"You see, Marian," he said, "I do not like to give out, when I can help it, for they think it shirking, and there was a time when I did shirk; but a great many times last half, I was nearly mad with the aching and smarting of my eyes after I had been reading. And all I did was by bits now and then; for if I went on long the letters danced, and there was a mist between me and them."
"I wish you would tell Mr. Lyddell; I am sure it is not fit to go on in such a way."
"I have told Wells," answered Lionel.
A pause--then Lionel said, "I believe papa is in the library; I'll go and speak to him about the emigration."
Marian was very anxious to hear the result of the conference, but she could not find out anything just at first as she had to drive out with Mrs. Lyddell and Caroline to make calls. In the evening, over the game at chess, Lionel told her that his father said he should talk to his mother about it; and two days after he came to her in the hall, saying, "Come and take a turn in the plantation walk, Marian; 'tis nice and shady there, and I have something to tell you."
The something was as follows: "Well, Marian, my father was very kind, paid something about its being a sensible notion, and that he would see about it."
"But are you to go back to Eton?"
"Yes, that must be; and I must scramble on as best I may. It will be better at first, after all this rest. It is something gained that the whole plan is not knocked on the head at once."
"Then he gives his consent?"
"Why, he says it will be time to think of it in a year or two, and I am too young as yet, which is true enough; only, I wish I was to be learning farming, instead of torturing my eyes with what will be no good out there. Then he said, as to giving up the army, I need not think that was necessary, because it was only that he did not want to have two sons in it, and now Johnny is otherwise disposed of; and, besides Mr. Faulkner had behaved in such a handsome way about Caroline's fortune.'
"O!" said Marian.
"Yes, I don't like that at all," said Lionel. "Johnny always was crazy to be a sailor, so he is all right, and that is not what I care for; but I don't want to be beholden to Mr. Faulkner. I had rather Caroline had her own money, and not that we should all profit by her making this grand marriage."
"I should quite feel with you."
"Marian, we have never talked that over; but I know you cannot bear the Faulkners."
"What is the use of asking me, Lionel?"
"O, I know you can't, as well as if you had said so; and I want to know how you could let Caroline go and do such a thing?"
"I? How could I help it?" said Marian smiling, at the boy's assuming that she had power of which she was far from being conscious. "Besides, I thought you liked Mr. Faulkner; you, all of you, did nothing but praise him at Christmas."
"I did at first, not at last," said Lionel. "Besides, liking a man to go out shooting with is not the same as liking him to marry one's sister."
"By no means!" cried Marian, emphatically. "But what made you think ill of him?"
"Things I heard him say to Elliot when we were out together."
"Did Gerald hear them?" asked Marian, very anxiously, as she remembered what a hero Mr. Faulkner was in her brother's estimation.
"No, I don't think he did. He certainly was not there the worst time of all,--the time that gave a meaning to all the rest. Don't you remember that day when Mr. Faulkner drove Elliot and me in his dog-cart to look at that horse at Salisbury? I am sure I never praised him after that day. He said what Elliot never would have said himself--never."
"How?" Marian could not help asking, though she doubted the next moment whether it was wise to have done so.
"Things about--about religion--the Bible," said Lionel, looking down and mumbling, as if it was with difficulty that he squeezed out the answer. "Now, you know, I have heard," he added, speaking more freely, "I have heard people make fun with a text or a name out of the Bible many a time; and though that is very bad of them, I think they don't mean much harm by it. Indeed, I have now and then done it myself, and should oftener, if I had not known how you hated it."
"It is a very wrong thing," but I see what you mean,--that some people do it from want of thought."
"Yes, just so; but that is a very different thing from almost quizzing the whole Bible,--at least talking as if it was an absurd thing to accept the whole of it, I do declare, Marian, he was worse when he began to praise it than he was before; for he talked of the Old Testament as if it was just like the Greek mythology, and then he compared it to Homer, and Æschylus, and the Koran. To be sure he did say it was better poetry and morality; but the idea of comparing it! I don't mean comparing as if it must be better, but as if it stood on the same ground."
"And did Elliot listen to all this?" said Marian, thinking the poison must have been in rather too intellectual a form for Elliot.
"He listened," said Lionel. "I don't think he would ever set up to say such things for himself; but I believe he rather liked hearing them said. I am quite sure this Faulkner will make him worse than he is already, for all this talk is a hundred times worse than going on in Elliot's way."
"To be sure it is--a thousand times!"
"But what I want to know is this, Marian? has Caroline got any notion of what sort of a man she has got? Because if she does it with her eyes open, it can't be helped; but if not, I think she ought to be warned; for I don't suppose the man is fool enough to talk in this way to her. Indeed, I think I heard him say that believing is all very well for women."
"Why don't you tell her, then?"
"That is the very thing I had on my mind all these holidays; but I know no one would ever listen to me. If Walter was here it would be a very different thing, for he is worth attending to, and Caroline knows that; though she thinks I have no sense at all but for mischief."
"She could not think so, if she heard you speak as you do now."
"Then there is another thing, Marian, and what makes it quite--at least very nearly out of the question; I don't believe they in the least reckoned on my hearing all this. You know the man is very good-natured; well, he took me up to go instead of his servant, and I was sitting back to back with them. I sometimes think my bad eyes have made my ears sharper, for I know I often hear when other people don't; and so I should not expect they supposed in the least that I was attending, though I did not miss a word, for I could not help hearing. Now, you see, I could not possibly go and betray him; and if you were not the safest person in the world, I would never have told you: only, if somebody could just give Caroline a hint that she is going to marry an infidel, it would be a pleasant thing."
"A pleasant thing!" repeated Marian. Then she paused, considering, and Lionel waited patiently while she did so, "I see," she said at last, "that you could hardly tell her of this conversation; and after all, Lionel, I believe we knew what was quite as bad of him from the first: this only proves it a little more fully."
"Did you?"
"Yes, Lord Marchmont told me something of it; and I mentioned it to Caroline before he came here at all."
"O, that is right!" said Lionel, greatly relieved, "then it is no concern of mine; though what can possess Caroline, I can't think. Is it love, I wonder?"
"I suppose so," said Marian, sighing.
"Well, it is a queer thing," said the boy. "I should have thought Caroline was one to care about such matters more than I, but perhaps she means to convert him. So! I did think Caroline was good for something, but it is no affair of mine; and I shall be all the more glad to get off to New Zealand to be out of the sight of it all."