The evening passed in expeditions of Ethel’s to look after her patient, and in desultory talk on all that was probable and improbable between Dr. May and the younger ones, until just as Ethel was coming down at nine o’clock with the report that she had persuaded Mary to go to bed, she was startled by the street door being opened as far as the chain would allow, and a voice calling, ‘I say, is any one there to let me in?’
‘Harry! O, Harry! I’m coming;’ and she had scarcely had time to shut the door previous to taking down the chain, before the three others were in the hall, the tumult of greetings breaking forth.
‘But where’s Polly?’ he asked, as soon as he was free to look round them all.
‘Going to bed with a bad headache,’ was the answer, with which Daisy had sense enough not to interfere; and the sailor had been brought into the drawing-room, examined on his journey, and offered supper, before he returned to the charge.
‘Nothing really the matter with Mary, I hope?’
‘Oh! no—nothing.’
‘Can’t I go up and see her?’
‘Not just at present,’ said Ethel. ‘I will see how she is when she is in bed, but if she is going to sleep, we had better not disturb her.’
‘Harry thinks she must sleep better for the sight of him,’ said the Doctor; ‘but it is a melancholy business.—Harry, your nose is out of joint.’
‘Who is it?’ said Harry, gravely.
‘Ah! you have chosen a bad time to come home. We shall know no comfort till it is over.’
‘Who?’ cried Harry; ‘no nonsense, Gertrude, I can’t stand guessing.’
This was directed to Gertrude, who was only offending by pursed lips and twinkling eyes, because he could not fall foul of his father. Dr. May took pity, and answered at once.
‘Cheviot!’ cried Harry. ‘Excellent! He always did know how to get the best of everything. Polly turning into a Mrs. Hoxton. Ha! ha! Well, that is a relief to my mind.’
‘You did look rather dismayed, certainly. What were you afraid of?’
‘Why, when that poor young Leonard Ward’s business was in the papers, a messmate of mine was asked if we were not all very much interested, because of some attachment between some of us. I thought he must mean me or Tom, for I was tremendously smitten with that sweet pretty girl, and I used to be awfully jealous of Tom, but when I heard of Mary going to bed with a headache, and that style of thing, I began to doubt, and I couldn’t stand her taking up with such a dirty little nigger as Henry Ward was at school.’
‘I think you might have known Mary better!’ exclaimed Gertrude.
‘And it’s not Tom either?’ he asked.
‘Exactly the reverse,’ laughed his father.
‘Well, Tom is a sly fellow, and he had a knack of turning up whenever one wanted to do a civil thing by that poor girl. Where is she now?’
‘At New York.’
‘They’d better take care how they send me to watch the Yankees, then.’
‘Your passion does not alarm me greatly,’ laughed the Doctor. ‘I don’t think it ever equalled that for the reigning ship. I hope there’s a vacancy in that department for the present, and that we may have you at home a little.’
‘Indeed, sir, I’m afraid not,’ said Harry. ‘I saw Captain Gordon at Portsmouth this morning, and he tells me he is to go out in the Clio to the Pacific station, and would apply for me as his first lieutenant, if I liked to look up the islands again. So, if you have any commissions for Norman, I’m your man.
‘And how soon?’
‘Uncertain—but Cheviot and Mary must settle their affairs in good time; I’ve missed all the weddings in the family hitherto, and won’t be balked of Polly’s. I say, Ethel, you can’t mean me not to go and wish her joy.’
‘We are by no means come to joy yet,’ said Ethel; ‘poor Mary is overset by the suddenness of the thing.’
‘Why, I thought it was all fixed.’
‘Nothing less so,’ said the Doctor. ‘One would think it was a naiad that had had an offer from the mountains next, for she has been shedding a perfect river of tears ever since; and all that the united discernment of the family has yet gathered is, that she cries rather more when we tell her she is right to say No than when we tell her she is right to say Yes.’
‘I declare, Ethel, you must let me go up to her.’
‘But, Harry, I promised she should hear no more about it to-night. You must say nothing unless she begins.’
And thinking a quiet night’s rest, free from further excitement, the best chance of a rational day, Ethel was glad that her mission resulted in the report, ‘Far too nearly asleep to be disturbed;’ but on the way up to bed, soft as Harry’s footfalls always were, a voice came down the stairs, ‘That’s Harry! Oh, come!’ and with a face of triumph turned back to meet Ethel’s glance of discomfited warning, he bounded up, to be met by Mary in her dressing-gown. ‘O, Harry, why didn’t you come?’ as she threw her arms round his neck.
‘They wouldn’t let me.’
‘I did think I heard you; but when no one came I thought it was only Richard, till I heard the dear old step, and then I knew. O, Harry!’ and still she gasped, with her head on his shoulder.
‘They said you must be quiet.’
‘O Harry! did you hear?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ holding her closer, ‘and heartily glad I am; I know him as well as if I had sailed with him, and I could not wish you in better hands.’
‘But—O, Harry dear—’ and there was a struggle with a sob between each word, ‘indeed—I won’t—mind if you had rather not.’
‘Do you mean that you don’t like him?’
‘I should see him, you know, and perhaps he would not mind—he could always come and talk to papa in the evenings.’
‘And is that what you want to put a poor man off with, Mary?’
‘Only—only—if you don’t want me to—’
‘I not want you to—? Why, Mary, isn’t it the very best thing I could want for you? What are you thinking about?’
‘Don’t you remember, when you came home after your wound, you said I—I mustn’t—’ and she fell into such a paroxysm of crying that he had quite to hold her up in his arms, and though his voice was merry, there was a moisture on his eyelashes. ‘Oh, you Polly! You’re a caution against deluding the infant mind! Was that all? Was that what made you distract them all? Why not have said so?’
‘Oh, never! They would have said you were foolish.’
‘As I was for not knowing that you wouldn’t understand that I only meant you were to wait till the right one turned up. Why, if I had been at Auckland, would you have cried till I came home?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry I was silly! But I’m glad you didn’t mean it, dear Harry!’ squeezing him convulsively.
‘There! And now you’ll sleep sound, and meet them as fresh as a fair wind tomorrow. Eh?’
‘Only please tell papa I’m sorry I worried him.’
‘And how about somebody else, Mary, whom you’ve kept on tenter-hooks ever so long? Are you sure he is not walking up and down under the limes on the brink of despair?’
‘Oh, do you think—? But he would not be so foolish!’
‘There now, go to sleep. I’ll settle it all for you, and I shan’t let any one say you are a goose but myself. Only sleep, and get those horrid red spots away from under your eyes, or perhaps he’ll repent his bargain, said Harry, kissing each red spot. ‘Promise you’ll go to bed the instant I’m gone.’
‘Well,’ said Dr. May, looking out of his room, ‘I augur that the spirit of the flood has something to say to the spirit of the fell.’