CHAPTER X.
MRS. PIPER’S DAY.
‘Iamnot surprised,’ said Miss Coyle, when she was informed that Beatrix Harefield had gone away, and there was to be no wedding. ‘That unhappy young woman’s guilty conscience has driven her away. A just punishment for Sir Kenrick. Of course he was going to marry her for her money. He knows, as well as I do, that she poisoned her father.’
The wedding was to have been strictly private—altogether different from the imposing ceremonial that had made Bella Scratchell the second Mrs. Piper. There were no guests to be put off at the last moment; there was no confusion anywhere; but there was a great deal of talk in Little Yafford when it became generally known, through Mrs. Pomfret, the pew-opener, that Sir Kenrick’s marriage was not to be.
There were various theories as to Beatrix Harefield’smotive for her extraordinary conduct. ‘Guilty conscience,’ said Miss Coyle and her party. ‘A prior attachment,’ said the more charitably inclined. ‘The girl must be wrong in her head,’ said the matter-of-fact matrons and middle-aged husbands, who could not understand the fits and starts of passion.
Perhaps in all the neighbourhood there was only one person, except the rival cousins themselves, who guessed the real cause of Miss Harefield’s flight. That person was Mrs. Piper. She knew how deeply Beatrix had loved Cyril, and it hardly surprised her that, at the last moment, she should refuse to consummate a loveless bond.
‘It might have been happier for me if I had run away,’ thought Bella, looking round her apple-green dressing-room, with all the gewgaws Mr. Piper’s generosity had heaped upon her, ‘yet any other life than this would be almost unbearable now.’
Time went on. Kenrick returned to India, leaving his honour in Mr. Dulcimer’s hands. Miss Harefield’s money was to be paid back, and without loss of time. Kenrick’s lawyers and Mr. Dulcimer were to arrange the matter between them somehow;Kenrick did not care how; but the thing must be done. On that point Sir Kenrick was firmly resolved.
The lawyers were as slow as most of their craft, and saw no reason why such a business as this should be precipitated. Mr. Dulcimer was the last man to hasten the movements of the lawyers. Happy in his world of shadows—now digging out the forgotten temples of Nineveh and Babylon—anon wandering with the lost tribes of Israel—he was apt to let the actual business of life slip out of his mind altogether. Mrs. Dulcimer had to remind him of everything, to tell him what bills he ought to pay, what people he ought to visit—all the details of his quiet life. Now Mrs. Dulcimer was not disposed to remind her husband of Kenrick’s desire to refund Miss Harefield’s fifty thousand pounds. She hoped that Kenrick might, by fair means or foul, be made to keep the money. He had been cruelly wronged. The least atonement that could be made to him was the liberation of his estate from its old burdens. Thus argued Mrs. Dulcimer, while Kenrick was busy fighting the Burmese.
Before the bleak winds of March had ceased toblow their keenest across the wide waste of withered heather and sandy barrenness, before the last of the daffodils had faded in Mrs. Pomfret’s neat garden, Cyril Culverhouse had come back to his old place at Little Yafford. He had done good work at Bridford, but the work had been too much for him. He could not be content to do half the work wanted, and leave the rest undone. Another man in his position would have been easy in his conscience after doing a quarter of the good that Cyril had done in that crowded lazar-house; but the knowledge of unconquerable evils, of cures only half wrought, weighed upon Cyril’s spirits like an ever-present nightmare. He could not sleep for the thought of the evils round about him—the loathsome miseries—the rampant vices—the selfishness of the rich—the godlessness of the poor. His health broke down under the burden. This time it was no fierce attack of fever—no brain sickness and delirium,—but his strength went down like the sand in a glass when the hour is nearly done—appetite failed—the power of sleep left him, and Dr. Bolling told him, in plainest terms, that if he wished to go on living he must leave Bridford.
Brought face to face with this solemn question of life or death, Cyril discovered that existence was not altogether worthless. He, who a little time ago had courted death, had now no desire to die. There were mysteries that he wanted to solve in this life, before he went to investigate the awful mystery beyond it. He wanted to stand face to face with Beatrix Harefield once more. He wanted to know whether it was indeed for love of him she had at the last moment jilted his cousin. He wanted to find some stronger proof of her innocence than the sudden conviction that had flashed into his mind when he looked into her steadfast eyes, and saw scorn of his weak doubts, and fondest love for himself, at war in her soul. While he lived there was always a chance, however remote, of his discovering the truth. While he lived there was always the possibility that Beatrix and he might meet. She was not his cousin’s wife. Fate had spared him that last bitterness. He could think of her without sin.
So he came back to Little Yafford, to his old rooms, his old friends, his old ways, and the old quietly busy life which seemed so easy after his vainendeavour to cleanse that Augean stable, an overcrowded manufacturing town.
‘I never feel as if I had too much work to do, so long as it is work that can be done,’ he said to the gentle Vicar. ‘To grapple with impossibilities and feel one’s self being daily worsted! That is the trial.’
There were two of his parishioners at Bridford whom Cyril could not be content to leave behind him. Those were Emmanuel Joyce and his mother. Emmanuel’s gratitude for the man who had risked his life to save him had done what argument and teaching might never have accomplished. Emmanuel was now a conscientious conforming Christian. He believed, as the leper believed, because he had been saved. The conduct of one Christian man opened his heart to receive the sublime mystery of a Redeemer who was more than man. He went to the altar without one lurking doubt. He made himself like a little child, and confessed that all the learning he had been so proud of was nothing, when weighed against his friend and teacher’s one act of Christian self-abnegation.
‘What was I that you should sacrifice yourselffor me?’ he said. ‘When man can be so generous I will no longer refuse to believe that God can suffer and die for sinners.’
‘I would have you believe upon better grounds than any friendly act of mine,’ said Cyril.
‘I have been face to face with death,’ answered Joyce. ‘Men learn strange things on their deathbeds. A death-bed repentance may be a poor thing, but a death-bed revelation may accomplish what a life of study could not do.’
And then Emmanuel, being by nature an enthusiast, talked wildly of the visions of his bed of pain—the cloud-curtain that had been lifted from the invisible world—the wonders that he had seen and heard in that mysterious border-land between life and death.
Cyril asked no more than a simple unquestioning belief.
It was with a thrill of joy that he saw Emmanuel kneeling before the altar rails, meekly lifting up his hands to receive the sacred symbols of Divine love. Could he leave his convert behind him in the fever-tainted alley, where the sweet summertide was everthe harbinger of death? No. He made up his mind that Emmanuel and his mother should go with him.
‘I am doubtful if you would be able to live at Little Yafford by shoe-mending,’ he said, when he discussed the question with Joyce and the widow, ‘but, if I could get the schoolmaster a better berth somewhere else, I am sure you could manage the school, with a little help from me at the beginning.’
‘Oh, sir, it would be the very thing for him,’ cried Mrs. Joyce. ‘His father began life as a parish schoolmaster, and he gave Emmanuel a good plain education. He was very severe with the poor lad, but that was partly in his anxiety to make him a thorough scholar. I don’t think there’s any one could beat my boy in arithmetic or Bible history. I’m sure he could teach. You’d like to teach, wouldn’t you, Emmanuel?’
‘John Milton was a schoolmaster,’ said Joyce, with his face all aglow. ‘I should like it of all things, if you think I could do it, Mr. Culverhouse.’
‘As for book learning,’ cried the widow, ‘I don’t think there’s one in a thousand—no, not even among the gentlefolks—has read as much as my Emmanuel.’
‘A wide range of reading would hardly be required, though every teacher must be the better for it,’ said Cyril, smiling. ‘But I know that Emmanuel has been well grounded in a plain English education, and that he now thinks rightly upon religious questions, so I fancy he might teach well in our parish school. Of course, the first thing to be done is to get a better place for the present man, who is a very good master.’
Cyril did not add, as he might have done, that the present schoolmaster’s merits were chiefly his work. He had taken infinite pains to teach the teacher as well as the pupils.
Before Cyril had been at Little Yafford a month he contrived to get the schoolmaster transferred to a more profitable situation forty miles away, and to get Emmanuel Joyce accepted as master upon probation. He was to do the work for a quarter without remuneration; and if he succeeded in pleasing the Vicar and churchwardens, was to be engaged at the end of that time at the handsome stipend of five-and-thirty pounds a year, with a cottage adjoining the school, and an allowance of coals and candles. This,in Yorkshire twenty years ago was to be passing rich.
It is hardly possible to conceive greater happiness than that of Mrs. Joyce and her son when they came to take possession of their cottage at Little Yafford. The rustic beauty of the village, the grandeur of the moor, the blue river winding capriciously through the valley, the dark pine branches gently swaying in the April breeze, the gardens bright with spring flowers, the silvery blackthorn in the hedges, the primroses and dog-violets, the scattered houses, all more or less picturesque of aspect, the sloping meadows, and orchards full of pear blossom—all these things, to people who had lived in one of the most loathsome corners of a manufacturing town, were as a revelation of an earthly paradise. Could heaven itself be sweeter or fairer? Could death ever enter here? Mrs. Joyce wondered. Was there any coffin-maker in that peaceful village? The thread of life, spun gently in this fair tranquillity, must surely run on for ever. What should snap it?
The four-roomed cottage seemed to the Joyces the most luxurious mansion. Four rooms! Whatcould they two possibly do with such a world of space? There would be room enough for ghosts in the unused chambers. And then Mrs. Joyce reminded her son how, before illness crippled his father, and brought poverty and trouble, they had lived in a four-roomed house just like this, with a scullery at the back of the kitchen, which might be accounted a fifth room, and a little yard where they were able to grow scarlet runners.
‘It is like old times, Emmanuel, when your father was earning his five-and-thirty shillings a week,’ said Mrs. Joyce, ‘and my house was the neatest and brightest in Saville’s Buildings.’
‘Wherever you lived, mother, the place would be neat and bright,’ said her son, admiringly.
They went out to explore the garden, enraptured with everything. It was quite an extensive garden, nearly a quarter of an acre. There were potatoes, and apple trees, and gooseberry and currant bushes, and roses in abundance. And there was room for scarlet runners, as Mrs. Joyce exclaimed delightedly.
The scarlet runner is the chief of vegetables in the estimation of the poor. That homely, usefulbean will grow anywhere, and is a thing of beauty wherever it grows.
‘We might even try some vegetable marrows, Emmanuel,’ said the widow. ‘They would look so pretty behind the rose bushes in summer-time.’
Emmanuel began his work next day, after a long conversation with Mr. Culverhouse overnight. Cyril was going to allow him ten shillings a week during his time of probation. It was very little, perhaps, but the frugal widow could manage to make it serve, and it was a great deal for Cyril to give out of his small means.
Before a week was ended everybody concerned was agreed that Emmanuel would do. The children liked their new master. There was something in his quiet manner which won both liking and respect. It was thought that he knew a great deal. He had taken the trouble to explain things to his pupils. He had enlarged upon the meagre history of England, in which the kings and heroes, politicians and Churchmen, were the merest shadows, and had told the boys of the greatness and power that had been in their native land since Alfredthe Saxon, warrior and poet, kindled the light of letters amongst a barbarous people. The more intelligent of the boys were delighted with him—even the stupid ones brightened under his tuition. He was so keenly interested in his work. The pupils could hardly find their lessons a burden, when the master took so much pleasure in them.
On Sunday he sat at the end of the church, with his pupils ranged before him on a row of benches beside the organ.
He kept them in wonderful order, and the occasional dropping of marbles and attacks of spasmodic coughing which had been apt to disturb the congregation under the rule of Emmanuel’s predecessor were no longer heard.
Cyril was delighted at the success of his scheme. The Vicar and churchwardens did not wait for the three months of probation to come to an end, before they expressed their satisfaction. At midsummer, Emmanuel Joyce was formally appointed schoolmaster, and his salary began from that time. The school-house was beautifully kept by Mrs. Joyce; the cottage and garden were a picture ofneatness, unsurpassed by any house or garden in Little Yafford. Cyril had the deep delight of knowing that he had made two people happy.
His own life went on very quietly all this time. He was certainly happier at Little Yafford than he ever could have been at Bridford. He had plenty to do, and his work was successful. He saw the church crowded on a Sunday evening, and knew that people came from far and wide to hear him preach. Had he been vain of his power as a preacher his vanity might have been fully satisfied. The week-day services were well attended. The people led better lives than when he had first come among them. There was less drunkenness, there were fewer brawls. Over the young people his influence was powerful. He gave a more intellectual tone to their lives. He had opened a reading-room, which was now a self-supporting and self-governing institution, but its committee always looked to him for advice in the choice of books.
He saw a good deal of the Dulcimers, in his occasional leisure hours, and with the kind and genialVicar he was always happy. The keenest pang that he felt in all his sad memories of the past was when he passed the Water House, and saw its darkened windows, and remembered that she who should have reigned there as a centre of light and happiness was a wanderer none knew where, her fair fame clouded, her youth blighted.
He called once in a way on Mrs. Piper of the Park; not often, for the thought of Bella had never been entirely agreeable to him after that conversation with Mrs. Dulcimer, in which he had, in a manner, found himself accused of having misled the young lady—or at any rate the young lady’s friends—as to his intentions. Now that she was married he had certainly no need to be uneasy on that score; but the recollection was an uncomfortable one, and he had a feeling about Mrs. Piper much too near dislike to be altogether Christian.
Bella, in all the fulness of her new powers, was not a person to be easily kept at a distance. She wanted captives at her chariot wheels, to make her triumph complete, and she was particularly anxious that Cyril Culverhouse—who, according to her ownidea, had scorned her in her poverty—should see and wonder at her splendour and elegance. She pestered him with invitations, all of which he found it impossible to decline without marked discourtesy, more especially as Mr. and Mrs. Piper were regular worshippers at the parish church, and liberal subscribers to all local charities.
Bella had taken it into her head to receive her friends upon one particular day of the week. It was quite a new thing in Little Yafford—except for such a person as Lady Jane Gowry, who was a privileged eccentric—and had rather a foreign flavour. At the beginning of this institution visitors were slow to arrive, and Bella found it rather a dull business to sit waiting for them, looking her loveliest, in a dress just arrived from Paris, but with nobody but Mr. Piper to admire her.
‘You look uncommon pretty, my dear,’ said that devoted husband, walking up and down his blue and gold drawing-room, as restlessly as a polar bear in his cage, ‘but I can’t say that I hold with this new style of visiting. If you was to ask people to a jolly good dinner they’d be sure to come; if you asked them to afriendly tea, I dare say they’d come, though they might think it low. But you send ’em your pasteboard with “Mrs. Piper, Thursdays, At home from four to six,” and I’ll lay they don’t know what to make of it.’
‘It’s quite the right thing, Mr. Piper. In London everybody of any importance does it. And here, where the distances people have to come are so much longer, it is still more convenient.’
‘Then I suppose you’re not of any importance, my dear,’ said the provoking Mr. Piper, ‘for you see nobody comes.’
‘How can you say so, Mr. Piper,’ cried Bella, reddening with anger at this obnoxious truth. ‘Miss Coyle came last Thursday.’
‘Yes, and the Thursday before that, and the Thursday before that again. That old lady will come anywhere for the sake of a dish of scandal and a cup of strong tea.’
‘And Mrs. Dulcimer comes.’
‘Yes, I believe she has been once,’ said Mr. Piper, and then, anxious to chase the thunder-cloud from his young wife’s stormy brow, he added hastily,‘Never mind, my lass. You’ll have a visitor this afternoon. I met Chumney this morning when I was in Great Yafford, and I asked him to drop in at five and pay his respects to you, and eat his chop with me at seven.’
‘What!’ cried Bella, ‘you have invited that vulgarian, your old cashier! Mr. Piper, I am ashamed of you. You have not a particle of self-respect.’
‘Why, what’s amiss with Chumney? The most faithful servant a man ever had. Why should I cast him off because I’ve got a pretty young wife? The first Mrs. P. never made any objection to Chumney. She never said a word about the difference in the butcher’s bill, let me bring him home as often as I might. Why should you object to him?’
‘I don’t object to him, as a faithful servant, but let him be kept in a servant’s place. Why bring him home here—a man who eats peas with his knife, and bites his bread, and is always talking of the time when you were in trade. Can’t you see that I am trying to raise the tone of your surroundings——’
‘The tone be blowed,’ muttered Mr. Piper.
‘That I want to get you recognised by the countypeople; that I want to force you into the best society in the neighbourhood. You must know this, and yet you bring Chumney to spoil everything. He was at our last dinner party.’
‘Well, he did no harm,’ growled Mr. Piper, waxing savage.
‘He was an eyesore. He was a blot upon the whole thing. Do you think I shall ever rise above your Wigzells and your Porkmans, while you weigh me down with Mr. Chumney?’
‘My Wigzells and my Porkmans are a deal pleasanter than the stuck-up lotyou’vecontrived to bring about me,’ retorted Mr. Piper, ‘A pack of shabby-genteel lawyers and parsons and half-pay captains, that eat up my substance and stare me out of countenance, as if I was waxwork—and never offer me bite nor sup in return. I despise such half-and-half gentry. I’d as soon put electro-plated goods on my table as set them down to it. And as for the county,’ cried Mr. Piper, snapping his fingers derisively, ‘the county won’t have cut, shuffle, or deal with us, and wouldn’t, no, not if you were to put your eyes out upon sticks.’
This horrible expression, which Mr. Piper sometimes used when he was in a passion, overcame Bella. She began to cry, and murmured meekly that she wouldn’t so much mind Mr. Chumney coming if it was not her ‘day.’
‘Your day!’ cried Mr. Piper, growing bold in his scorn. ‘Your day, be hanged! Nobody comes on your day. You might as well call it Queen Elizabeth’s day, or Nebuchadnezzar’s day. You’ve laid yourself out to know a parcel of arrogant people that don’t want to know you, and you’ve turned up your nose at people that give three hundred guineas for a pair of horses, and live in handsome houses of their own building, and brag about the money they have earned with their own industry, instead of bragging about their great-grandfathers. You want to keep company with the Tudors and the Plantagenets. Nothing less than that will satisfy you. But they won’t have you, and if you want any one to admire your fine clothes and eat your fine dinners you’d better be content with my friends.’
Mr. Chumney’s arrival brought the conversationto an abrupt finish. He was a long lean man, with iron-gray hair and whiskers, thick black eyebrows, and an intelligent expression which atoned in some measure for his gaunt ugliness.
He loved Ebenezer Piper with the affection of a faithful dog that has never known but one master, and with regard to all the rest of the world he was strictly misanthropic. He was not a scandalmonger like Miss Coyle. He generally thought the worst of people, but he always kept his thoughts to himself. He believed every business man, except Mr. Piper, to be an innate rogue, and on the verge of insolvency, but he gave no expression to his doubts. He was not a lively companion, so far as conversation goes, but he was an accomplished listener; he had the art of looking ineffably wise, and of appearing to be able to give an immense deal of information, if he had not preferred to withhold it. He was like the great Lord Thurlow. Nobody ever could have been so wise as Samuel Chumney looked.
From the hour she became acquainted with Mr. Chumney Bella had hated him. She did notknow why. It might have been his eyebrows, it might have been his vulgarity. For some undiscovered reason he was more obnoxious to her than any creature she had ever met. She thought him clever, and she had a lurking idea that he was able to read her as easily as he could read a book. She fancied that he knew everything that was passing in her mind—that he was perfectly familiar with her motive for marrying his old employer—that he had weighed and measured her till he was master of her most secret thoughts. She lectured her husband for his cultivation of Chumney; but she was wonderfully polite to Mr. Chumney himself. She feared him too much to be discourteous to him.