CHAPTER LIV

MORE DISCOVERIES

All that morning I pondered over the devious lane of my life, which had led up to so fair a garden.  And one thing above all kept turning and turning in my head, until I thought I should die of waiting for its fulfilment.  Now was I free to ask Dorothy to marry me, to promise her the ease and comfort that had once been hers, should God bring us safe back to Maryland.  The change in her was little less than a marvel to me, when I remembered the wilful miss who had come to London bent upon pleasure alone.  Truly, she was of that rare metal which refines, and then outshines all others.  And there was much I could not understand.  A miracle had saved her from the Duke of Chartersea, but why she had refused so many great men and good was beyond my comprehension.  Not a glimpse of her did I get that day, though my eyes wandered little from the knob of the door.  And even from Aunt Lucy no satisfaction was to be had as to the cause of her absence.

“’Clare to goodness, Marse Dick,” said she, with great solemnity, “’clare to goodness, I’se nursed Miss Dolly since she was dat high, and neber one minnit obher life is I knowed what de Chile gwine t’ do de next.  She ain’t neber yit done what I calcelated on.”

The next morning, after the doctor had dressed my wounds and bantered me to his heart’s content, enters Mr. Marmaduke Manners.  I was prodigiously struck by the change in him, and pitied him then near as much as I had once despised him.  He was arrayed in finery, as of old.  But the finery was some thing shabby; the lace was frayed at the edges, there was a neat but obvious patch in his small-clothes, and two more in his coat.  His air was what distressed me most of all, being that of a man who spends his days seeking favours and getting none.  I had seen too many of the type not to know the sign of it.

He ran forward and gave me his hand, which I grasped as heartily as my weakness would permit.

“They would not let me see you until to-day, my dear Richard,” he exclaimed.  “I bid you welcome to what is left of our home.  ’Tis not Arlington Street, my lad.”

“But more of a home than was that grander house, Mr. Manners.”

He sighed heavily.

“Alas!” said he, “poverty is a bitter draught, and we have drunk deep of it since last we beheld you.  My great friends know me no more, and will not take my note for a shilling.  They do not remember the dinners and suppers I gave them.  Faith, this war has brought nothing but misery, and how we are to get through it, God knows!”

Now I understood it was not the war, but Mr. Marmaduke himself, which had carried his family to this pass.  And some of my old resentment rekindled.

“I know that I have brought you great additional anxiety and expense, Mr. Manners,” I answered somewhat testily.  “The care I have been to Mrs. Manners and Dorothy I may never repay.  But it gives me pleasure to feel, sir, that I am in a position to reimburse you, and likewise to loan you something until your lands begin to pay again.”