It is twilight upon the marsh: the land at the foot of the hill lies a level of dim monotony, and even the sea beyond is lost in mystery. In the middle of the plain one solitary homestead, with its clump of trees, stands out just a little darker than anything else, and from afar there comes to me the sound of the sea, sweetly lulling, as it has come to me ever since I was a little child. A chill breeze creeps up among the aspens on the cliff, and for a moment there steals over me the sense of loneliness of ten years ago, and I seem to see once more a tall, dark figure thread his way down among the trees, and disappear forever onto the wide plain. But this is only for a moment; for as I look, the past lies stretched, as the plain is stretched, before me—vivid, yet distant as a dream. The white mill detaches itself upon the dark hill-side, the cattle rest upon the quiet marsh; and still the sound of the sea comes to me, tenderly murmuring, as it did when I was a happy child, and tells me of a present that is wide and fair as, above the lonely land, the coming night is blue and vast.
My sister Joyce is older than I am. At the time of which I am thinking she was twenty-one, and I was barely nineteen. We were the only children of Farmer Maliphant of Knellestone Grange, in the county of Sussex. The Maliphants were an old family. Their names were on the oldest tombstones in the graveyard of the abbey, whose choir and ruined transepts were all that was left standing of a splendid church that had been the mother of a great monastery, and of many other churches in the popish days, when our town was a feature in English history. I am not sure that our family dated as far back as that. I had read of knights in helmets and coats of mail skirmishing beneath the city wall, of which there were still fragments standing, and of gallant captains bringing the King's galleys to port in the bay that had become marsh-land, and I hoped that there might have been Maliphants too, riding up and down the hill under the gate-ways that were now ivy-grown; but I am afraid that, even if the family had been in existence at the time, they would only have been archers, shooting their arrows from behind the turrets on the hill.
At all events—to leave romancing alone—Maliphants had owned or rented land upon the Udimore hills and the downs of Brede for more than three hundred years, and it must have been nearly as long as that that they had lived in the old stone house overlooking the Romney Marsh. For almost all our land had been a manor of the old abbey, and had been granted to my father's family at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540, and it was not much more than a century since the Maliphants had been obliged to sell most of it to the ancestors of him who was now squire at the big house. But they had never left the old home, renting the land that they had once owned, and tilling the soil that they had once been lords of. Our house was the oldest house in the place, antiquaries testifying to the fact that it was built of the same foreign stone that fashioned the walls of the old abbey; and our name was the oldest name, a fact which my father, democrat as he was, never really forgot. But we were not so well-to-do as we had once been, even in the memory of living folk.
Family portraits of ladies in scanty gowns and high waists, and of gallants in ruffled shirts, made pleasant pictures in my fancy, and there were whispered stories of kegs of spirits stored at dead of night in the old cellars beneath the house in my grandfather's time, and of mother's old Mechlin lace having been brought, at the risk of bold lives, in the merry little fishing-smacks that defied the revenue-cutters. But smuggling was a dead art in our time, and respectable folk would have been ashamed to buy smuggled goods. We lived the uneventful life of our neighbors, and were no longer the great people that we had been even in my grandfather's time; for farming was not now so lucrative.
My sister Joyce was very handsome. I have not seen much of the world, but I am sure that any one would have said so. She was tall, taller than I am, and I am not short, and she was slight, and fair as a rose. There was a sort of gentle Quaker-like dignity about Joyce which I have never seen in one so young. She had it of our mother. Both women were very tall, and both bore their height bravely. Sometimes, it is true, when Joyce walked along the dark passages of the old Grange, her arms full of sweet-scented linen, and bending her little head to pass under the low door-ways, or when she made the jam in the kitchen, or pats of butter in the dairy, she stooped just a little over her work; but when—of a June evening—she would come across the lawn with her hands full of guelder-roses and peonies for the parlor, no one could have said that she was too tall, so erect and gracefully did she seem to flit across the earth.
Of course I did not consciously notice these things when I was nineteen; but as I think of her again now, I can see that it was not at all to be wondered at that the country-folk used to talk of Joyce Maliphant as a poor slip of a thing, not fit to be a countryman's wife. There was an over-sensitiveness about her—a sort of tremulous reserve—that marked her as belonging to a different order of beings. It was not that she was weak either in mind or in body. Joyce would often surprise one by her sudden purposes; and as for fatigue, that slender figure could work all day without being tired, and though the cheek was as dainty as the petal of a flower, it had nothing frail about it: it told of health, just as did the clearness of the blue eye and the wealth of the rippling auburn hair.
Joyce kept her complexion, partly because she was less out-of-doors than I was; but if I had known that I could have had her lovely skin instead of my own freckled face, I do not believe that I would have changed with her. No doubt mother was right, and I might have kept that—my one good point—if I had cared to. Red-haired people generally do have fresh skins, and my hair is just about the color of Virginia-creeper leaves in autumn, or of the copper kettle in the sunlight. I was very much ashamed of it in those days.
Luckily, I gave little heed to my appearance. I was quite content to leave the monopoly of the family beauty to my sister, if I might have freedom to scour the marsh-land with Taff, the big St. Bernard; and so long as my father treated me like a boy, and let me help him superintend the farm, he might banter as much as he liked about "Margaret's gray eyes that looked a different color every day," and even rail at me for heavy eyelids that didn't look a bit as if I led a healthy out-door life. But I did: when there was neither washing nor baking nor butter-making to help with, I was out-of-doors from morning to night. When I was a child it was with Reuben Ruck the shepherd, and his black collie Luck, who was the best sheep-dog in the country.
Reuben taught me many things—where to find the forms of the hares upon the marsh-land, the nests of the butcher-birds and yellow-hammers and wheat-ears that were all peculiar to our home; he taught me to surprise the purple herons upon the sands or by the dikes at eventide, to find the pewits' eggs upon the shingle, to tame the squirrels in the Manor woods, to catch gray mullet in the Channel, to spear eels in the dikes, to know when every bird's brood came forth, to welcome the various arrivals of the swifts and martins and swallows.
At the time of which I write, Reuben had had to give up his shepherd's duties, owing to ill health, and used to do odd jobs about the house and garden; but he had bred the love of the country in me, and now it was useless for mother to bemoan my wandering habits, or even for our old nurse, Deborah, to take me to task for not caring more about the home pursuits in which my sister so brilliantly excelled. Whatever related to a bird or a beast I would attend to with alacrity; but as for household duties, I only got them over as quickly as I could, that I might the sooner be out in the air. I knew every hill's crest inland, every headland out to sea, every shepherd's track across the marsh, every plank across the channels. The shepherds and the coast-guards were all my friends alike, and I think there was not one of them who would not have braved danger rather than I should come to harm, although I do not suppose that I ever exchanged more than six words' conversation with any of them in all my life. Words were not necessary between us.
Farmer Maliphant's little miss had always been a favorite, and "Farmer Maliphant's little miss" was always his youngest daughter. I like to remember the title now; I like to remember that if Joyce was mother's right hand in the house, I was father's companion in the fields. I was very fond of father; I was very fond of any praise of his. I did not get on so well with mother. I suppose daughters often do not get on so well with their mothers. For though Joyce was a fresh, neat, deft girl, just after mother's own heart, and I know that she thought there was none to equal her, they never got on well together. I was always fighting her battles. She was too gentle, or too proud—I was never sure which—to fight them for herself. A cross word, only spoken in the excitement of a domestic crisis—which meant worlds to a woman to whom house-keeping was an art—would shut Joyce up in an armor of reserve for days, and I often laughed at her even while I fought for her.
As for me, I used to think I could manage mother. I wish I had the dear old days back again! It's little managing I would care to do. It came to very little good. I believe that every quarrel I had for Joyce only did her harm with mother; I was such a headstrong girl that it took a deal to set me down, and I am afraid that she got some of the thrusts that were meant for me in consequence.
One of the special, though tacit, subjects of difference between mother and myself was upon the choice of a husband for my sister. I quite agreed with the country-folk, that she was not suited to be a countryman's wife, but I did not agree with mother's idea of a suitable husband for her.
Mother was a very ambitious woman. She wanted us to rise in the world; she wanted us to hold once more something of the position she knew the family had once held. She was not a highly educated woman herself, but she was a shrewd woman. She had had us educated to the best of her abilities, a little better than other farmers' daughters; if she had had her way, she would have sent me, as the cleverer, to school in London. But father would have none of it. He never denied her a whim for herself, but he did not hold with boarding-school learning.
I was left to finish my education by living my life. But mother was none the less ambitious for us, and being an old-fashioned woman, her ambition aspired to good marriages for us. And I—foolish girl that I was—chose to think that the particular man whom she hoped that Joyce's beauty would secure was a very commonplace lover, and not at all worthy of her. In the first place, he occupied a better position in the world than she did, and would probably consider that he was raising her by the marriage, which my pride resented. For, after all, it was only what the world considered a better position; he owned the land that we worked. But the land had only been bought by his ancestors; whereas our forefathers had owned it for more than two hundred years before that, so that we considered that we were of the finer stock.
As I set this down now in black and white I smile to myself; it represents so very badly the real relations that existed between our two families, for the man of whom I speak has always been to us the best and stanchest of friends, and even at that time there was hearty simple intercourse between us that was quite uninfluenced by difference of rank or party-spirit. But the words express a certain side of our feelings, especially a certain side of my own particular feelings, and therefore they shall stand.
The man whom mother hoped Joyce might marry was Squire Broderick. Ever since we girls could remember, he had been squire at the big house, for his father had died when he was scarcely twenty-one, and from that time he had been master of the thousand rooks that used to fly across the marsh at even, to their homes in the beeches and elms that sheltered the Manor from the sea-gales.
I remember thinking when I was a child that it was very strange the rooks should always fly to Squire Broderick's trees rather than to ours. For we had trees too, although not so many nor so big, and our house only stood at the other end of the hill, that sloped down on both sides into the marsh. His house was large and square and regular—a red brick Elizabethan house—and had a great many more windows and chimneys than ours had, and a great many more flower-beds on the lawn that looked out across the marsh to the sea.
But although the Grange had been often added to in the course of its history, and was therefore irregular in shape and varied in color, according to the time that the stone had stood the weather, or to the mosses and ivy that clung to its gray walls, I am sure that it was just as fine an old structure in its way, with its high-pitched tiled roof and the lattice-windows, that only looked like eyes in the empty spaces of solid stone.
We certainly had a better view than the squire. From the low windows of the front parlor we could see the red-roofed town rise, like a sentry-tower out of the plain, some three miles away; and, beyond the ruin of the round stone fortress, lying like a giant asleep in the tawny marsh-land, we looked across the wide stretch of flat pasture-land to the storms and the blue of the sea in the distance.
I do not suppose that I was conscious of the strange beauty of this marsh-land as I am conscious of it now; but I know that I loved it—though people do say that country-folk have no admiration of nature—and I know that I was glad that we saw more of it than they did from the Manor, where a belt of trees had been allowed to grow up and shut out the view. But the rooks loved that lordly belt of trees, and I think that, as a child, I envied the squire the rooks. If I did, it was the only thing I ever did envy him.
As the child of the squire's tenant, and proud of my family pride, it was born in me rather to dislike him than otherwise for his fine old house and his many acres. But this was only when something occurred to remind me of these sentiments—to wit, mother's desire for a marriage between my sister and the village big-wig. Otherwise I did not think of him in this light at all, but rather as the provider of the only treats that ever came our way in that quiet life; for it was he who would make up a party to take us to the travelling shows in the little town when they came by, or even sometimes to the larger seaport ten miles off. I can still remember the school feasts at the Manor when we were little girls, and the squire had but just come into his own; and how, when the village tea and cake had been handed round, he would take us two all over the grounds alone, and give us lovely posies of hot-house flowers to take back to the Grange parlor.
I can even recollect a ride on his back round the field when I tried to catch the pony, and how wildly I laughed all the time, making the meadows ring with my merriment; but that must have been when I was scarcely more than five years old. Since then he had been a husband and a father, and now he was a widower, and in my eyes quite an old man; although, I suppose, he can have been little more than five-and-thirty.
I do not remember Mrs. Broderick. I asked mother about her once, and she told me that she had died when I was scarcely ten years old. And from our old servant, Deborah, I had further gleaned that it was in giving birth to a little son, who had died a year after her, and that mother could not bear to speak of it, because it was just at the same time that we lost our little brother John. Both children had died of scarlet-fever, and mother had nursed the squire's motherless boy before her own. I suppose that was why the squire was always so tender and reverential to her.
I know I was sorry for the squire; for it seemed hard he should have no heir to all his acres, and should have to live in that big house all alone. But he did not seem to mind it much: he was always cheery; his fair, fresh face always with a smile on it; his frank, blue eyes always bright. It did one good to see him; it was like a breath of fresh air. I think everybody felt the same thing about him. It was not only that he was generous, a just landlord, "always as good as his word"—there was something more in it than that; there was something that made everybody love him, apart from anything that he did. And as I look back now to the past, I can see that the squire can have had no easy time of it among the people. He had a thorn in the flesh, and that thorn was my father.
The squire was an ardent Conservative, and father was—well, whatever he was, he was opposed to the squire; and as he was one of those people who have the rare gift of imparting their convictions and their enthusiasms to others, he had great influence among the working-classes, and his influence was not favorable to the squire's party. And yet father was no politician. I knew nothing about shades in these matters at that time, and because father was not a Tory I imagined that he must be a Liberal. But he was not a Liberal, still less was he a Radical, in the party sense of the word. As I have said, he belonged to no party. The reforms that he wanted were social reforms, and they could only be won by the patient struggles of the people who required them. That was what he used to say, and I suppose that was why he devoted all his strength to encouraging the working-classes, and cared so little for their existing rulers. But I did not understand this at the time; it was not till long afterwards that I appreciated all that my father was. Then it occurred to me to wonder how he had come by such advanced ideas living in a quiet country village, and I remembered of a sudden some words that he had said to me one day when I had asked him about a little crayon sketch that always hung above the writing-table in his business-room. It was the portrait of a young man with a firm square chin, a sensitive mouth, liquid, fiery eyes. He wore his hair brushed back off his broad forehead, and had altogether a foreign air. It was a fascinating face.
That, Meg, he had said, "was a great man—a man who made war against the strong, who helped the poor and down-trodden, and fought for the laws of justice and liberty. He gave his affections, his goods, his brains, and his life to the service of others. He died poor, but was rich. He was a real Christian. His name was Camille Lambert."
He said no more, and I never liked to broach the subject again; for mother had told me afterwards that he had had a romantic friendship for the young Frenchman shortly after her engagement to him, and that he could never bear to speak of him after the time when he laid him to rest under the shadows of the old abbey church.
Mother could tell me little about him beyond the fact that he was some years older than father, and that his parents had belonged to the remnants of that colony of French refugees who had inhabited our town during the last century, and still left their names to many existing houses. Indeed, I thought no more of it at the time; but when long afterwards I remembered the matter, I hunted up a little manuscript pamphlet in father's handwriting, telling the story of his friend's life.
Camille Lambert was a disciple of St. Simon, who had died when my father was yet but a lad. Of an eager and romantic temperament, his enthusiasm had been early fired by those exalted doctrines, and he had given all his substance to the great "school," which had just opened its branch houses in the provinces.
In all the works connected with it, Camille Lambert had taken an active part; and when financial troubles and dissensions between the leaders led popular ardor to cool and the scheme to be declared unpractical, he broke his heart over the failure of his hopes, and came home to the little English village to die.
As I read those pages in after years, I felt that it was no wonder that such an enthusiasm should have kindled a kindred flame in the heart of a man so just and so tender as I knew my dear father to be. I love to think of that friendship now; it explains a great deal to me which has sometimes been a puzzle, when I have looked at my father's character with the more mature eyes of my present years. But in those days I did not think deeply enough for anything to be a puzzle. I was proud of my father's influence among the country-folk; I liked to hear the shouts of applause with which he was greeted when he stood up to speak at winter evening assemblies in the old town-hall. I knew that the crusade he preached was that of the poor against the rich; and a confusion had arisen in my mind as to our attitude towards the squire. I fancied I noticed a restive feeling in father towards the man to whom he paid the rent of his land; and when I guessed at that secret hope in mother's heart, I began to class the squire with "the rich" against whom he waged war in theory, and forgot the many occasions in which they were one at heart in the performance of kindly and generous actions.
My mood did not last long, for the old habit of a lifetime was stronger than a mood, and the squire was our friend, but for the moment that was my mood. The squire belonged to an antagonistic class; perhaps, even worse than that in my eyes, he was a middle-aged man, and Joyce must not marry him. Mother never spoke of her hopes to me. It was old Deborah who sometimes discussed them; she always did discuss the family concerns far more freely than any one else in the house. She was with us when Joyce was born, and it was natural she should talk most of what mattered to those whom she loved most in the world. But Deborah could not be expected to enter into the delicacy of such a situation, and I felt sure that on me fell the duty of fighting to the death before my beautiful sister should be sacrificed to commonplace affluence, instead of shining in the world of romance that I loved to fancy for her.
Captain Forrester was the hero of the romance that I had fashioned in my head for Joyce. One bright, frosty winter's day I had driven her into town to market. The sky was blue, the air was sharp, the little icicles hung glittering from the trees and hedge-rows as we drove down the hill; the sea lay steely and calm beyond the waste of white marsh-land that looked so wide in its monotony. The day was invigorating to the spirits, and it had the same effect on father's new mare as it had on us; the road, besides, was as hard as iron and very slippery.
Joyce was nervous in a dog-cart, and she had her doubts of the new purchase. For the matter of that, so had I. The mare pulled very hard. However, we got into town well enough, and in the excitement of her purchases Joyce forgot her uneasiness. It was a long time before she was quite suited to her mind in the matter of soap, and ham, and kitchen utensils; and just as we were leaving I remembered that mother had told me to bring her some tapes and needles.
I've forgotten something, Joyce, said I. "Get in a minute and take the reins. I'll call a boy to hold the horse's head."
She got in, and I beckoned a lad hard by, who went to the animal's head. But before I had been in the shop a moment a cry from Joyce called me back. The mare was rearing. Whether the lad had teased her or not I do not know, but the mare was rearing, and at her head, instead of the lad I had called, was Captain Forrester. We did not know what his name was then; we merely saw a tall, good-looking man in smarter clothes than were usually worn by the dandies of the neighborhood, soothing the restless animal, who soon showed that she recognized a friend. Joyce was as white as a sheet; but when the young man turned to me and said, raising his hat, "Miss Joyce Maliphant, I believe," she blushed as red as a poppy.
It was strange that he should know her name so well.
No, said I, "I am not Joyce; I am Margaret Maliphant. My sister's name is Joyce."
I waved towards her as I spoke. Perhaps I was a little off-hand; folk say I always am. I suppose I must have been, for he muttered a half-apology.
I should not have ventured to intrude, said he, "but that I know the nature of this animal. Strangely enough, she belonged to me once. She is not suitable for a lady's driving."
Why, said I, puzzled and half doubtful, "father bought her only last week from Squire Broderick."
Exactly, smiled he, and I noticed what a pleasant, genial smile he had. "I sold the mare to Squire Broderick myself. I know him very well."
Oh! ejaculated I, I am afraid still far from graciously.
He was still standing by the horse, stroking its neck.
Yes, he repeated, and his tone was not a jot less pleasant because I had spoken so very ungraciously. "She used to belong to me. She has a bit of a temper."
I like a horse with a little temper, answered I. "A horse that has a hard mouth is dull driving."
I said it out of pure intent to brag, for I had been offended at its being supposed I could not drive any horse. As I spoke, I put my foot on the step to mount the dog-cart. As soon as the mare felt the movement behind her she reared again slightly. Captain Forrester quieted her afresh, but still there was no doubt about it, she had reared.
Oh, Margaret, sighed Joyce, "I'm sure we shall never get home safely!"
Nonsense! cried I, impatiently.
I hated to have Joyce seem as though she mistrusted my power of managing a restive horse, and I hated equally to have her show herself off as a woman with nerves. I had already got up into my place, and I now took the reins from her hands and prepared to give the mare her head.
I think I shall walk, Margaret, said Joyce, in a voice which I knew meant that there would be no persuading her from her purpose. She was not generally obstinate, but when she was frightened she would not listen to any reason.
Rather than have a scene, I knew it would be best to give in.
Very well; then we will both walk, said I. "You had better get down, and I will drive on and put the cart up at the inn. Reuben will have to walk out this evening and take it home."
I know I spoke crossly; it was wrong, but I was annoyed. However, before Joyce had had time to get down I saw that our new friend had gone round to the other side of the dog-cart and was talking to her.
Miss Maliphant, said he—and I could not help remarking what a charming manner he had, and what a fascinating way of fixing his wide-open light-brown eyes full in the face of the person to whom he was speaking, and yet that without anything bold in the doing of it—"Miss Maliphant, will you let me drive you and your sister home? I know how uncomfortable it is to be nervous, and I don't think you would be frightened if I were driving, for, you see, I understand the mare quite well."
Joyce blushed, and I bit my lip. It certainly was very mortifying to have a perfect stranger setting himself up as a better whip than I was.
Joyce answered, "Oh, thank you, I don't think we could trouble you to do that," she said, with a bend of her pretty head.
It would be no trouble, replied he, looking at her. "I am going in your direction." He did not say it eagerly, only with a pleasant smile as though his offer were made out of pure politeness.
I looked at him. He was young and handsome, and he was most certainly a gentleman, for he had the most perfect and easy manners that I had ever met with in any man; and he was looking at Joyce as I fancied a man might look at the woman whom he could love. Suddenly all my offence at his want of respect to my powers of driving evaporated; for a thought flashed across my mind. Might this be the lover of whom I had dreamed for my beautiful sister? He had learned her name beforehand; therefore he must have seen her, and also have been sufficiently attracted by her to wish to find out who she was.
Why was it not possible that he had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that he had sought this opportunity of knowing her? Such things had been known to happen, and Joyce was certainly beautiful enough to account for any ardor in an admirer. I stood a moment undecided myself. A young man from the shop where I had made my little purchase came out and put the parcel in the dog-cart. He held another in his hand.
This is for the Manor, captain, said he. "Shall I put it in the carriage?"
No, no, thank you, answered our new friend. "The squire will be driving over one of these days and will fetch it."
This settled the question for me.
Captain!
There was something so much more romantic about a captain than about a plain mister. And such a captain! I had met captains before at the Volunteer ball, but not like this one. It did not occur to me for a moment that if the gentleman was a friend of the squire's he must needs belong to the class which I thought I abhorred, and therefore should not be a suitable lover for my sister. I was too much fascinated by the individual to remember the class. Joyce looked at me for help.
I don't know what to say, I'm sure, murmured she.
The horse began to fidget again at being kept so long standing. There could be no possible objection to a friend of the squire's driving us over.
Thank you, said I, trying to be cool and dignified and not at all eager. "If you would be so kind as to drive us, I shall be very much obliged to you." And turning to the shop-boy I added, "Put the parcel into the carriage."
I do not know what the captain must have thought of my sudden change of manner; I did not stop to consider. I jumped to the ground before he had time to help me, and began to let down the back seat of the cart.
No, no; don't leave the horse, cried I, as he came round to the back to help me. "I know how to do this perfectly well. Do get up. Joyce is so very nervous."
As you like, said he, still smiling; and he got up beside Joyce.
In a moment I had fixed the seat and jumped into it, and we started off at a smart trot down the village street. Joyce was not entirely reassured, although vanity prevented her from openly expressing her alarm, as she would have done if I had been at her side. She sat holding on to the cart, with lips parted and eyes fixed on the horse's ears. I had turned round a little on the seat so that I could see her, and I thought that she looked very lovely. I thought Captain Forrester must be of the same mind; but I think he had not much time to look at her just then—the mare kept his hands full. We rattled down the hill over the cobble-stones and out of the town. Soon its red roofs, crowned by the square tower of the ancient church at its summit, were only a feature in the landscape, which I watched gradually mellowing into the white background as I sat with my back to the others. Before long I was lost in one of what father would have called my brown studies, and quite forgot to notice whether the two in front of me were getting on well together or not. The vague dream that I had always had about my sister's future was beginning to take shape—it unrolled itself slowly before me in a sweet and delightful picture, to which the fair scene before me imparted life and brilliancy as the sense of it mingled imperceptibly with my thoughts. I had never known what it really was that I desired for my sister's lot. To be the wife of a country bumpkin she was far too beautiful; and yet I thought that nothing should have induced me to help towards mating her with one of the gentry who crushed the people's honest rights. Sir Walter Scott's "Fair Maid of Perth," which I had just finished reading, had lent wings to my youthful imagination; but there were no burghers in these days who held the honorable positions of those smiths and glovers, although no doubt at that time there had been many such living in the very town where we had just been to market, and which was in days of old one of the strongholds of his Majesty's realm. If there had been any such suitors, I think I would have given our "Fair Maid" to one of them; but there was all the difference between the man who owned the linen-draper's shop—even if he did not measure off yards of stuff behind the counter—and the man who fashioned the goods with his own hand and took a pride in making them beautiful. And nowadays there were no men who made armor—there were no men who needed it. War had become a very brutal thing compared to what it was then, when it really was a trial of individual strength; nevertheless, of the professions of which I knew anything, it was still to my mind the finest, and it seemed to me that a fine profession was the only thing between a countryman and a landed proprietor such as Squire Broderick. I wonder if I should have thought all this out so neatly if the fine, handsome, and gentlemanly young man who had come across our path had not borne the title of "Captain?" Anyway, it had struck my fancy, as he had struck my fancy—for Joyce.
There was something fresh and brave and bright about him, with those wide-open brown eyes, that he fixed so intently upon one's own. I felt sure that he was full of enthusiasm, full of courage and of loyalty—every inch a soldier. He was the first man I had ever seen who impressed me by his personality; and yet with all that, he was so simple, so light and easy.
As I look back now upon my first impression of Captain Forrester, I do not think it was an unnatural one; I think that he really had a rare gift of fascination, and it was not to be wondered at that I said to myself that this was the noble hero of whom I had dreamed that he should carry off the lily nurtured in the woodland shade. He was just the kind of man to fit in with my notion of a gallant and a hero—a notion derived solely from those old-fashioned novels of father's library which I devoured in the secrecy of my bedchamber when I could snatch a moment from household darning, and mother was not by to pass her scathing remarks upon even such profitable romance-reading as the works of Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen.
As I sat there in the midst of the snow-plain, with the ocean beyond it, and the weather-worn old town the only human thing in the wide landscape, I fixed my thoughts upon that one little spot with all the concentration of my nature, and fell to weaving a romance far more brilliant than anything I had read, or than anything that had yet suggested itself to me in my quiet every-day life. The days of gay tournaments, and fierce hand-to-hand combats, and warriors clad in suits of mail, were no longer; but still, to fight for one's country's fame, to win one's bread by adventure and glory, to kill one's country's foes and save the lives of her sons, was the grandest thing that could be, I thought; and this Captain Forrester did.
As I dreamed, my eyes grew dim thinking of the wife who must send her lover from her, perhaps forever—even though it be to glorious deeds; and as I dreamed, the dog-cart gave a jolt over a stone, and I awoke from my foolish fancies to see that Captain Forrester's hard driving had taken all the mischief out of the mare, and that she was trotting along quite peaceably, while he let the reins hang loose upon her neck, and turned round to talk to my sister Joyce. And as we passed the clump of tall elms at the foot of the cliff, and began slowly to climb the hill towards the village, I looked out across the cold expanse of white marsh-land to the calm sea beyond, and wondered whether it were true what the books said that the peace of a perfect love could only be won through trouble and heartache. Anyway, the trouble must be worth the reward, since we all admired those who fought for it, and most of us entered the lists ourselves. But no doubt the trouble and the fighting was always on the man's side, and as I caught a glimpse of Joyce's blushing profile and of the Captain's eager gaze, I said to myself that Joyce was beautiful, and that Joyce was sweet, and that Joyce would have a lover to whom no trouble in the whole world would be too much for the sake of one kiss from her lips.
I had jumped down as we ascended the hill, and had walked by the side of the cart. Captain Forrester had turned round now and then to say a word to me, making pleasant general remarks upon the beauty of the country and the healthiness of the situation. But he did it out of mere politeness, I knew. When we reached the top of the hill, he gave the reins to Joyce and got down.
You'll be all right now, won't you? said he, helping me in. "I won't come to the door, for I'm due at home;" and he nodded in the direction of the Manor.
Then he must be staying in our village.
I said aloud, laughing, "Well, we could hardly get into trouble between this and our house, could we?"
Hardly, laughed he back again, looking down the road to the right, which led to the ivied porch of our house.
How well he seemed to know all about us! Was he the squire's guest as well as his friend? If so, Joyce would see him again.
Won't you come in and see my father and mother? said I.
I was not sure whether it was the thing to do in good society, such as that to which I felt instinctively that he belonged, but I knew that it was the hospitable thing to do, and I did it. Joyce seconded my invitation in an inarticulate murmur.
I think we were both of us considerably relieved when he said with that same gay smile, and speaking with his clear, well-bred accent: "Not now, thank you. But I will come and call very soon, if I may."
He added the last words turning round to Joyce. She blushed and looked uncomfortable. We were both thinking that mother might possibly not welcome this stranger so cordially as we had done. However, I was not going to have this good beginning spoiled by any mistake on my part, and I hastened to say: "Oh yes, pray do come. I am sure mother will be delighted to welcome any friend of Squire Broderick's."
He gave a little bow at that, but he did not say anything. He held out his hand to me, and then turned to Joyce. I fancied that hers rested in his just a moment longer than was necessary; but then I was in the mood to build up any romance at the moment, and no doubt I was mistaken. But anyhow, I turned the dog-cart down rather sharply towards the house, and Captain Forrester had to stand aside. I was not going to have the villagers gossiping; and such a thing had not been seen before, as Farmer Maliphant's two daughters talking with a stranger at the corner of the village street.
I wonder whether he is staying at the Manor, said I, as we drove up the gravel.
And Joyce echoed, "I wonder."
But she had plenty to do when she got in, showing her new purchases to mother, and telling her the market prices of household commodities, and I do not suppose that she gave a thought to her new admirer for some time. At all events, she did not speak of him. Neither did I. I did not go in-doors.
I always was an unnatural sort of a girl in some ways, and shopping and talk about shopping never interested me. I preferred to remain in the yard, and discuss the points of the new mare with Reuben. But all the time, I was thinking of the man whom we had met in town, and wondering whether or not he would turn out to be Joyce's lover. As I have said before, Reuben and I were great friends. He was a gaunt, loose-limbed old fellow, with a refined although by no means a handsome face, thin features, a fair pale skin, with white whiskers upon it. In character he was simple, obstinate, and taci turn, and had a queer habit of applying the same tests to human beings as he did to dumb animals. In the household—although every one respected his knowledge of his own business—I think that he was regarded merely as an honest, loyal nobody. It was only I who used sometimes to think that it was not all obtuseness, but also a laudable desire for a quiet life, which led Reuben to be such an easy mark for Deborah's wit, and apparently so impervious to its arrows.
She pulled, did she? said he, with a smile that showed a very good set of teeth for an old man. "Ah, it takes a man to hold a mare, leastways if she's got any spirit in her."
She didn't pull any too much for me, answered I, half vexed. "What makes you fancy so?"
I seed the young dandy a-driving ye along the road, said he. "I can see a long way. She pulled at first, but he took it out of her."
If there was any secret in our having driven out of town with Captain Forrester, Reuben had it.
Joyce was frightened, and he had driven the mare at the squire's, said I. "She reared a bit in town, but I don't think he drove any better than I could have done."
Reuben took no notice of this remark. "She's a handsome mare," said he. "The handsomer they be, the worse they be to drive. Women are the same—so I've heard tell; though, to be sure, the ugly ones are bad enough."
Deborah was not handsome; but then, had Reuben ever tried to drive her? Oh, if she could have heard that speech! She came up the garden cliff in front of us as I spoke, with some herbs in her arms—a tall, strong woman, with a wide waist and shoulders, planting her foot firmly on the ground at every step, and swaying slightly on her hips with the bulk of her person. When she was young she must have had a fine figure, but now she was not graceful.
Yes, she's a beauty, said I, stroking the mare's sleek sides, and alluding to her and not to Deborah. "When we are alone together we'll have fine fun." The mare stretched out her pretty neck to take the sugar that I held in my hand. She was beginning to know me already.
Yes, Miss Joyce is nervous, said Reuben, meditatively. "Most like she would have more confidence in a beau. Them pretty maids are that way, and the beaux buzz about them like flies to the honey. But the beasts be fond of you, miss," he added, admiringly, watching me fondling the horse.
It was the higher compliment from Reuben, and it was true that every animal liked me. I could catch the pony in the field when it would let no one else get near it. I could milk the cow who kicked over the pail for any one but Deborah. I could coax the rabbits to me, and almost make friends with the hares in the woods. The cat slept upon my bed, and Taff watched outside my door.
I laughed at Reuben's compliment; but Deborah strode out of the back door just then, to hang linen out to dry, and Reuben never laughed when she was by. She gave me a sharp glance.
You've got your frock out at the gathers again, said she. She did not often trouble to give us our titles of "miss."
Have I? replied I, carelessly.
Yes, you have; and how you manage it is more than I can tell, continued she, tartly. "Now you're grown up, I should think you might have done with jumping dikes, and riding horses without saddles, and such-like."
Why, Deb, cried I, laughing, "I haven't jumped a dike since I was fourteen. At least, not when any one was by," added I, remembering a private exploit of two days ago.
Yes; I suppose you don't expect me not to know where that black mud came from on your petticoat last night, remarked she, sententiously. "Anyhow, I'd advise you to mend your frock, for the squire's in the parlor, and your mother won't be pleased."
The squire! cried I. "Is he going to stay to dinner?"
Not as I know of, answered the old woman. "But you had better go and see. Joyce let him in, for I hadn't a clean apron, and I heard him say that he had come to see the master on business."
Well, so I suppose he did, answered I.
Deborah smiled, a superior sort of smile. She did not say anything, but I knew very well what she meant. She was the only person in the house who openly insisted that the squire came to the Grange after Joyce. Mother may have thought it; I guessed from many little signs that she did think it, but she never directly spoke of it. But Deborah spoke of it, and spoke of it frankly.
It irritated me. I pushed past her roughly to reach the front parlor windows. I wanted to see the squire to-day, for I wanted to find out whether our new friend was staying at the Manor.
You're never going in like that? cried she.
Certainly, replied I. "What's good enough for other folk is good enough for the squire. The squire is nothing to me, nothing at all."
That's true enough, laughed Deborah. "I don't know as he is anything to you. But he may be something to other folk all the same. And look here, Miss Spitfire, there may come a day, for all your silly airs, when you may be glad enough that the squire is something to some of you, and when you'd be very sorry if you'd done anything to prevent it. You go and think that over."
I curled my lip in scorn. "You know I refuse to listen to any insinuations, Deborah," said I. "The squire comes here to visit my father, and we have no reason to suppose that he comes for anything else."
This was quite true. The squire had certainly never said a word that should lead us to imagine that he meant anything more by his visits to the Grange than friendship for an old man laid by from his active life by frequent attacks of gout; but if I had been quite honest, I should have acknowledged that I, too, entertained the same suspicion as Deborah did.
The women must always needs be thinking the men be coming after them, muttered Reuben, emerging from the darkness of a shed to the left with an axe over his shoulder.
If I had been less preoccupied I should have laughed at the audacity of this remark, which he would certainly not have dared to make unless it had been for the support of my presence.
It don't stand to reason, went on Deborah, scorning Reuben's remark, "that a gentleman like the squire would come here and sit hours long for naught but to hear the gentry-folk abused by the master. It is a wonder he stands it as he do, for master is over-unreasonable at times. But, Lord! you can't look in the squire's eyes and not know he's got a good heart, and it's Miss Joyce's pretty face that'll get it to do what she likes with, you may take my word for it. The men they don't look to the mind so much as they look to the face, and the temper—and Joyce, why, her temper's as smooth as her skin; you can't say better than that."
This was true, and Deborah was right to say it in praise, although I do believe in her heart she had even a softer spot for me and my bad temper than for Joyce and her gentle ways.
Birds of a feather, I suppose.
You seem to think that it's quite an unnatural thing for two men to talk politics together, Deborah, said I, with a superior air of wisdom. "But perhaps the squire is wiser than you fancy, and thinks that at his time of life politics should be more in his way than pretty faces."
Deborah laughed, quite good-humoredly this time.
Hark at the lass! cried she. "The time may come when you won't think a man of five-and-thirty too old to look at a woman, my dear."
Oh, I don't mind how old a man is! laughed I, merrily, recovering my good-humor at the remembrance of that second string I had to my bow for my sister. "The men don't matter much to me—they never look twice at me, you know well enough. But Joyce is too handsome to marry an old widower, and I dare say if she waits a bit there'll come somebody by who'll be better suited to her."
Well, all I can say is, I hope she may have another chance as good, insisted the obstinate old thing, shaking out the last stocking viciously and hanging it onto the line. "But she hasn't got it yet, you know; and if folk all behave so queer and snappish, maybe she won't have it at all. But you must all please yourselves," added she, as though she washed her hands of us now. And then giving me another of her sharp glances, she said, in conclusion, "And you know whether your mother will like to see you with a torn frock or not."
I went in with my head in the air. I thought it was very impertinent of Deb to talk of "good chances" in connection with my sister. I have learned to know her better since then.
Her desire for that marriage was not all ambition for Joyce. But at that time I little guessed what she already scented in the air.
It was a quarter of an hour before I reached the parlor, for I did mend my frock in spite of my bit of temper. The cloth was laid for dinner—a spotless cloth, for mother was very particular about her table-linen—and the bright glass and the dinner-ware shone in the sunlight. I can see the room now: a long, low room, with four lattice-windows abreast, and a seat running the length of the windows; opposite the windows a huge fireplace, across which ran one heavy oaken beam bearing the date and the name of the Maliphants, and supported by two stout masonry pillars, fashioned, tradition said, out of that same soft stone of which a great part of the abbey was built. Two high-backed wooden chairs, with delicate spindle-rails, highly polished, and very elegant, stood close to the blaze. There was also a pretty inlaid satinwood table in the far corner that had belonged to mother's grandfather, and had been left to her; but the rest of the furniture was plain dark oak, and had been in the house ever since the Maliphants had owned it. It was a sweet, cosey room, and if the windows, being old-fashioned and somewhat small, did not admit all the sunlight they might, they also did not let in the wind, of which there was plenty, for the parlor faced towards the sea, and the gales in winter were sometimes terrific.
We had another best-parlor, looking on the road, where were the piano and the upholstered furniture, covered in brown holland on common days; but though the pale yellow tabaret chairs and curtains looked very pretty when they were all uncovered, we none of us ever felt quite comfortable excepting in the big dwelling-room that looked over the marsh. How well I remember it that day when we were all there together! Father sat by the fire with his boots and gaiters still on. He had been out for the first time after a severe attack of his complaint, and he was very irritable. I thought Joyce might have helped him off with the heavy things, but no doubt he had refused; any offer of help was almost an insult to him. They used to say I took after father in that. He was bending over the fire that day, stretching out his fingers to the blaze—a powerful figure still, though somewhat worn with hard work and the sufferings which he never allowed to gain the upper-hand. But his back was not bent—an out-door life, whatever other marks it may leave, spares that one; his head was erect still—a remarkable head—the gray hair, thick and strong, sticking up in obstinate little tufts without any attempt at order or smoothness. It was not beautiful hair, for the tufts were quite straight, but at least it was very characteristic; I have never seen any quite like it. It was in keeping with the bushy eyebrows that had just the same defiant expression as the tufts of hair. The brow was high and prominent, the eyes keen and quick to change, the jaw heavy and somewhat sullen. At first sight it might not have been called a lovable face; it might rather have been called a stern, even an unbending one; but that it was really lovable is proved by the sure love and confidence with which it always inspired little children. They came to father naturally as they would have gone to the tenderest woman, and smiled in his face as though certain beforehand of the smile that would answer theirs in return. But father's face was sullen sometimes to a grown-up person. It looked very sullen as he sat by the fire that day. I knew in a moment that something had ruffled him.
Mother seemed to be doing her best, however, to make up for the ill reception which her husband was giving his guest; and mother's best was a very pretty thing. She was a very pretty woman, and she looked her prettiest that day. She was tall—we were a tall family, I was the shortest of us all—and her height looked even greater than it was in the straight folds of the soft gray dress that suited so well with her fair skin. She had a fresh white cap on; the soft fluted frills came down in straight lines just below her ears, framing her face; and the bands of snow-white hair, that looked so pretty beside the fresh skin, were tucked away smoothly beneath it. Mother's face was a young face still—as dainty in color as a little child's. Joyce took her beauty from her.
Mother was standing up in the middle of the room talking to the squire, who apparently was about to take his leave. Joyce was putting the last touches to the dinner-table. She looked up at me in an appealing kind of way as I came in, and I felt sure that there had been some sort of difference between father and the squire. They often did have little differences, though they were the best of friends in reality; but I always secretly took father's side in every argument, and I never liked to see mother, as it were, making amends for what father had said. Yet it was what she was doing now. "I'm sure, Squire Broderick," she was saying, "we take it very kindly of you to interest yourself in our affairs. Laban is a little tetchy just now, but it's because he ain't well. He feels just as I do really."
Father made an impatient sound with his lips at this, but mother went on just the same.
I'm quite of your mind, she declared, shaking her head. "I've often said so to Laban myself. We can't go against Providence, and we must learn to take help where we can get it, though I know ofttimes it's just the hardest thing we have to do."
What could this speech mean? I was puzzled. I glanced at father. He sat quite silent, tapping his foot. I glanced at Joyce. There was nothing in her manner to show that the subject under discussion had anything whatever to do with her. The squire had turned round as I came into the room, but mother kept him so to herself that he could do no more than give me a smile as I walked across and sat down in the window-seat.
I know it would be the best in the end, mother went on, with a distressed look on her sweet old face.
It rather annoyed me at the time, simply because I saw that she was siding with the squire against father; but I have often remembered that, and many kindred looks since, and have wondered how it was that I never guessed at the anxiety of that tender spirit that labored so devotedly to cope with problems that were beyond its grasp.
However, added mother, with the pretty smile that, after all, I remember more often than the knitted brow, "he'll come round himself in time. He always does see things the way you put them after a bit."
She said these words in a whisper, although they were really quite loud enough for any one to hear. I saw father smile. He was so fond of mother, and the words were so far from accurate, that he could afford to smile; for there were very few instances in which he came round to the squire's way of seeing things at that time, although he was very fond of the squire. The squire himself laughed aloud. He had a rich, rippling laugh; it did one good to hear it.
No, no, ma'am, he said, "I can't agree to that; and no reason why it should be so either." He held out his hand to mother as he spoke.
I must be off now, he added. "I ought to have gone long ago. We'll talk it over again another time."
Oh, won't you stay and have a bit of dinner with us, squire? cried mother, in a disappointed voice. "It's just coming in. I know it's not what you have at home, but it is a fine piece of roast beef to-day."
Fie, fie, Mrs. Maliphant! don't you be so modest, said the squire, with his genial smile, buttoning up his overcoat as he spoke.
He always had a gay, easy manner towards the mother—something, I used to fancy, like what her own younger brother might have had towards her, or even her own son, although at that time I should have thought it impossible for a man as old to be mother's son at all. I suppose it was in consequence of that sad time in the past that he had grown to love her as I know he did.
I don't often get a dinner such as I get at your table, added he; "but I can't stay to-day, for I'm due at home."
Just the words that young man had used at the foot of the village street. I was determined to find out before the squire left whether that young man was staying at the Manor or not.
Perhaps Mr. Broderick has visitors, mother, I suggested.
I glanced at Joyce as I spoke. Her cheeks were poppies.
What makes you think so? asked the squire, turning to me and frowning a little.
We met a gentleman in town, said I, boldly, although my heart beat a little; "he helped us with the mare when she reared, and he said he was a friend of yours."
Mother looked at me, and Joyce blushed redder than ever. Certainly, for a straightforward and simple young woman who had no more than her legitimate share of vanity, Joyce had a most unfortunate trick of blushing. I know it was admired, but I never could see that folk must needs be more delicate of mind because they blushed, or more sensitive of heart because they cried. The squire frowned a little more and bit his lip.
Ah, it must have been Frank, said he. "He did say he was going to walk into town this morning. My nephew," added he, in explanation, turning to mother. "Captain Forrester."
Your nephew! exclaimed mother, quite reassured. "He must be but a lad."
Oh, not at all; he's a very well-grown man, and of an age to take care of himself, answered the squire, and it did not strike me then that he said it a little bitterly. "My sister is a great deal older than I am."
Of course I have seen Mrs. Forrester, said mother, "and I know she's a deal older than you are, but I never should have thought she had a grown-up son—and a captain, too!"
Oh yes, he's a captain, repeated the squire, and he took up his hat and stick from the corner of the room and put his hand on the door-knob. "Good-bye, Mr. Maliphant," cried he, cheerily, without touching any more on the sore subject.
Father did not reply, and he turned to me and held out his hand. "Good-bye," he said, more seriously than it seemed to me the subject required. "I'm sorry the mare reared."
See the squire to the door, Joyce, said the mother. And Joyce, blushing again, glided out into the hall and lifted the big latch.
I was dying to hear what had been the subject of the difference between Squire Broderick and father, for that it was somehow related to something more closely allied to our own life than mere politics, I was inwardly convinced. I came up to the fireplace and began toasting my feet before the bars. I hoped father would say something. But he did not even turn to me, and Deborah coming in with the dinner at that moment, mother took her place at the head of the table, and father asked a blessing. Mother did not look sad; she looked very bright and pretty, with the sunshine falling on her silvery hair, and on her white dimpled hands, lovely hands, that were wielding the carvers so skilfully. I thought at the time that she did not notice father's gloomy face, but I think it is far more likely that she did notice it, but that she thought it wiser to leave him alone; those were always her tactics.
Father, began she, as soon as she had served us all and had sat down, "the girls mustn't drive that mare any more if she rears; it isn't safe."
No, no, of course not, assented father, absently. Then turning to me, "What made her rear, Meg?"
I don't know, father, answered I. "I was in a shop when she did, and a boy was holding her. I suppose he teased her. But it's not worth talking about; it would have been nothing if Joyce hadn't been so easily frightened."
I couldn't help it, murmured Joyce. "I know I'm silly."
Well, to be sure, any old cart-horse would be better for you than a beast with any spirit, wouldn't it? laughed I.
Well, Margaret, the animal must have looked dangerous, you know, said mother, "for no strange gentleman would have thought of accosting two girls unless he saw they were really in need of help."
I laughed—I am afraid I laughed. I thought mother was so very innocent.
I hope you thanked him for his trouble, added she. "Being the squire's nephew, as it seems he was, I shouldn't be pleased to think you treated him as short as you sometimes treat strangers. You, Margaret, I mean," added mother, looking at me.
Oh yes, we were very polite to him, said I. And then I grew very hot. Of course I knew I was bound to say that Captain Forrester had driven us home. I hoped mother would take it kindly, as she seemed well disposed towards him, but I did not feel perfectly sure.
We asked him to come in, didn't we, Joyce? added I, looking at her.
Yes, we did, murmured my sister, bending very low over her plate.
Asked him to come where? asked mother.
Why, here, to be sure, cried I, growing bolder. "He drove us home, you know."
Mother said nothing, for Deborah had just brought in the pudding, and she was always very discreet before servants at meal-times. But she closed her lips in a way that I knew, and her face assumed an aggrieved kind of expression that she only put on to me; when Joyce was in the wrong, she always scolded her quite frankly. There was silence until Deborah had left the room. She went out with a smile on her face which always drove me into a frenzy, for it meant to say, "You are in for it, and serve you right;" and I thought it was taking advantage of her position in the family to notice any differences that occurred between mother and the rest of us.
When Deborah had gone out, shutting the door rather noisily, mother laid down her knife and fork. She did not look at me at all, she looked at Joyce. That was generally the way she punished me.
You don't mean to say, Joyce, that you allowed a strange gentleman to get into the trap before all the townsfolk! said she. "You're the eldest—you ought to have known better."
I could not stand this. "It isn't Joyce's fault," said I, boldly; "I thought we were in luck's way when the gentleman offered to drive us. He knew the mare, and of course I felt that we were safe."
It will be all over the place to-morrow, said mother, pathetically.
Well, the gentleman is the squire's nephew, and everybody knows what friends you are with the squire, answered I, provokingly.
You might see that makes it all the worse, answered mother. "I don't know how ever I shall meet the squire again. I'm ashamed to think my daughters should have behaved so unseemly. But the ideas of young women in these days pass me. Such notions wouldn't have gone down in my day. Young women were forced to mind themselves if they were to have a chance of a husband. Your father would never have looked at me if I had been one of that sort."
Father was in a brown-study. I do not think he had paid much attention to the affair at all, but now he smiled as mother glanced across at him, seeming to expect some recognition. She repeated her last remark and then he said, bowing to her with old-fashioned gallantry, "I think I should have looked at you, Mary, whatever your shortcomings had been. You were too pretty to be passed over."
And he smiled again, as he never smiled at any one but mother; the smile that, when it did come, lit up his face like a dash of broad sunshine upon a rugged moor.
But mother's quite right, lassies, added he; "a woman must be modest and gentle, not self-seeking, nor eager for homage, or she'll never have all the patience she need have to put up with a man's tempers."
He sighed, and the tears rose to my eyes. A word of disapproval from my father always hurt me to the quick, and I felt that in this case it was not wholly deserved, as, however mistaken I might have been, I had certainly not been self-seeking or eager for homage.
I'm very sorry, said I, but I am afraid not at all humbly; "I didn't know I was doing anything so very dreadful. Anyhow, it wasn't I who was afraid of the horse, and it wasn't for me that Captain Forrester took the reins."
This was quite true, but I had no business to have said it. I wished the words back as soon as they were spoken. Joyce blushed scarlet again, and mother looked at me for the first time. I felt that she was going to ask what I meant, but father interrupted her.
There, there, said he, not testily, but as though to put an end to the discussion. "You should not have done it, because mother says so, and mother always knows best, but I dare say there's little harm done. A civil word hurts nobody; and as for the mare, you needn't drive her again."
So that was all that I had got for my pains. I opened my mouth to explain and to remonstrate, but father rose from the table and said grace, and I dared not pursue the subject further. For the matter of that, the look of pain in his face, as he moved across the room and sat down heavily in the chair, was quite enough to chase away my vexation against him. "Meg, just take these heavy things off for me, I'm weary," said he. I knelt down and unfastened the gaiters, and unlaced the heavy boots, and brought him his slippers. He lay back with a sigh of relief.
The walk round the farm has been too much for you, Laban, said mother, sitting down in the other high-backed chair near him.
Let be, let be, muttered he.
Nay, I can't let be, Laban, insisted mother. "I must look after your health, you know. I can see very well that it is too much for you seeing after the farm as it should be seen after. And that's why I don't think the squire's notion is half a bad one."
I stopped with the spoons and forks in my hand that I was taking off the table. Father made that noise between his teeth again. I always knew it meant a storm brewing.
Anyhow, I hope you won't bear him a grudge for what he thought fit to advise, mother went on. "He did it out of friendship, I'm sure. And the squire's a wise man."
Father did not answer at first. He had risen and stood with his back to the fire. His jaw was set, his eyes looked like black beads under the overhanging brows.
Of course I know you'll say he just wants to get a job for his friend's son, continued mother. "And no doubt he mightn't have thought of it but for this turning up. But he wouldn't advise it if he didn't think it was for our good. The squire has our interests at heart, I'm sure."
D—n the squire, said father at last, slowly and below his breath. Mother laid her hand on his arm.
Hush, Laban, hush; not before the girls, said she, in her gentle tones.
Well, well, there, said he, "the squire's a good man and an honest man, but I say neither he nor any one else has a right to come and teach a man what to do with his own."
He doesn't do it because of any right, persisted mother. "He does it because he's afraid things don't work as well as they used to do, and because he's your friend."
And what business has he to be afraid? retorted father. "I say the land's my own, though I do pay him rent for it, and it's my business to be afraid. Does he think I shall be behind-hand with the rent? I've been punctual to a day these last twenty years. What more does he want, I should like to know?"
Now, Laban, you know that isn't it, expostulated mother. "He knows he is safe enough for the rent, but he's afraid you ain't making money so fast as you might. And of course if you aren't, it's clear it's because you're not so strong to work as you were, and you haven't got a son of your own to look after things for you."
Mother sighed as she said this, but I am afraid I looked at her with angry not sympathetic eyes.
The squire takes a true interest in us all, repeated she for the third time, her voice trembling a little.
Well, then, let him take his interest elsewhere this time, ma'am, that's all I've got to say, retorted father, in no way appeased. "If things were as they should be, there'd be no paying of rent to eat up a man's profits on the land, but what he made by the sweat of his brow would be his own for his old age, and for his children after him. And if we can only get what ought to belong to the nation by paying for it, then all I bargain for is—let those who get the money from me leave alone prying into how I get it together."
I had stood perfectly still all this time, with the spoons and forks in my hand, listening and wondering. Father's last speech I had scarcely given heed to. I had heard those opinions before, and they had become mere words in my ears. I was entirely engrossed with wondering what was the exact nature of the squire's suggestion, and with horror at what I feared. I was not long left in doubt.
Well, you make a great mistake in being angry with Squire Broderick, Laban, indeed you do, reiterated mother, shaking her head, and without paying any attention to his fiery speech. She never did pay any attention to such speeches. She always frankly said that she did not understand them. "If the squire recommends this young Mr. Trayton Harrod to you, it is because he knows him and thinks he would work with you, and not be at all like any common paid bailiff, I'm sure of that."
Well, then, mother, all I can say is—it's nonsense—that is what it is. It is nonsense. If a man is a paid bailiff, the more like one he is the better. And I don't think it is at all likely I shall ever take a paid bailiff to help me to manage Knellestone.
With that he strode to the door and opened it.
Meg, will you please come to me in my study in a quarter of an hour? said he, turning to me as he went out. "There are a few things in the farm accounts that I think you might help me with."
I went into the sunlight and stood leaning upon the garden-hedge looking out over the glittering plain of snow to the glittering blue of the sea beyond. The whole scene was set with jewels of light, and even the gray fortress in the marsh seemed to awaken for once out of its sleep; but I was in no mood to laugh with the sunbeams, for my heart was beating with angry thoughts. A bailiff, a manager for Knellestone—and Knellestone that had been managed by nobody but its own masters for three hundred years! It was impossible! Why, the very earth would rise up and rebel! From where I stood I could see our meadows down on the marsh, our fields away on the hills towards the sunset, the pastures where our shepherds spent cold nights in huts at the lambing-time, the land where our oxen drew the plough and our laborers tilled the soil and harvested the ingatherings. Would the men and the beasts work for the manager as they worked for us? Would the land prosper for a stranger and a hireling, who would not care whether the cattle lived or died, whether the seasons were kind or cruel, whether the trees and the flowers flourished or pined away, who would get his salary just the same, though the frost nipped the new crops, though the wheat dried up for want of rain or rotted in the ear for lack of sun, though the cows cast their calves and the lambs died at the birth? How absurd, how ridiculous it was! Did it not show that it had been suggested by one who took no interest in the land, but who let it all out to others to care for? Of course this was some spendthrift younger son of a ruined gentleman's family, or some idiot who had failed at every other profession, and was to be sent here to ruin other people without having any responsibility of his own—somebody to whom the squire owed a duty or a favor. Perhaps a man who had never been on a farm in his life, maybe had not even lived in the country at all. In my childish anger I became utterly unreasonable, and gave vent in my solitude to any absurd expressions that occurred to me. I smile to myself as I remember the impotent rage of that afternoon. Indeed, I think I hated the squire most thoroughly that day. It was the idea, too, that I was being set at naught that added to my anger. Hitherto it was I who had transmitted father's orders to the men whenever he was laid by or busy; and, as I have said before, he often trusted me to ride to the bank with money, and even to take stock of the goods before sales and fairs came on. Of course I know now that I was worse than useless to him. I was a clever girl enough, and dauntless in the matter of fatigue or trouble, but I was entirely ignorant of the hundred little details that make all the difference in matters of that kind, and pluck and coolness stood me in poor stead of experience. But at that time I was confident, and as I stood there looking at the brightness that I did not see, tears came into my eyes—tears of mortification, that even the squire should have considered me so perfectly useless that I could be set aside as though I did not exist. How often I had wished to be a boy! How heartily I wished it that afternoon! If I had been a boy there would never even have been a question of getting a paid manager to help father. I should have been a man by this time, nearly of age, and no one would have doubted that I was clever enough and strong enough to see after my own.
Father called from the window, and I went in. He was sitting by the table, surrounded by papers, his foot supported on a chair.
Sit down, Meg, said he. "I want you to help me remember one or two things in the books that I don't quite understand—I think you can."
He spoke quite cheerfully. I had been setting down things in the book while he had been ill, and paying the wages to the men, and it was quite natural he should want to see me about it. I sat down, and we went over the books item by item. We had had a very sound education, though simple, quite as good as most girls have, and I had been considered more than usually smart at figures. But that day I think I was dazed. I could not remember things; I could not tell why the books were not square; my wits were muddled on every point. Father was most patient, most kind. I think he must have seen that I was over-anxious, but his kindness only made me more disgusted with myself; for I knew that that dreadful question was in his mind the whole time, as it was in mine.
Whenever I told him anything that was not satisfactory in the conduct of affairs, or anything that had failed to turn out as he expected, I knew that it was in his mind, although he did not think I saw it.
We can't expect old heads to grow on young shoulders, said he at last, patting mine gently, a thing most rare for him to do. "It takes many a long day to learn experience, my dear. And sometimes we don't do so much better with it than we did without it." He put the books away as he spoke, and leaned back in his chair. "That'll do now, child," he added; "to-morrow I shall be able to see the men myself. I am well and hearty again now—thank the Lord—and a good bit of work will do me good."
You mustn't begin too soon, father, said I, timidly; "you know the weather is very cold and treacherous yet."
Oh, you women would keep a man in-doors forever for fear the wind should blow in his face, cried he, testily. "But there's an end to everything. When I'm ill you shall all do what you like with me, but when I'm well I mean to be my own master."
But I shall still be able to help you, father, as I have done before, sha'n't I? added I, still, singularly, without my accustomed self-confidence.
Why, yes, child, of course, he replied. "And you and I will be able to get on yet awhile without a stranger's help, I'll warrant." It was the only allusion he had made to the horrible subject during the whole of our interview. It was the only allusion he made to it in my presence for many a long day. He rose from his chair as he spoke the last words, and walked across to the window.
The afternoon was beginning to sink, and the sun had paled in its splendor. The lights were gray now over the whiteness of the marsh, and the snow looked cold and cruel. Something made my heart sink, too, as I noticed how gray was father's face in the scrutinizing light of the afternoon. I had not noticed before that he had really been ill. I left the room quickly, and went out again. The stinging March air struck a chill into my bones, and yet it was scarcely more than four o'clock. Two hours of daylight yet! How was it possible that any man but the strongest should work as a man must work whose farm should prosper? And was father really a strong man? I was sick with misgivings. What if, after all, the squire were right? But I would not believe it. Father had had the gout; it was always the strongest men who had the gout.
I turned to go in-doors. A laugh greeted my ears from the library. I passed before the window. Yes; it was father who was laughing as he shook hands with a man who had just entered the room. I looked. The man was a tall, blond, spare fellow, with a sanguine complexion, very marked features, small gray eyes, and a bald head. I knew him to be a Mr. Hoad, father's solicitor in town. He was well dressed in a black suit and gray trousers. He was a very successful man for his time of life, people said. I knew that father liked him, and I was glad that father should have a visitor who cheered him to-day. But for my own part, I knew no one who filled me with such a peculiar antipathy. I could not bear the sight of the man. Yet he was a harmless kind of fellow, and very polite to ladies. Joyce often used to take me to task for my excessive dislike to him. If it was because I did not consider him on equal terms with us, from a social point of view—for I must confess I was ridiculously prejudiced on this score, and where I had learned such nonsense I do not know—then the ship-owners and other people of that class to whom I could give "good-day" in town were much less so. But I could not have told why I disliked him so particularly; I could not have told why I wondered that father could have any dealings with him—why I was always on the watch for something that should prove that I was in the right in my instinct. And somehow his appearance on this particular evening affected me even more uncomfortably than usual, and I felt that I could not go in and see him—perhaps even have to discuss the very subject that was weighing on my mind, when I wanted to be alone to nurse my own mortification, and lull my fears to rest by myself. I crept into the hall quietly and fetched a cloak and hood, and then, running round to the yard, I called the St. Bernard. He came, leaping and jumping upon me, this friend with whom I was always in tune. I opened the gate gently, and together we went out upon the road.
I think Taff and I must have walked three miles. The roads were stiff and slippery, the air was like a knife; but I did not care. The quick movement and the solitude and the quiet of the coming night soothed me. We got up upon the downs where lonely homesteads stud the country here and there, and came back again along the cliffs that crown the marsh-land. There I stood a long while face to face with the quiet world upon which the moon had now risen in the deep blue of a twilight sky. It looked down upon the wide, white marsh upon whose frozen bosom gray vapors floated lightly; it looked down upon the dark town that rose yonder so sombre and distinct out of the mystery of the landscape; the channel that flows to the sea lay cold and blue and motionless at the foot of the hill like a sheet of steel. It made me shudder. There was not a ripple upon its deathly breast. The snow around was far more tender. For the first time in my life I felt the sadness of the world; I realized that there was something in it which I could not understand; I remembered that there was such a thing as death.
I did not escape Mr. Hoad by my walk. He had stayed to tea. I do not think that he was a favorite of mother's, but she always made a great point of welcoming all father's friends to the house, and I saw that she had welcomed him to-night. He sat in the place of honor beside her, and there were sundry alterations on the tea-table, and a pot of special marmalade in the middle.
It was very late when I came in. I took off my things in the hall and went in without smoothing my hair. I thought I should have been in disgrace for coming in late, and for having my hair in disorder when a guest was present; but mother had forgotten her displeasure, and smiled as she pushed my cup towards me. She never made any allusion to by-gone differences—her anger never lasted long.
The mood that I had brought with me from without was still upon me, and when I saw that father's face had lost its gray pallor, that his eyes shone with their usual fire, and that his voice was strong and healthy, I sighed a sigh of relief and told myself that I was a fool, and that Mr. Hoad must really be a good fellow if he could so soon chase away the gloom from my parent's brow.
Your husband looks wonderfully well again, Mrs. Maliphant, he was saying; "it's quite surprising how soon he has pulled round. When I met the doctor the other day driving from town, and stopped to ask after him, he said it would be weeks before he could be about again. But he has got a splendid constitution—must have. Not that I would wish to detract from your powers of nursing. We all have heard how wonderful they are."
Mr. Hoad smiled at mother, but she did not smile back again. There were people whom she kept at arm's-length, even though carefully civil to them. I don't suppose she knew this, for she was a shy woman, but I recollect it well.
We can all nurse those we are fond of, she said. "I'm sure I'm very pleased to think you should find Mr. Maliphant looking better."
Better! Nonsense! exclaimed father. "I'm as well as I ever was in my life. Don't let's hear any more about that, wife, there's a dear soul."
Nay, you shall hear no more about it than need be from me, Laban, I can promise you that, smiled mother, pouring out the tea, while Joyce, from the opposite side of the table, where she was cutting up the seed-cake that she had made with her own hands the day before, asked the guest after his two daughters.
They are very busy, answered Mr. Hoad. "A large acquaintance, you know—it involves a great deal of calling. I'm afraid they have been remiss here."
Oh, I pray, don't mention such a thing, Mr. Hoad, exclaimed mother, hastily. "We don't pay calls ourselves. We are plain folk, and don't hold with fashionable ways."
Mr. Hoad smiled rather uncomfortably.
And we have not much to amuse them with, I put in. "We do nothing that young ladies do."
I saw mother purse up her lips at this, and I was vexed that I had said it, but father laughed and said: "No, Hoad, my girls are simple farmer's daughters, and have learned more about gardening and house-keeping than they have about French and piano-playing, though Meg can sing a ballad when she chooses as well as I want to hear it."
I declared my voice was nothing to Miss Hoad's; and Joyce, always gracious, looked across to Mr. Hoad and said: "I wonder whether Miss Jessie would sing something for us at our village concert?"
I'll ask her, said Mr. Hoad, a little diffidently. "I'm never sure about my daughters' engagements. They have so many engagements."
We shall be very pleased to see them here any afternoon for a practice, sha'n't we, mother? added Joyce.
The young ladies will always be welcome, replied mother, a little stiffly; and I hastened to add, I fear less graciously:
But pray don't let them break any engagements for us.
Mr. Hoad smiled again, and then father turned to him and they took up the thread of their own talk where they had left it.
You certainly ought to know that young fellow I was speaking of, Mr. Hoad began. "I was struck with him at once. A wonderful gift of expressing himself, and just that kind of way with him that always wins people—one can't explain it. Handsome, too, and full of enthusiasm."
Enthusiasm don't always carry weight, objected father. "It's rather apt to fly too high."
Bound to fly high when you have got to get over the heads of other folks, laughed Mr. Hoad.
Father looked annoyed. "I wasn't joking, I wasn't joking," said he. "If men want to go in for great work, they can't afford to take it lightly." And then he added with one of his quick looks, "But don't misunderstand me, Hoad. Enthusiasm of the right kind never takes things lightly. It's the only sort of stuff that wins great battles, because it has plenty of courage and don't know the meaning of failure. Only there's such lots of stuff that's called enthusiasm and is nothing but gas. I should like to see this young man and judge for myself. God forbid I should think youth a stumbling-block. Youth is the time for doing as well as for dreaming."
Father sighed, and though I could not tell why at the time, I can guess now that it was from the recollection of that friend of his who must have been the type of youthful enthusiasm thus to have left his memory and the strength of his convictions so many years in the heart of another.
Well, you can see him easily enough, said Mr. Hoad. "He's staying in your village, I believe. He's a nephew of Squire Broderick's."
What! Captain Forrester? cried I.
Ah, you know him of course, Miss Maliphant. Trust the young ladies for finding out the handsome men, said Mr. Hoad, turning to me with his most irritating expression of gallantry. I bit my lips with annoyance at having opened my mouth to the man, especially as he glanced across at Joyce with a horribly knowing look, at which of course she blushed, making me very angry.
I fancy the squire and he don't get on so extra well together, said Mr. Hoad. "Squire don't like the look of the lad that'll step into his shoes, if he don't make haste and marry and have a son of his own, I suppose."
I should think this smart captain had best not reckon too much on the property, said mother, stiffly, up in arms at once for her favorite. "The squire's young enough yet to marry and have a dozen sons."
Yes, yes, ma'am, only joking, only joking, declared Mr. Hoad. "I shouldn't think the lad gave the property a thought."
If he's the kind of man you say, he can't possibly care about property, said I, glibly, talking of what I could not understand. Father smiled, but smiled kindly, at me. Mr. Hoad laughed outright and made me furious.
I see you're up in all the party phrases, young lady, said he.
How did you come to know the young man, Hoad? asked father, without giving me time to reply. "You seem to have become friends in a very short time."
He came to me on a matter of business, repeated Hoad, evasively. "I fancy he's pretty hard up. Only got his captain's pay and a little private property, on his father's side, I suppose, and no doubt gives more than he can spare to these societies and things."
Father was silent. Probably he knew, what I had no notion of, that there was another branch to Mr. Hoad's profession besides that of a solicitor. Evidently he did not like to be reminded of the fact, for he knitted his brow and let his jaw fall, as he always did when annoyed.
I don't know how we came to talk politics, Hoad went on, "but we did, and I thought to myself, 'Why, here's just the man for Maliphant.' I never knew any one else go as far as you do; but this young fellow—why, he nearly beat you, 'pon my soul he did!"
Politics! echoed father, frowning more unmistakably than ever; "what have they got to do with the matter?"
Come, now, Maliphant, you're not going to keep that farce up forever, cried Mr. Hoad, in his most intimate and good-natured fashion. Oh, how I resented it when he would treat father as though he were on perfect equality with him! For my father's daughter I was intolerant; but then Mr. Hoad patronized, and patronizing was not necessary in order to be consistent.
What do you mean? asked father.
It was all very well for you to swear you would have nothing to do with us before, continued Mr. Hoad. "You did not think we should ever get hold of a man who looked at things as you do. But now we have. And if you really have the Radical cause at heart, as you say, you will be able to get him in for the county. He has got everything in his favor—good name, good presence, good-breeding. Those are the men to run your notions; not your measly, workaday fellows—they have no influence with the masses."
Father rose from the table. His eyebrows nearly met in their overhanging shagginess, and his eyes were small and brilliant.
I don't think I understand you, Hoad, said he. "We seem to be at cross-purposes. Do you mean to say that this young man wants to get into Parliament?"
Oh, no plans, no plans whatever, I should say, said Hoad. "He merely asked me who was going to contest the Tory seat; and when I asked him if he was a Radical, he aired a few sentiments which, as I tell you, are quite in your line. But I should think we might easily persuade him—he seemed so very eager. If you would back our man, Maliphant, we should be safe whoever he was, I do believe," added the solicitor, emphatically. "He has a really wonderful influence with the working-classes, that husband of yours, ma'am," he finished up, turning to mother.
Yes, said she, proudly; "Laban's a fine orator. When I heard him speak at the meeting the other day he fairly took my breath away, that he did."
Mother looked up at father with a pleased smile, for she loved to hear him praised, but for my own part I knew very well that he was in no mood for pleasant speeches.
I have always told you, Hoad, that it's no part of my scheme to go in for politics, said he, in a low voice, but very decisively. "I see no reason to change my mind."
Well, my dear fellow, but that's absurd, answered Mr. Hoad, still in that provokingly friendly fashion. "However do you expect to get what you want?"
Not through Parliament, anyhow, said father, laconically. "I never heard of any Act of Parliament that gave bread to the poor out of the waste of the rich. I'll wait to support Parliament till I see one of the law-makers there lift up a finger to right the poor miserable children who swarm and starve in the London streets, and whose little faces grow mean and sharp with the learning to cheat those who cheat them of their daily bread."
I can see him now, his lip trembling, his eye bright, his hands clinched. It was the cry with which he ended every discourse; this tender pity for the many children who must needs hunger while others waste, who must needs learn sin while others are shielded from even knowing that there is such a thing; those innocent sinners, outcasts from good, patient because hopeless, yet often enough incurably happy even in the very centre of evil—they were always in his heart. It was his most cherished hope in some way to succor them, by some means to bring the horror of their helplessness home to the hearts of those who had happy children of their own.
I held my face down that no one should see my tears, and I knew that father took out his big colored pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose very hard. Mr. Hoad, however, was not so easily affected.
Ah, you were right, Mrs. Maliphant, said he, in a loud, emphatic voice. "Your husband would make a very fine orator. All the more reason it's a sin and a shame he should hide his talents under a bushel. Now, don't you agree with me?"
Oh, Laban knows best what he has got to do, answered mother. "I think it's a great pity for women to mix themselves up in these matters. They have plenty to do attending to the practical affairs of life."
Mr. Hoad burst into a loud fit of laughter. "Ah, you've got a clever wife, Maliphant," cried he. "She's put her finger upon the weak joint in your armor! Yes, that's it, my boy. They're fine sentiments, but they aren't practical; they won't wash. But you would soon see, when you really got into the thing, that the best way to make the first step towards what you want is not to ask for the whole lot at once. The thin edge of the wedge—that's the art. And I should be inclined to think this young fellow was not wanting in tact."
Anyhow, answered father, quietly, "if Squire Broderick's nephew were minded to oppose the Tory candidate for this county, I should certainly not wish—as Squire Broderick's old friend—to support him in his venture."
Ah, you're very scrupulous, Maliphant, laughed Mr. Hoad. But then, seeing his mistake, he added, quickly, "Quite right, perfectly right of course, and I don't suppose the young man has any intention of doing anything of the kind."
No doubt it was rather that the wish was father to the thought in you, Hoad, answered father, frankly.
Ah, well, you may be as obstinate as you like, Maliphant, said the solicitor, trying to take father's good-tempered effort as a cue for jocoseness, "but we can get on very well without you if the young ladies will only give us their kind support. I hope you won't be such an old curmudgeon as to forbid that; and I hope," added he, turning to Joyce with that sugary smile of his, "that the young ladies will not withdraw their patronage if, after all, a less handsome man than Captain Forrester should be our Radical candidate."
Oh, thank you, said Joyce, blushing furiously, and looking up with distressed blue eyes; "indeed, we scarcely know Captain Forrester at all. We couldn't possibly be of any use to you."
Of course not, cried I. "Whoever were the candidate we should not canvass. We never canvass. We are not politicians."
I wonder that nobody smiled, but nobody did. Father was too busy with his thoughts, and perhaps Mr. Hoad was too much astonished. But as though to cover my priggishness, Joyce said, sweetly, when Mr. Hoad rose to go: "You won't forget the concert, will you? And, please, will you tell Miss Bessie that I shall be very glad to do what I can to help her with her bazaar work?"
He promised to remember both messages, and shook hands with her in a kind of lingering way, which I remember was a manner he always had towards a pretty girl. I thought mother took leave of him a little shortly. Father alone accompanied him out into the hall, and saw him into the smart little gig that came round from the stable to pick him up. I went to the pantry for the tray to clear the tea-things. When I came back again into the parlor Joyce had gone up-stairs, and father and mother were alone. I do not know why it was, but as soon as I came in I felt sure that the discussion with Hoad, eager as it had been at the time, was not occupying father's mind. I felt sure that mother had alluded to that more important matter hotly spoken of after the squire's visit. She was standing by the fire, and father held her hand in his. He asked me to bring a lamp into his study, and went out. I glanced at mother.
What does father want to go to work for so late? said I. "Why don't he sit and smoke his pipe as usual?"
Mother did not answer; her back was turned towards me, but there was something in its expression which made me feel sure that she was crying.
But he seems much better to-night, mother, I added, coming up behind her; "he was quite himself over that argument."
Yes, dear, yes; he can always wake up over those things, answered she, and sure enough there was a tremble in her voice, and every trace of the dignity that she had used towards me since the scene at the dinner-table had entirely disappeared.
Dear mother, why do you fret? said I, softly. "I'm sure there's no need."
No, no, of course there's no need, she repeated. "But, Margaret," added she, hurriedly, as though she were half ashamed of what she were saying, "if he could be brought to see that plan of the squire's in a better light, I'm sure it would be a good thing. I don't think his heart has ever been in farm-work, and I can't a-bear to see him working so hard now he is old. It would have been different, you see, if—if little John had lived."
I kissed her silently. The innocent slight to my own capacities, which had so occupied my mind an hour ago, passed unnoticed by me. And as father that night at family prayers rolled forth in his sonorous voice the beautiful language of the Psalms, the words, "He hath respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off," sank into my heart, and I thought that I should never again want to set myself up above my betters.