SAFE IN PORT
The marriage of Everard Lisle and Ethel Thursby Clare did not take
place till the following April.
Sir Gilbert, his son, his granddaughter and Lady Pell spent the winter
in the South of France, where they were joined in February by Everard
on his return from Pineapple City, whither he had gone at John Clare’s
request (for Sir Gilbert strongly objected to his son’s going in
person) to wind up his affairs, which had been looked after during the
past few months by a trusted subordinate, and to dispose of the
business.
But it now becomes requisite to go back a little, for many things had
happened before Sir Gilbert and the others got back to the Chase.
The first to whom our attention is due are the dear twin-sisters of
Rose Mount.
On the morning of the day following that scene at the Chase when Sir
Gilbert had unconditionally sanctioned the engagement of his
granddaughter to Everard Lisle, Ethel asked her father whether he had
any objection to her writing to her “aunts” at Mapleford and informing
them of all the wonderful things which had befallen her in the course
of the last four-and-twenty hours.
Not only had John Clare no objection to the sisters being informed, but
he suggested that instead of Ethel writing to them, Everard Lisle
should be sent to them as a special envoy, not only to tell them the
news, but to bring them back, _vi et armis_, on a long visit to the
Chase.
It was a task which Everard accomplished to the satisfaction of
everyone concerned. Of the meeting between Ethel and the sisters, when
at length the latter had been persuaded into accepting Sir Gilbert’s
hospitality, and of the genuine welcome accorded them, we have not
space left to speak. It will be enough to say that, a little later, at
Sir Gilbert’s earnest persuasion, they agreed to leave Rose Mount and
St. Oswyth’s and make their future home at Maylings (of which they were
to become the tenants at a nominal rent), where they would be next
door, as one might say, to their “dear girl.” That Tamsin should
accompany them to their new home was a foregone conclusion; indeed, it
would not have seemed like home without her.
John Clare’s Christmas present to the sisters, to whom he felt himself
so deeply indebted, took the form of a pony and basket carriage. It was
a luxury which they had denied themselves ever since the break in their
fortunes, but with Vale View House let on a seven years’ lease the need
for their doing so no longer existed.
In the course of the winter Mrs. Tew was married, the man of her choice
being none other than Dr. Mallory, the most popular of the Mapleford
_medicos_. As Lady Pell said, the affair was quite a little romance. It
appeared that the canon’s widow and the doctor had been in love with
each other thirty years before when they were young folk living in
quite a different part of the country. As is often the case, something
had happened to separate them, and for a quarter of a century or more
they had wholly lost touch of each other; so much so that for aught
either of them knew the other might be dead. Chance, or accident, one
day brought them together, and to their mutual surprise they discovered
that the ashes on the altar of their early love which they had believed
to be long extinct, still smouldered, and needed nothing but
propinquity and favouring circumstances to fan them into a flame which
one might pretty safely assume would expire only with life itself.
If the canon’s widow believed—which she did firmly—that Dr. Mallory had
lived unmarried all these years because he had never got over his early
disappointment, it was a charming belief, and certainly the doctor
himself would have been the last man to undeceive her.
Little now remains to be done save to furnish the reader with a few
brief particulars of the after fortunes of sundry of the characters
with one or more episodes of whose life-history the foregoing pages
have been concerned.
First, then, as regards the Keymers, father and son.
With Launce Keymer it was the case of the trickster being tricked.
Always on the lookout for a woman with money, he met and was introduced
to a widow, still young and pretty, whose husband had died two years
before, leaving her a fortune of twenty-five thousand pounds. After
having obtained a copy of the late Mr. Witley’s will from Somerset
House, and so satisfied himself as to the genuineness of the bequest,
Keymer proposed and was accepted. Not till after his marriage did he
discover that nearly the whole of his wife’s fortune had been swallowed
up in a huge banking failure which had occurred only a few weeks prior
to his introduction to her. So extreme was his disgust and
disappointment that, after having scraped together every shilling he
could lay hands on, he quietly levanted, presumably to the land of the
stars and stripes, and his newly married wife saw him no more.
Of Mr. Keymer, senior, it is enough to state that, partly as a
consequence of his second wife’s extravagance, which he was morally too
weak to curb; partly owing to a growing neglect of his business,
combined with, or the result of, an increasing fondness for the cup
which, whether it cheers or no, does inebriate; and, lastly, because he
found himself powerless to compete against the new brewery which a
wealthy London syndicate had lately established in St. Oswyth’s, he
gradually drifted into the bankruptcy court, in the dreary morasses of
which we will leave him floundering.
It was scarcely likely that Ethel, in her good fortune, should forget
the existence of Miss Hetty Blair, the pretty nursery governess of
Dulminster, who once on a time had rendered her such an important
service. And when she heard that she was about to be married to a
rising young lawyer of a distant town, a very substantial proof of her
regard accompanied her wishes for her happiness and welfare.
Of Captain Verinder there is nothing pleasant to report. With such men
as he it seems almost inevitable that as they advance in years their
failings and vices should become accentuated, and that whatever virtues
or good qualities they may originally have been possessed of, should
grow “finer by degrees and beautifully less.” In point of fact, the
Captain began to deteriorate and go down-hill from the date of the
collapse of his vile plot. He had built so much on it that its failure
thoroughly disheartened him, and afterwards he scarcely seemed to care
what became of him. His end was a sad one even for such as he. His body
was fished out of the river-ooze down Deptford way. An ugly wound at
the back of his head and his turned-out pockets told unequivocally how
he had come by his death.
Everything was done that could be done both by John Clare and Everard
Lisle in the way of benefiting Luigi Rispani and furnishing him with
the opportunity of earning an honourable livelihood, but to no purpose.
By means of certain influence which was brought to bear, three
different situations were obtained for him, not one of which he kept
longer than a month or two. Simply to give him money from time to time
was merely helping to demoralise him still further. At length a
situation was found for him as drawing-master in a college of his
mother’s sunny clime, and though he would never reach fame or fortune,
aware that he had now only his own endeavours to trust to, he managed
to keep his head above water, and earn a very modest livelihood.
Kirby Griggs, to whom, in one sense, John Clare felt that he owed so
much, was not forgotten by him. For the man himself he could do
nothing, but he succeeded in placing two of his sons with excellent
City firms, and, by finding the requisite premium, in having one of his
daughters, who had a natural gift that way, apprenticed to one of the
best-known milliners at the West End.
In the course of the winter the marble tablet, which had been put up in
the church of St. Michael to the memory of John Alexander Clare, was
quietly removed.
When at length Sir Gilbert got back to the Chase, it was declared by
everybody who saw him that he seemed to have taken a fresh lease of
life. And so indeed he had, for when a man’s constitution has nothing
radically amiss with it, happiness undoubtedly helps to lengthen our
days, and Sir Gilbert had now everything to render him happy. The MS.
of his County History, so long laid aside, was enthusiastically taken
in hand again as soon as his grandson-in-law returned from his
honeymoon, and in the course of the following winter was brought to a
triumphant conclusion. The title-page records that it is the joint
production of “Sir Gilbert Clare, Bart., and Everard Lisle Clare,” for
before the marriage took place Sir Gilbert insisted upon the young man
taking out letters-patent authorising him to add to his own name the
surname of the ancient and honourable family of which he was about to
become a member.
During the years of his expatriation, John Clare had devoted much of
his spare time to experimental physics. It is a study which exercises a
potent charm over such of its votaries as venture beyond the threshold
of its temple of severe delights, and in the laboratory, which John
caused to be fitted up at the Chase, he spent many happy hours in the
effort to master those more abstruse secrets, and to arrive at a more
correct knowledge of those subtler elements of the material universe,
than the conditions of his life had heretofore allowed of his doing.
A few parting words are due to Lady Pell. As soon as the wedding was
over she set out to pay a long-deferred round of visits, but by the
middle of autumn she was back at the Chase, which henceforward was _de
facto_ her home. It was not to be expected that her restless
proclivities would quite desert her, and occasionally she would start
off at an hour’s notice, or no notice at all, for some place a couple
of hundred miles away, but always to come back with increasing
satisfaction, as time went on, to the old roof-tree, under whose
shadow, the romance of her life had had its beginning and its end.
Of Ethel and Everard what can be said in conclusion save that theirs
was the quiet happiness of well-ordered lives, of duties
conscientiously performed, and of unselfish devotion to the well-being
of others? In such a soil the sweet flower of content blooms
perennially and changes not with the seasons as they come and go.
THE END.