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Page 5
It is impossible to describe the force of love's advent for Mary
Lennox. She had come to believe herself as vaguely committed to
her cousin, and imagined that her affection for Henry amounted to
as much as she was ever likely to feel for a man. But reality
awakened her, and its glory did not make her selfish, since her
nature was not constructed so to be; it only taught her what love
meant, and convinced her that she could never marry anybody on
earth but the stricken sailor. And this she knew long before he
was well enough to give a sign that he even appreciated her
ministry. The very whisper of his voice sent a thrill through her
before he had gained strength to speak aloud. And his deep tones,
when she heard them, were like no voice that had fallen on her ear
till then. The first thing that indicated restoring health was
his request that his beard might be trimmed; and he was making love
to her three days after he had been declared out of danger. Then
did Mary begin to live, and looking back, she marvelled how horses
and dogs and a fishing-rod had been her life till now. The
revelation bewildered her and she wrote her emotions in many long
pages to her cousin. The causes of such changes she did not indeed
specify, but he read between the lines, and knew it was a man and
not the war that had so altered and deepened her outlook. He had
never done it, and he could not be angry with her now, for she had
pretended no ardor of emotion to him. Young though he was, he
always feared that she liked him not after the way of a lover. He
had hoped to open her eyes some day, but it was given to another to
do so.
He felt no surprise, therefore, when news of her engagement reached
him from herself. He wrote the letter of his life in reply, and
was at pains to laugh at their boy-and-girl attachment, and lessen
any regret she might feel on his account. Her father took it
somewhat hardly at first, for he held that more than sufficient
misfortunes, to correct the balance of prosperity in his favor,
had already befallen him. But he was deeply attached to his
daughter, and her magical change under the new and radiant
revelation convinced him that she had now awakened to an emotional
fulness of life which could only be the outward sign of love. That
she was in love for the first time also seemed clear; but he would
not give his consent until he had seen her lover and heard all
there was to know about him. That, however, did not alarm Mary,
for she believed that Thomas May must prove a spirit after Sir
Walter's heart. And so he did. The sailor was a gentleman; he
had proposed without the faintest notion to whom he offered his
penniless hand, and when he did find out, was so bewildered that
Mary assured her father she thought he would change his mind.
"If I had not threatened him with disgrace and breach of promise,
I do think he would have thrown me over," she said.
And now they had been wedded for six months, and Mary sat by the
great log fire with her hand in Tom's. The sailor was on leave,
but expected to return to his ship at Plymouth in a day or two.
Then his father-in-law had promised to visit the great cruiser, for
the Navy was a service of which he knew little. Lennoxes had all
been soldiers or clergymen since a great lawyer founded the race.
The game of billiards proceeded, and Henry caught his uncle in the
eighties and ran out with an unfinished fifteen. Then Ernest
Travers and his wife--old and dear friends of Sir Walter--played
a hundred up, the lady receiving half the game. Mr. Travers was a
Suffolk man, and had fagged for Sir Walter at Eton. Their
comradeship had lasted a lifetime, and no year passed without
reciprocal visits. Travers also looked at life with the eyes of a
wealthy man. He was sixty-five, pompous, large, and rubicund--a
"backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent. His wife, ten years
younger than himself, loved pleasure, but she had done more than
her duty, in her opinion, and borne him two sons and a daughter.
They were colorless, kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of
others like themselves. The war had sobered them, and at an early
stage robbed them of their younger boy.
Nelly Travers won her game amid congratulations, and Tom May
challenged another woman, a Diana, who lived for sport and had
joined the house party with her uncle, Mr. Felix Fayre-Michell.
But Millicent Fayre-Michell refused.
"I've shot six partridges, a hare, and two pheasants to-day," said
the girl, "and I'm half asleep."
Other men were present also of a type not dissimilar. It was a
conventional gathering of rich nobodies, each a big frog in his
own little puddle, none known far beyond it and none with
sufficient intellect or ability to create for himself any position
in the world save that won by the accident of money made by their
progenitors.
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