the marriage of everard lisle and ethel thursby clare did not take place till the following april.
sir gilbert, his son, his granddaughter and lady pell spent the winter in the south of france, where they were joined in february by everard on his return from pineapple city, whither he had gone at john clare's request (for sir gilbert strongly objected to his son's going in person) to wind up his affairs, which had been looked after during the past few months by a trusted subordinate, and to dispose of the business.
but it now becomes requisite to go back a little, for many things had happened before sir gilbert and the others got back to the chase.
the first to whom our attention is due are the dear twin-sisters of rose mount.
on the morning of the day following that scene at the chase when sir gilbert had unconditionally sanctioned the engagement of his granddaughter to everard lisle, ethel asked her father whether he had any objection to her writing to her "aunts" at mapleford and informing them of all the wonderful things which had befallen her in the course of the last four-and-twenty hours.
not only had john clare no objection to the sisters being informed, but he suggested that instead of ethel writing to them, everard lisle should be sent to them as a special envoy, not only to tell them the news, but to bring them back, vi et armis, on a long visit to the chase.
it was a task which everard accomplished to the satisfaction of everyone concerned. of the meeting between ethel and the sisters, when at length the latter had been persuaded into accepting sir gilbert's hospitality, and of the genuine welcome accorded them, we have not space left to speak. it will be enough to say that, a little later, at sir gilbert's earnest persuasion, they agreed to leave rose mount and st. oswyth's and make their future home at maylings (of which they were to become the tenants at a nominal rent), where they would be next door, as one might say, to their "dear girl." that tamsin should accompany them to their new home was a foregone conclusion; indeed, it would not have seemed like home without her.
john clare's christmas present to the sisters, to whom he felt himself so deeply indebted, took the form of a pony and basket carriage. it was a luxury which they had denied themselves ever since the break in their fortunes, but with vale view house let on a seven years' lease the need for their doing so no longer existed.
in the course of the winter mrs. tew was married, the man of her choice being none other than dr. mallory, the most popular of the mapleford medicos. as lady pell said, the affair was quite a little romance. it appeared that the canon's widow and the doctor had been in love with each other thirty years before when they were young folk living in quite a different part of the country. as is often the case, something had happened to separate them, and for a quarter of a century or more they had wholly lost touch of each other; so much so that for aught either of them knew the other might be dead. chance, or accident, one day brought them together, and to their mutual surprise they discovered that the ashes on the altar of their early love which they had believed to be long extinct, still smouldered, and needed nothing but propinquity and favouring circumstances to fan them into a flame which one might pretty safely assume would expire only with life itself.
if the canon's widow believed--which she did firmly--that dr. mallory had lived unmarried all these years because he had never got over his early disappointment, it was a charming belief, and certainly the doctor himself would have been the last man to undeceive her.
little now remains to be done save to furnish the reader with a few brief particulars of the after fortunes of sundry of the characters with one or more episodes of whose life-history the foregoing pages have been concerned.
first, then, as regards the keymers, father and son.
with launce keymer it was the case of the trickster being tricked. always on the lookout for a woman with money, he met and was introduced to a widow, still young and pretty, whose husband had died two years before, leaving her a fortune of twenty-five thousand pounds. after having obtained a copy of the late mr. witley's will from somerset house, and so satisfied himself as to the genuineness of the bequest, keymer proposed and was accepted. not till after his marriage did he discover that nearly the whole of his wife's fortune had been swallowed up in a huge banking failure which had occurred only a few weeks prior to his introduction to her. so extreme was his disgust and disappointment that, after having scraped together every shilling he could lay hands on, he quietly levanted, presumably to the land of the stars and stripes, and his newly married wife saw him no more.
of mr. keymer, senior, it is enough to state that, partly as a consequence of his second wife's extravagance, which he was morally too weak to curb; partly owing to a growing neglect of his business, combined with, or the result of, an increasing fondness for the cup which, whether it cheers or no, does inebriate; and, lastly, because he found himself powerless to compete against the new brewery which a wealthy london syndicate had lately established in st. oswyth's, he gradually drifted into the bankruptcy court, in the dreary morasses of which we will leave him floundering.
it was scarcely likely that ethel, in her good fortune, should forget the existence of miss hetty blair, the pretty nursery governess of dulminster, who once on a time had rendered her such an important service. and when she heard that she was about to be married to a rising young lawyer of a distant town, a very substantial proof of her regard accompanied her wishes for her happiness and welfare.
of captain verinder there is nothing pleasant to report. with such men as he it seems almost inevitable that as they advance in years their failings and vices should become accentuated, and that whatever virtues or good qualities they may originally have been possessed of, should grow "finer by degrees and beautifully less." in point of fact, the captain began to deteriorate and go down-hill from the date of the collapse of his vile plot. he had built so much on it that its failure thoroughly disheartened him, and afterwards he scarcely seemed to care what became of him. his end was a sad one even for such as he. his body was fished out of the river-ooze down deptford way. an ugly wound at the back of his head and his turned-out pockets told unequivocally how he had come by his death.
everything was done that could be done both by john clare and everard lisle in the way of benefiting luigi rispani and furnishing him with the opportunity of earning an honourable livelihood, but to no purpose. by means of certain influence which was brought to bear, three different situations were obtained for him, not one of which he kept longer than a month or two. simply to give him money from time to time was merely helping to demoralise him still further. at length a situation was found for him as drawing-master in a college of his mother's sunny clime, and though he would never reach fame or fortune, aware that he had now only his own endeavours to trust to, he managed to keep his head above water, and earn a very modest livelihood.
kirby griggs, to whom, in one sense, john clare felt that he owed so much, was not forgotten by him. for the man himself he could do nothing, but he succeeded in placing two of his sons with excellent city firms, and, by finding the requisite premium, in having one of his daughters, who had a natural gift that way, apprenticed to one of the best-known milliners at the west end.
in the course of the winter the marble tablet, which had been put up in the church of st. michael to the memory of john alexander clare, was quietly removed.
when at length sir gilbert got back to the chase, it was declared by everybody who saw him that he seemed to have taken a fresh lease of life. and so indeed he had, for when a man's constitution has nothing radically amiss with it, happiness undoubtedly helps to lengthen our days, and sir gilbert had now everything to render him happy. the ms. of his county history, so long laid aside, was enthusiastically taken in hand again as soon as his grandson-in-law returned from his honeymoon, and in the course of the following winter was brought to a triumphant conclusion. the title-page records that it is the joint production of "sir gilbert clare, bart., and everard lisle clare," for before the marriage took place sir gilbert insisted upon the young man taking out letters-patent authorising him to add to his own name the surname of the ancient and honourable family of which he was about to become a member.
during the years of his expatriation, john clare had devoted much of his spare time to experimental physics. it is a study which exercises a potent charm over such of its votaries as venture beyond the threshold of its temple of severe delights, and in the laboratory, which john caused to be fitted up at the chase, he spent many happy hours in the effort to master those more abstruse secrets, and to arrive at a more correct knowledge of those subtler elements of the material universe, than the conditions of his life had heretofore allowed of his doing.
a few parting words are due to lady pell. as soon as the wedding was over she set out to pay a long-deferred round of visits, but by the middle of autumn she was back at the chase, which henceforward was de facto her home. it was not to be expected that her restless proclivities would quite desert her, and occasionally she would start off at an hour's notice, or no notice at all, for some place a couple of hundred miles away, but always to come back with increasing satisfaction, as time went on, to the old roof-tree, under whose shadow, the romance of her life had had its beginning and its end.
of ethel and everard what can be said in conclusion save that theirs was the quiet happiness of well-ordered lives, of duties conscientiously performed, and of unselfish devotion to the well-being of others? in such a soil the sweet flower of content blooms perennially and changes not with the seasons as they come and go.
