"What will you, my poor friend?" she said, with a queer little smile. "_C'est la vie._"
It is not my intention to dwell at length upon my journey to England and all that awaited me there. There are times in his life when--as Madame de Clericy said, with her wise smile--a man is better alone. And are there not occasions when the most eloquent of us is best dumb?
I had for travelling companion on the bright autumn morning when I quitted Paris my father's friend, John Turner--called suddenly to England on matters of business. He gave a grunt when he saw me in the Northern station.
"Better have taken my advice," he said, "to go home and make it up with your father, rather than stay here to run after that girl with the pretty hair--at your time of life. Avoid quarrels and seek a reconciliation--that is my plan. Best way is to ask the other chap to dinner and do him well. What are you going home for now? It is too late."
As, indeed, I knew without the telling. For when I reached Hopton my father had already been laid in the old churchyard beneath the shadow of the crumbling walls of the ruined church, which is now no longer used. They have built a gaudy new edifice farther inland, but so long as a Howard owns Hopton Hall, we shall, I think, continue to lie in the graveyard nearer to the sea.
I suppose we are a quarrelsome race, for I fell foul of several persons almost as soon as I arrived. The lawyers vowed that there were difficulties--but none, I protest, but what such parchment minds as theirs would pause to heed. One thing, however, was certain. Did I not read it in black and white myself? My obstinate old father--and, by gad! I respect him for it--had held to his purpose. He had left me penniless unless I consented to marry Isabella Gayerson. The estate was bequeathed in trust, to be administered by said trustees during my lifetime, unless I acceded to a certain matrimonial arrangement entertained for me. Those were the exact words. So Isabella had no cause to blush when the will was published abroad. And we may be sure that the whole county knew it soon enough, and vowed that they had always thought so.
"If one may inquire the nature of the matrimonial arrangement so vaguely specified?"... said the respectable Norwich solicitor who, like all his kind, had a better coat than his client, for those who live on the vanity and greed of their neighbours live well.