From One Generation to Another | Page 5

did not seem to be following the printed
lines.
"I suppose she was all right when you were up just now!" he said
carelessly after a moment, and without lowering his paper.
"Yes, dear," the lady replied. "She was asleep."
And this young mother of forty smiled softly to herself as if at some
recollection.
This happiness had come late, as happiness must for us to value it fully,
and Mrs. Glynde's somewhat old-fashioned Christianity was of that
school which seeks to depreciate by hook or by crook the enjoyment of
those sparse goods that the gods send us. The stone in her path at this
time was an exaggerated sense of her own unworthiness--a matter
which she might safely have left to another and wiser judgment.
Presently the Rector laid aside the newspaper, and rose slowly from his
chair.
"Are you going upstairs, dear?" inquired his tactless spouse.
"Um--er. Yes! I am just going up to get--a pocket-handkerchief."
Mrs. Glynde said nothing; but as she knew the creak of every board in
the room overhead she became aware shortly afterwards that the Rector
had either diverged slightly from the path of which he was the ordained
finger-post, or that he had suddenly taken to keeping his
pocket-handkerchiefs in the far corner of the room where the cradle

stood.
It will be readily understood that in a household ruled, as this rectory
was, by a sleepy little morsel of humanity, Anna Hethbridge was in no
way hindered in the furtherance of her own personal purposes--one
might almost add periodical purposes, for she never held to one for
long.
The Squire was very lonely. His boy Jem, aged four, would certainly be
the happier for a mother's care. Above all, Miss Hethbridge seemed to
want the marriage, and so it came about.
If Anna Hethbridge had been asked at that time why she wanted it, she
would probably have told an untruth. She was rather given, by the way,
to telling untruths. Had she, in fact, given a reason at all, she would
perforce have left the straight path, because she had no reason in her
mind.
The real motive was probably a love of excitement; and Miss Anna
Hethbridge is not the only woman, by many thousands, who has
married for that same reason.
The wedding was celebrated quietly at the Clapham parish church. A
humiliating day for the stiff-necked old Squire of Stagholme; for he
was introduced to many new relatives, who, if they could have bought
up Stagholme and its master, were but poorly equipped with the letter
"h." The bourgeois ostentation and would-be high-toned graciousness
of the ladies, jarred on his nerves as harshly as did the personal
appearance of their respective husbands.
Altogether it was just possible that Squire Agar began to realise the
extent of his own foolishness before the effervescence had left the
champagne that flowed freely to the health of bride and bride-groom.
The event was duly announced in the leading newspapers, and in the
course of a few days a copy of the Times containing the insertion
started eastward to meet Seymour Michael on his way home from
India.

Anna Agar came home to Stagholme to begin her new life; for which
peaceful groove of existence she was by the way totally unfitted; for
she had breathed the fatal air of Clapham since her birth. This
atmosphere is terribly impregnated with the microbe of bourgeoisie.
But the novelty of the great house had that all-absorbing fascination
exercised over shallow minds by anything that is new. At first she
maintained excitedly that there was no life like a country life--no centre
more suited for such an ideal existence than Stagholme. For a time she
forgot Seymour Michael; but love is eminently deceitful. It lies in a
comatose silence for many years and then suddenly springs to life.
Sometimes the long period of rest has strengthened it--sometimes the
time has been passed in a chrysalis stage from which Love awakens to
find itself changed into Hatred.
Little Jem, her stepson--sturdy, fair, silent--was her first failure.
"Come to your mother, dear," she said, with unguarded enthusiasm one
afternoon when there were callers in the room.
"I cannot go to my mother," replied the youthful James, with his mouth
full of cake, "because she is dead."
There was an uncompromising matter-of-factness about this simple
statement, made in all good faith and honesty, which warned the
second Mrs. Agar to press the matter no farther just then. But she was
so intent upon exhibiting to her neighbours the maternal affection
which she persuaded herself that she felt for the plain-spoken heir to
Stagholme, that she took him to task afterwards. With great care and an
utter lack of logic she devoted some hours to the instruction of Jem in