Читать книгу Margaret Maliphant - Alice Vansittart Strettel Carr - Страница 9

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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.