CHAPTER XI

THE DOUBLE-BLOSSOM WILD CHERRY-TREE

Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was with him and he had a good retreat through folding-windows to the lawn, in case of cogency on the enemy’s part, to attack his cousin regarding the preposterous plot to upset the family by a scamper to London:  “By the way, Vernon, what is this you’ve been mumbling to everybody save me, about leaving us to pitch yourself into the stew-pot and be made broth of?  London is no better, and you are fit for considerably better.  Don’t, I beg you, continue to annoy me.  Take a run abroad, if you are restless.  Take two or three months, and join us as we are travelling home; and then think of settling, pray.  Follow my example, if you like.  You can have one of my cottages, or a place built for you.  Anything to keep a man from destroying the sense of stability about one.  In London, my dear old fellow, you lose your identity.  What are you there?  I ask you, what?  One has the feeling of the house crumbling when a man is perpetually for shifting and cannot fix himself.  Here you are known, you can study at your ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell you honestly, I feel it myself, a week of London literally drives me home to discover the individual where I left him.  Be advised.  You don’t mean to go.”

“I have the intention,” said Vernon.

“Why?”

“I’ve mentioned it to you.”

“To my face?”

“Over your shoulder is generally the only chance you give me.”

“You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge.  As to the reason, I might hear a dozen of your reasons, and I should not understand one.  It’s against your interests and against my wishes.  Come, friend, I am not the only one you distress.  Why, Vernon, you yourself have said that the English would be very perfect Jews if they could manage to live on the patriarchal system.  You said it, yes, you said it!—­but I recollect it clearly.  Oh, as for your double-meanings, you said the thing, and you jeered at the incapacity of English families to live together, on account of bad temper; and now you are the first to break up our union!  I decidedly do not profess to be a perfect Jew, but I do . . .”

Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his bride and his cousin.  He raised his face, appeared to be consulting his eyelids, and resolved to laugh:  “Well, I own it.  I do like the idea of living patriarchally.”  He turned to Clara.  “The Rev. Doctor one of us!”

“My father?” she said.

“Why not?”

“Papa’s habits are those of a scholar.”

“That you might not be separated from him, my dear!”

Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her father, mentally analysing the kindness, in which at least she found no unkindness, scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.