Perhaps it was because we left Montreal so abruptly that Mrs. March
never received Mrs. Bentley's card. It may be at the Ottawa House to
this day, for all I know. What is certain is that we saw and heard
nothing more of her or her daughter. Glendenning called to see us as he
passed through Boston on his way west from Quebec, but we were neither
of us at home and we missed him, to my wife's vivid regret. I rather
think we expected him to find some excuse for writing after he reached
his place in northern Ohio; but he did not write, and he became more and
more the memory of a young clergyman in the beginning of a love-affair,
till one summer, while we were still disputing where we should spend the
hot weather within business reach, there came a letter from him saying
that he was settled at Gormanville, and wishing that he might tempt us
up some afternoon before we were off to the mountains or seaside. This
revived all my wife's waning interest in him, and it was hard to keep
the answer I made him from expressing in a series of crucial inquiries
the excitement she felt at his being in New England and so near Boston,
and in Gormanville of all places. It was one of the places we had
thought of for the summer, and we were yet so far from having
relinquished it that we were recurring from time to time in hope and
fear to the advertisement of an old village mansion there, with ample
grounds, garden, orchard, ice-house, and stables, for a very low rental
to an unexceptionable tenant. We had no doubt of our own qualifications,
but we had misgivings of the village mansion; and I am afraid that I
rather unduly despatched the personal part of my letter, in my haste to
ask what Glendenning knew and what he thought of the Conwell place.
However, the letter seemed to serve all purposes. There came a reply
from Glendenning, most cordial, even affectionate, saying that the
Conwell place was delightful, and I must come at once and see it. He
professed that he would be glad to have Mrs. March come too, and he
declared that if his joy at having us did not fill his modest rectory to
bursting, he was sure it could stand the physical strain of our
presence, though he confessed that his guest-chamber was tiny.
"He wants _you_, Basil," my wife divined from terms which gave me no
sense of any latent design of parting us in his hospitality. "But,
evidently, it isn't a chance to be missed, and you must go--instantly.
Can you go to-morrow? But telegraph him you're coming, and tell him to
hold on to the Conwell place; it may be snapped up any moment if it's so
desirable."
I did not go till the following week, when I found that no one had
attempted to snap up the Conwell place. In fact, it rather snapped me
up, I secured it with so little trouble. I reported it so perfect that
all my wife's fears of a latent objection to it were roused again. But
when I said I thought we could relinquish it, her terrors subsided; and
I thought this the right moment to deliver a stroke that I had been
holding in reserve.
"You know," I began, "the Bentleys have their summer place there--the
old Bentley homestead. It's their ancestral town, you know."
"Bentleys? What Bentleys?" she demanded, opaquely.
"Why, those people we met on the _Corinthian_, summer before last--you
thought he was in love with the girl--"
A simultaneous photograph could alone reproduce Mrs. March's tumultuous
and various emotions as she seized the fact conveyed in my words. She
poured out a volume of mingled conjectures, assertions, suspicions,
conclusions, in which there was nothing final but the decision that we
must not dream of going there; that it would look like thrusting
ourselves in, and would be in the worst sort of taste; they would all
hate us, and we should feel that we were spies upon the young people;
for of course the Bentleys had got Glendenning there to marry him, and
in effect did not want any one to witness the disgraceful spectacle.
I said, "That may be the nefarious purpose of the young lady, but, as I
understood Glendenning, it is no part of her mother's design."
"What do you mean?"
"Miss Bentley may have got him there to marry him, but Mrs. Bentley
seems to have meant nothing more than an engagement at the worst."
"What _do_ you mean? They're not engaged, are they?"
"They're not married, at any rate, and I suppose they're engaged. I did
not have it from Miss Bentley, but I suppose Glendenning may be trusted
in such a case."
"Now," said my wife, with a severity that might well have appalled me,
"if you will please to explain, Basil, it will be better for you."
"Why, it is simply this. Glendenning seems to have made himself so
useful to the mother and pleasing to the daughter after we left them in
Montreal that he was tolerated on a pretence that there was reason for
his writing back to Mrs. Bentley after he got home, and, as Mrs. Bentley
never writes letters, Miss Bentley had the hard task of answering him.
This led to a correspondence."
"And to her moving heaven and earth to get him to Gormanville. I see! Of
course she did it so that no one knew what she was about!"
"Apparently. Glendenning himself was not in the secret. The Bentleys
were in Europe last summer, and he did not know that they had a place at
Gormanville till he came to live there. Another proof that Miss Bentley
got him there is the fact that she and her mother are Unitarians, and
that they would naturally be able to select the rector of the Episcopal
church."
"Go on," said Mrs. March, not the least daunted.
"Oh, there's nothing more. He is simply rector of St. Michael's at
Gormanville; and there is not the slightest proof that any young lady
had a hand in getting him there."
"As if I cared in the least whether she had! I suppose you will allow
that she had something to do with getting engaged to him, and that is
the _great_ matter."
"Yes, I must allow that, if we are to suppose that young ladies have
anything to do with young men getting engaged to them; it doesn't seem
exactly delicate. But the novel phase of this great matter is the
position of the young lady's mother in regard to it. From what I could
make out she consents to the engagement of her daughter, but she don't
and won't consent to her marriage." My wife glared at me with so little
speculation in her eyes that I felt obliged to disclaim all
responsibility for the fact I had reported. "Thou canst not say _I_ did
it. _They_ did it, and Miss Bentley, if any one, is to blame. It seems,
from what Glendenning says, that the young lady and he wrote to each
other while she was abroad, and that they became engaged by letter. Then
the affair was broken off because of her mother's opposition; but since
they have met at Gormanville, the engagement has been renewed. So much
they've managed against the old lady's will, but apparently on condition
that they won't get married till she says."
"Nonsense! How could she stop them?"
"She couldn't, I dare say, by any of the old romantic methods of a
convent or disinheritance; but she is an invalid; she wants to keep her
daughter with her, and she avails with the girl's conscience by being
simply dependent and obstructive. The young people have carried their
engagement through, and now such hope as they have is fixed upon her
finally yielding in the matter of their marriage, though Glendenning was
obliged to confess that there was no sign of her doing so. They
agree--Miss Bentley and he--that they cannot get married as they got
engaged, in spite of her mother--it would be unclerical if it wouldn't
be unfilial--and they simply have to bide their time."
My wife asked abruptly, "How many chambers are there in the Conwell
place?"
I said, and then she asked, "Is there a windmill or a force-pump?" I
answered proudly that in Gormanville there was town water, but that if
this should give out there were both a windmill and a force-pump on the
Conwell place.
"It is very complete," she sighed, as if this had removed all hope from
her, and she added, "I suppose we had better take it."