A Fatal Silence, Vol. 2 (of 3) by Florence Marryat

PAULA IS MARRIED.

Hal Rushton was very anxious that Mrs Sutton should live with Paula and himself at Deepdale. The old lady was fragile, and he thought it would gratify his future wife to make the last years of her mother's life comfortable. He would have liked to see the unfortunate offspring of Carl Bjornsën put away in an asylum, or under judicious guardianship, and so have removed from his sight and memory for ever all trace of Paula's first marriage. And if he could only forget it, as if it had never been (he said to himself), he should be so inexplicably happy. But, as Paula had anticipated, Mrs Sutton refused either to live at Highbridge Hall or to give up the charge of her little grandson. She loved the helpless child -- that was the first reason, but there was another. The local practitioner of Grassdene, who had known the little imbecile from his birth, and all the circumstances of the case, had persuaded a friend of his -- a famous brain doctor, who was taking a holiday at Lynmouth -- to see the child and pass an opinion on him, and his verdict had been that Paulie would never be any better, and was very unlikely to live over fourteen or fifteen years of age. So, as long as he lived, his grandmother declared she would never part with him. This settled the question, for much as Hal would have liked his wife to enjoy the society of her mother, the resolution they had arrived at, not to let the public of Deepdale into the secret of Paula's former life, entirely prohibited the presence of the little boy at Highbridge Hall. So he spent the few weeks before his marriage in a state of feverish anxiety, rushing about after painters and upholsterers, and ready to fly in a temper with everybody, and to declare nothing was being done well enough, nor quickly enough, for the divinity that was coming to bring the sunshine of Heaven upon the old place. Mr and Mrs Measures were both very good to the hot-headed young man in those days -- the lady especially so. She it was who restrained his extravagance, and prevented his destroying the calm and mellow tone of the old Hall by the introduction of a lot of modern furniture and pictures that would have killed half its beauty. Hal had never had his taste educated or directed. All he wanted to do was to provide everything that Paula could possibly desire, and he was ready, in consequence, to take any advice that Mr Snoad of Haltham chose to give him. But Mrs Measures was his guardian angel in this particular, and the old rooms bloomed anew in soft, subdued colours under her guiding hand. She took a delight in making the house look as superior to all other houses in Deepdale as she possibly could. She was secretly overjoyed at the idea of Paula Stafford coming back to queen it over the Gribbles and Axworthys, and the rest of the parishioners, who had hounded her from the village, and she had taken such a dislike to her successor, rosy-cheeked, glossy-haired Miss Brown, that the vicar could hardly persuade her to enter the schoolhouse.