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Updated: August 6, 2024
Polkington thought of him too, but she did not change her mind on this account. "We can't, then," she said, and turned to the discussion of other matters. She had carried these as far as the probable date of marriage, and the preferment the young man might easily expect, when the little servant came up to announce Mr. Gillat. Mrs. Polkington did not express impatience.
Captain Polkington offered a few not very coherent explanations and excuses, to which she did not listen, and then relapsed into silence. Johnny sat opposite, rubbing his hands in nervous sympathy, and looking from father to daughter; he took the silence of the one to be as hopeless as that of the other. "We thought," he ventured at last, tugging at the parcel now firmly wedged in his pocket.
Under these circumstances it is not perhaps so surprising that Chèrie found it advisable to accept Mr. Brendon Smith's offer of marriage, and Mrs. Polkington found the impossibility of getting a trousseau in time no very great disadvantage. When Julia came home it wanted but a short time to Chèrie's wedding.
She had enough of the Polkington self-mastery left to think of the manoeuvre and its advisability, but not enough to carry it out properly; the cup fell on the doubled-up tea-cloth that lay at her feet and was not broken at all. Nevertheless the incident and her own contempt for her failure steadied her a little. Rawson-Clew picked up the cup. "Do you not understand," he said.
I have a debt to pay you and until it is paid, if I were your own cousin, I could not stand on the same platform." "A debt?" he repeated the word in surprise. His young cousin's loan to Captain Polkington had slipped his memory, and even if it had not, its connection with the present would not have occurred to him.
So she wrote, then she put the slip with the cheque in an envelope and addressed it to the London club where the explosive had been sent. "It will be posted before the funeral," she thought; "I'm glad it will all end together poor father!" She went down-stairs and gave the letter to the postman. Mrs. Polkington came into the kitchen as she was doing so, for Mrs. Polkington was at the cottage now.
That day had been an important one to the Polkingtons; Violet, the eldest of the sisters, had that afternoon accepted an offer of marriage from the Reverend Richard Frazer. The young man had not left the house an hour, and Mrs. Polkington was not yet returned from some afternoon engagement more than half, but already the matter had been in part discussed by the family.
After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and interesting for Mr. Gillat and Julia, so that the March wind was forgotten, except in the ill-effect on Captain Polkington with whom it had disagreed a good deal, both in health and temper. That spring, as indeed every spring, there was a flower show in London at the Temple Gardens.
Polkington would probably go somewhere for part of the time, then there could be some real retrenchments not otherwise possible. Mary might be dismissed; Mr. Gillat even might come to board with them for a little; the outside world need not know he was a guest that paid.
Polkington observed this and felt it; an empty carriage and good livery following would have given her satisfaction, without in any way diminishing her sorrow and proper feeling. It is conceivable she would have found satisfaction in being shipwrecked in aristocratic company, without at the same time, suffering less than she ought to suffer.
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