CHAPTER XCVII.
IN WHICH OBEDIAH ARRIVES.
In the meantime our worthy little Lieutenant Puddock—by this time quite
reconciled to the new state of things, walked up to Belmont, with his
head a great deal fuller—such and so great are human vagaries—of the
interview pending between him and Aunt Becky than of the little romance
which had exploded so unexpectedly about a fortnight ago.
He actually saw Miss Gertrude and my Lord Dunoran walking side by side, on the mulberry walk by the river; and though he looked and felt a little queer, perhaps, a little absurd, he did not sigh, or murmur a stanza, or suffer a palpitation; but walked up to the hall-door, and asked for Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.
Aunt Becky received him in the drawing-room. She was looking very pale, and spoke very little, and very gently for her. In a reconciliation between two persons of the opposite sexes—though the ages be wide apart—there is almost always some little ingredient of sentiment.
The door was shut, and Puddock's voice was heard in an indistinct
murmur, upon the lobby. Then there was a silence, or possibly, some
speaking in a still lower key. Then Aunt Becky was crying, and the
lieutenant's voice cooing through it. Then Aunt Becky, still crying, said—
'A longer time than you think for, lieutenant; two years, and
more—always! And the lieutenant's voice rose again; and she
said—'What a fool I've been!' which was again lost in Puddock's
accents; and the drawing-room door opened, and Aunt Rebecca ran up
stairs, with her handkerchief to her red nose and eyes, and slammed her
bed-room door after her like a boarding-school miss.
And the general's voice was heard shouting 'luncheon' in the hall; and
Dominick repeated the announcement to Puddock, who stood, unusually pale
and very much stunned, with the handle of the open drawing-room door in
his hand, looking up toward the bed-room in an undecided sort of way, as
if he was not clear whether it was not his duty to follow Aunt Becky. On
being told a second time, however, that the general awaited him at
luncheon, he apprehended the meaning of the message, and went down to
the parlour forthwith.
The general, and my lord Dunoran, and Miss Gertrude, and honest Father
Roach, were there; and Aunt Becky being otherwise engaged, could not
come.
Puddock, at luncheon, was abstracted—frightened—silent, for the most
part; talking only two or three sentences during that sociable meal, by
fits and starts; and he laughed once abruptly at a joke he did not hear. He also drank three glasses of port.
Aunt Rebecca met him with her hood on in the hall. She asked him, with a
faltering sort of carelessness, looking very hard at the clock, and
nearly with her back to him—
'Lieutenant, will you take a turn in the garden with me?'
To which Puddock, with almost a start—for he had not seen her till she
spoke—and, upon my word, 'tis a fact, with a blush, too—made a sudden
smile, and a bow, and a suitable reply in low tones; and forth they
sallied together, and into the garden, and up and down the same walk, for a good while—a long while—people sometimes don't count the minutes—with none but Peter Brian, the gardener, whom they did not see, to observe them.
When they came to the white wicket-door of the garden, Aunt Rebecca
hastily dropped his arm, on which she had leaned; and together they
returned to the house very affably; and there Aunt Becky bid him
good-bye in a whisper, a little hastily; and Puddock, so soon as he
found Dominick, asked for the general.
He had gone down to the river; and Puddock followed. As he walked along
the court, he looked up; there was a kind of face at the window. He
smiled a great deal and raised his hat, and placed it to his heart, and
felt quite bewildered, like a man in a dream; and in this state he
marched down to the river's bank.
They had not been together for a full minute when the stout general
threw back his head, looking straight in his face; and then he stepped
first one, then another, fat little pace backward, and poked his cane
right at the ribs of the plump little lieutenant, then closing with him, he shook both Puddock's hands in both his, with a hearty peal of laughter.