As To Touching Pitch

Before the wedding old Mr. Caldigate arranged with his son that he would give up to the young married people the house at Folking, and indeed the entire management of the property.  ‘I have made up my mind about it,’ said the squire, who at this time was living with his son on happy terms.  ‘I have never been adapted for the life of a country gentleman,’ he continued, ’though I have endeavoured to make the best of it, and have in a certain way come to love the old place.  But I don’t care about wheat nor yet about bullocks;—­and a country house should always have a mistress.’  And so it was settled.  Mr. Caldigate took for himself a house in Cambridge, whither he proposed to remove nothing but himself and his books, and promised to have Folking ready for his son and his son’s bride on their return from their wedding tour.  In all this Robert Bolton and the old squire acted together, the brother thinking that the position would suit his sister well.  But others among the Boltons,—­Mrs Daniel, the London people, and even Mrs. Robert herself,—­had thought that the ‘young people’ had better be further away from the influences or annoyances of Puritan Grange.  Robert, however, had declared that it would be absurd to yield to the temper, and prejudice, and fury—­as he called it—­of his father’s wife.  When this discussion was going on she had absolutely quarrelled with the attorney, and the attorney had made up his mind that she should be—­ignored.  And then, too, as Robert explained, it must be for the husband and not for the wife to choose where they would live.  Folking was, or at any rate would be, his own, by right of inheritance, and it was not to be thought of that a man should be driven away from his natural duties and from the enjoyment of his natural privileges by the mad humours of a fanatic female.  In all this old Mr. Bolton was hardly consulted; but there was no reason why he should express an opinion.  He was giving his daughter absolutely no fortune; nor had he even vouchsafed to declare what money should be coming to her at his death.  John Caldigate had positively refused to say a word on the subject;—­had refused even when instigated to do so by Hester’s brother.  ‘It shall be just as he pleases,’ Caldigate had said.  ’I told your father that I was not looking after his daughter with any view to money, and I will be as good as my word.’  Robert had told her father that something should be arranged;—­but the old man had put it off from day to day, and nothing had been arranged.  And so it came to pass that he was excluded almost from having an opinion as to his daughter’s future life.

It was understood that the marriage trip should be continued for some months.  Caldigate was fettered by no business that required an early return.  He had worked hard for five years, and felt that he had earned a holiday.  And Hester naturally was well disposed to be absent for as long a time as would suit her husband.  Time, and time alone, might perhaps soften her mother’s heart.  They went to Italy, and stayed during the winter months in Rome, and then, when the fine weather came, they returned across the Alps, and lingered about among the playgrounds of Europe, visiting Switzerland, the Tyrol, and the Pyrenees, and returning home to Cambridgeshire at the close of the following September.