“And then there is Mr. Incledon,” said Mrs. Wodehouse, who felt that her son had been slighted, and may be excused perhaps for being a little spiteful. “The mother has always had her eye upon him since he came{43} back to Whitton. You will see that will be a match, if she can manage it; and of course it would be a great match for Miss Rose.”
I think if an angel from heaven came down into a country parish and a good woman with daughters entertained him unawares, her neighbors would decide at once which of the girls she meant to marry Gabriel to. But Mrs. Wodehouse had more justification than most gossips have. She could not forget the little pleading note which her Edward had made her write, entreating Rose to come down if only for one moment, and that the girl had taken no notice of it; though before that expedition to Whitton to see the Perugino and Mr. Incledon’s great house, Rose had been very well satisfied to have the young sailor at her feet. Mrs. Wodehouse had met the mother and daughter but seldom since, for they had been absorbed in attendance upon the rector; but when by chance she did encounter them, she felt proud to think that she had never said anything but “Good morning.”
No inquiries after their health had come from her lips. She had retired into polite indifference; though sometimes her heart had been touched by poor Rose’s pale cheek, and her wistful look, which seemed to ask pardon. “I do not mind what is done to me,” Mrs. Wodehouse said to her dear friend and confidant, Mrs. Musgrove; “but those who slight my son I will never forgive. I do not see that it is unchristian. It is unchristian not to forgive what is done to yourself; and I am sure no one is less ready to take personal offence than I am.” She was resolved, therefore, that whatever happened, “Good morning” was all the greeting she would give to the Damerels; though of course she was very sorry indeed for them, and as anxious as other people as to how they would be left, and where they would go.
Mrs. Damerel herself was overwhelmed by her grief in a way which could scarcely have been expected from a woman who had so many other considerations to rouse her out of its indulgence, and who had not been for a long time a very happy wife. But when man and wife have been partially separated as these two had been, and have ceased to feel the sympathy for each other which such a close relationship requires, a long illness has a wonderful effect often in bringing back to the survivor the early image of the being he or she has loved. Perhaps I ought to say she; I do not know if a sick wife is so touching to a husband’s imagination as a sick man is to his wife’s. And then a little thing had occurred before the end which had gone to Mrs. Damerel’s heart more than matters of much greater moment. Her husband had called Rose, and on Rose going to him had waved her away, saying, “No, no,” and holding out his feeble hands to her mother.
had stolen away everything but tenderness from the woman’s mind, and she wept for her husband as she might have wept for him had he died in the earlier years of their marriage, with an absorbing grief that drove everything else out of her thoughts. This, however, could not last. When the blinds were drawn up from the rectory, and the brisk sunshine shone in again, and the family looked with unveiled faces upon the lawn, where every one still expected to see him, so full was it of his memory, the common cares of life came back, and had to be thought of. Mrs. Damerel’s brothers had both come to the funeral. One of them, the squire, was the trustee under her marriage settlement, and one of the executors of Mr. Damerel’s will; so he remained along with the lawyer and the doctor and Mr. Nolan, and listened to all the provisions of that will, which were extremely reasonable, but of a far back date, and which the lawyer read with an occasional shake of his head, which at the moment no one could understand. Unfortunately, however, it was but too easy to understand.
