V
“Agatha, I suppose you have heard the news from somebody else by this time?” said her Uncle Humphrey some two or three weeks later. “I mean what Farmer Lovill has been talking to me about.”
“No, indeed” said Agatha.
“He wants to marry ye if you be willing.”
“O, I never!” said Agatha with dismay. “That old man!”
“Old? He’s hale and hearty; and what’s more, a man very well to do. He’ll make you a comfortable home, and dress ye up like a doll, and I’m sure you’ll like that, or you ’aint a woman of woman born.”
“But it can’t be, uncle!—other reasons—”
“What reasons?”
“Why, I’ve promised Oswald Winwood—years ago!”
“Promised Oswald Winwood years ago, have you?”
“Yes; surely you know it Uncle Humphrey. And we write to one another regularly.”
“Well, I can just call to mind that ye are always scribbling and getting letters from somewhere. Let me see—where is he now? I quite forget.”
“In India still. Is it possible that you don’t know about him, and what a great man he’s getting? There are paragraphs about him in our paper very often. The last was about some translation from Hindustani that he’d been making. And he’s coming home for me.”
“I very much question it. Lovill will marry you at once, he says.”
“Indeed, he will not.”
“Well, I don’t want to force you to do anything against your will, Agatha, but this is how the matter stands. You know I am a little behindhand in my dealings with Lovill—nothing serious, you know, if he gives me time—but I want to be free of him quite in order to go to Australia.”
“Australia!”
“Yes. There’s nothing to be done here. I don’t know what business is coming to—can’t think. But never mind that; this is the point: if you will marry Farmer Lovill, he offers to clear off the debt, and there will no longer be any delay about my own marriage; in short, away I can go. I mean to, and there’s an end on’t.”
“What, and leave me at home alone?”
“Yes, but a married woman, of course. You see the children are getting big now. John is twelve and Nathaniel ten, and the girls are growing fast, and when I am married again I shall hardly want you to keep house for me—in fact, I must reduce our family as much as possible. So that if you could bring your mind to think of Farmer Lovill as a husband, why, ’twould be a great relief to me after having the trouble and expense of bringing you up. If I can in that way edge out of Lovill’s debt I shall have a nice bit of money in hand.”
“But Oswald will be richer even than Mr. Lovill,” said Agatha, through her tears.
“Yes, yes. But Oswald is not here, nor is he likely to be. How silly you be.”
“But he will come, and soon, with his eleven hundred a year and all.”
“I wish to Heaven he would. I’m sure he might have you.”
“Now, you promise that, uncle, don’t you?” she said, brightening. “If he comes with plenty of money before you want to leave, he shall marry me, and nobody else.”
“Ay, if he comes. But, Agatha, no nonsense. Just think of what I’ve been telling you. And at any rate be civil to Farmer Lovill. If this man Winwood were here and asked for ye, and married ye, that would be a very different thing. I do mind now that I saw something about him and his doings in the papers; but he’s a fine gentleman by this time, and won’t think of stooping to a girl like you. So you’d better take the one who is ready; old men’s darlings fare very well as the world goes. We shall be off in nine months, mind, that I’ve settled. And you must be a married woman afore that time, and wish us goodbye upon your husband’s arm.”
“That old arm couldn’t support me.”
“And if you don’t agree to have him, you’ll take a couple of hundred pounds out of my pocket; you’ll ruin my chances altogether—that’s the long and the short of it.”
Saying which the gloury man turned his back upon her, and his footsteps became drowned in the rumble of the mill.