Victorian Short Stories | Page 8

voice. 'Do you mean for always?'
'If I were to marry, papa?'
'Oh, marry! No; that would not make me unhappy. It would make me
very happy, Patty, to see you married to a man you would love;--very,
very happy; though my days would be desolate without you.'
'That is it, papa. What would you do if I went from you?'
'What would it matter, Patty? I should be free, at any rate, from a load
which often presses heavy on me now. What will you do when I shall
leave you? A few more years and all will be over with me. But who is
it, love? Has anybody said anything to you?'
'It was only an idea, papa. I don't often think of such a thing; but I did
think of it then.' And so the subject was allowed to pass by. This had
happened before the day of the second arrival had been absolutely fixed
and made known to Miss Woolsworthy.
And then that second arrival took place. The reader may have
understood from the words with which Miss Le Smyrger authorized her
nephew to make his second visit to Oxney Colne that Miss
Woolsworthy's passion was not altogether unauthorized. Captain
Broughton had been told that he was not to come unless he came with a
certain purpose; and having been so told, he still persisted in coming.
There can be no doubt but that he well understood the purport to which
his aunt alluded. 'I shall assuredly come,' he had said. And true to his
word, he was now there.
Patience knew exactly the hour at which he must arrive at the station at
Newton Abbot, and the time also which it would take to travel over
those twelve up-hill miles from the station to Oxney. It need hardly be
said that she paid no visit to Miss Le Smyrger's house on that afternoon;
but she might have known something of Captain Broughton's approach
without going thither. His road to the Colne passed by the
parsonage-gate, and had Patience sat even at her bedroom window she
must have seen him. But on such an evening she would not sit at her
bedroom window;--she would do nothing which would force her to
accuse herself of a restless longing for her lover's coming. It was for
him to seek her. If he chose to do so, he knew the way to the parsonage.

Miss Le Smyrger--good, dear, honest, hearty Miss Le Smyrger, was in
a fever of anxiety on behalf of her friend. It was not that she wished her
nephew to marry Patience,--or rather that she had entertained any such
wish when he first came among them. She was not given to
match-making, and moreover thought, or had thought within herself,
that they of Oxney Colne could do very well without any admixture
from Eaton Square. Her plan of life had been that when old Mr.
Woolsworthy was taken away from Dartmoor, Patience should live
with her, and that when she also shuffled off her coil, then Patience
Woolsworthy should be the maiden-mistress of Oxney Colne--of
Oxney Colne and of Mr. Cloysey's farm--to the utter detriment of all
the Broughtons. Such had been her plan before nephew John had come
among them--a plan not to be spoken of till the coming of that dark day
which should make Patience an orphan. But now her nephew had been
there, and all was to be altered. Miss Le Smyrger's plan would have
provided a companion for her old age; but that had not been her chief
object. She had thought more of Patience than of herself, and now it
seemed that a prospect of a higher happiness was opening for her
friend.
'John,' she said, as soon as the first greetings were over, 'do you
remember the last words that I said to you before you went away?' Now,
for myself, I much admire Miss Le Smyrger's heartiness, but I do not
think much of her discretion. It would have been better, perhaps, had
she allowed things to take their course.
'I can't say that I do,' said the Captain. At the same time the Captain did
remember very well what those last words had been.
'I am so glad to see you, so delighted to see you, if--if--if--,' and then
she paused, for with all her courage she hardly dared to ask her nephew
whether he had come there with the express purport of asking Miss
Woolsworthy to marry him.
To tell the truth--for there is no room for mystery within the limits of
this short story,--to tell, I say, at a word the plain and simple truth,
Captain Broughton had already asked that question. On the day before
he left Oxney Colne he had in set terms proposed