Chapter 14 - Page 2

unselfish action.

As for Mrs. Trevennack, when she heard the good news, she almost
fainted with joy. It might yet be in time. Cleer might be married now
before poor Michael broke forth in that inevitable paroxysm.

For inevitable she felt it was at last. As each day went by it grew
harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately
against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the
petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to
keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet
found the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each
week that went by. As he put it to his own mind he could feel his
wings growing as if they must burst through the skin; he could feel it
harder and ever harder as time went on to conceal the truth, to
pretend he was a mere man, when he knew himself to be really the
Prince of the Archangels, to busy himself about contracts for pork,
and cheese, and biscuits, when he could wing his way n boldly over sea
and land, or stand forth before the world in gorgeous gear, armed as
of yore in the adamant and gold of his celestial panoply!

So Michael Trevennack thought in his own seething soul. But that
strong, brave woman, his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and
watching him closely day and night with a keen eye of mingled love and
fear, could see that the madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener
and oftener now did he lose himself in his imagined world; less and
less did he tread the solid earth beneath us. Mrs. Trevennack had by
this time but one anxious care left in life--to push on as fast as
possible Cleer and Eustace's marriage.

But difficulties intervened, as they always WILL intervene in this
work-a-day world of ours. First of all there were formalities about
the appointment itself. Then, even when all was arranged, Eustace
found he had to go north in person, shortly after Christmas, and set
to work with a will at putting his plan into practical shape for
contractor and workmen. And as soon as he got there he saw at once he
must stick at it for six months at least before he could venture to
take a short holiday for the sake of getting married. Engineering is a
very absorbing trade; it keeps a man day and night at the scene of his
labors.

Storm or flood at any moment may ruin everything. It would be prudent
too, Eustace thought, to have laid by a little more for household
expenses, before plunging into the unknown sea of matrimony; and
though Mrs. Trevennack, flying full in the face of all matronly
respect for foresight in young people, urged him constantly to marry,
money or no money, and never mind about a honeymoon, Eustace stuck to
his point and determined to take