CHAPTER XVII.

A week of darkened windows, of condolence-cards and hushed inquiries, of voices and faces saddened, of footsteps treading softly on one landing. A week of many tears and quiet sorrow; of many words, for in some persons grief speaks; and of half-silent sympathy, for in some even sympathy is silent. A week wherein to weigh this world and find it wanting, wherein also to realise the far more exceeding weight of the other. A week begun with the hope whose blossom goes up as dust, and ending with the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.

In goods and chattels, Mrs. Tyke remained none the poorer for her husband’s death. He had left almost everything to her and absolutely at her disposal, well knowing that their old faithful servants were no less dear to her than to himself, and having on his side no poor relations to provide for. His nephew Alan Hartley, and Mr. Tresham, were appointed his executors. Alan the good-natured, addicted to shirking trouble in general, consistently shirked this official trouble in particular. Arthur Tresham did, what little work there was to do, and did it in such a way as veiled his friend’s shortcomings. Mrs. Tyke, with a life-long habit of leaning on some one, came, as a matter of course, to lean on him, and appealed to him as to all sorts of details, without once considering whether the time he devoted to her service was reclaimed out of his work, or leisure, or rest; he best knew, and the knowledge remained with him. Alan, though sincerely sorry for his uncle’s death, cut private jokes with Stella about his co-executor’s frequent visits to Appletrees House, and ignored the shortcomings which entailed their necessity.

Mrs. Tyke, in her bereavement, clung to Lucy, and was thoroughly amiable and helpless. She would sit for hours over the fire, talking and crying her eyes and her nose red, whilst Lucy wrote her letters, or grappled with her bills. Then they would both grow sleepy, and doze off in opposite chimney-corners. So the maid might find them when she brought up tea, or so Arthur when he dropped in on business, or possibly on pleasure. Mrs. Tyke would sometimes merely open sleepy eyes, shake hands, and doze off again; but Lucy would sit up wide awake in a moment, ready to listen to all his long stories about his poor people. Soon she took to making things for them, which he carried away in his pocket, or, when too bulky for his pocket, in a parcel under his arm. At last it happened, that they began talking of old days, before he went to the East, and then each found that the other remembered a great deal about those old days. So gradually it came to pass that, from looking back together, they took also to looking forward together.

Lucy’s courtship was most prosaic. Old women’s flannel and old men’s rheumatism alternated with some more usual details of love-making, and the exchange of rings was avowedly an exchange of old rings. Arthur presented Lucy with his mother’s wedding-guard; but Lucy gave him a fine diamond solitaire which had been her father’s, and the romantic corner of her heart was gratified by the inequality of the gifts. She would have preferred a little more romance certainly on his side; if not less sense, at least more sentiment; something reasonable enough to be relied upon, yet unreasonable enough to be flattering. ‘But one cannot have everything,’ she reflected, meekly remembering her own thirty years; and she felt what a deep resting-place she had found in Arthur’s trusty heart, and how shallow a grace had been the flattering charm of Alan’s manner. Till, weighing her second love against her first, tears, at once proud and humble, filled her eyes, and ‘one cannot have everything’ was forgotten in ‘I can never give him back half enough.’

After the exchange of rings, she announced her engagement to Catherine and Mrs. Tyke; to Jane also and Mr. Durham in few words and as all business connected with Dr. Tyke’s will was already satisfactorily settled, and Appletrees House about to pass into fresh hands, she prepared to return home. Mrs. Tyke, too purposeless to be abandoned to her own resources, begged an invitation to Brompton-on-Sea, and received a cordial welcome down from both sisters. Arthur was to remain at work in London till after Easter; and then to join his friends at the seaside, claim his bride, and take her away to spend their honey-moon beside that beautiful blue Bosphorus which had not made him forget her.

If there was a romantic moment in their courtship, it was the moment of parting at the noisy, dirty, crowded railway-station, when Arthur terrified Lucy, to her great delight, by standing on the carriage-step, and holding her hand locked fast in his own, an instant after the train had started.