CHAPTER III.MR. BERESFORD AND PHIL.
Scarcely any two men could be more unlike each other than the two who walked slowly through the Hetherton grounds, commenting on the neglected, ruinous condition everywhere apparent, and the vast amount of labor necessary to restore the park and garden to anything like beauty or order.
Mr. Beresford, as the elder, will naturally sit first for his photograph. In age he was probably not more than thirty-five, though he looked and appeared somewhat older than that. He had received a first-class education at Yale, and when he entered the law he devoted himself to it with an energy and assiduity which, had he lived in a larger town than Merrivale, would have placed himat the head of his profession. There was no half way work with him. Whatever he did, he did with all his might, and his services were much sought after by people in the towns around Merrivale, so that he was always occupied and busy.
In stature he was medium size for a man, but finely formed, with a head set erect and square upon his shoulders, and crowned with a profusion of dark brown hair, which curled slightly around his forehead. His complexion was dark, and his eyes those round, bright, restless eyes which make you uncomfortable when fixed upon you, because they seem to be reading your inmost secrets and weighing all your thoughts and motives.
Belonging to one of the oldest and best families in the country, he was proud of his blood and proud of his name—foolishly proud, too, in many things, for had he been Anna Ferguson, that sign in her mother’s window would have annoyed him even more then it did the young lady herself, while the memory of the beer and the gingerbread once sold by her grandmother, and the cellar walls and chimneys built by her grandfather, would have driven him nearly frantic. Indeed, it was a wonder to him how Phil Rossiter could endure the Fergusons, whom he considered wholly vulgar and second-class. And yet, Arthur Beresford was a man of sterling qualities, and one whom everybody respected and liked, though not as they liked Phil Rossiter—good-natured, easy-going, indolent Phil, who, though always ready to help whenever his services were needed, had never been known to apply himself for any length of time to a single useful thing.
Business he had none; employment none; but for this useless life his mother was, perhaps, more in fault than he, for she was virtually the moving power of the family, or, as the villagers termed it, “the man of the house.”
Always peculiar, Col. Rossiter had grown more andmore peculiar and absent-minded with every year of his married life, and as a natural consequence his wife, whose character was stronger than his, had developed into a self-reliant, independent woman, who managed her husband and his affairs admirably, and for the most part let her children manage themselves. Especially was this the case with Phil, who was her idol, and whom she rather encouraged in his idleness. There was money enough, she reasoned, for the colonel was one of those fortunate men in whose hands everything turns to gold, and there was no need for Phil to apply himself to business for several years at least. By and by when he came to marry, it might be well enough to have some profession, but at present she liked him near her ready to do her bidding, and no queen ever received more homage, or a mother more love, than did Mrs. Rossiter from her son. For her sake he would do anything, dare anything, or endure anything, even to the Fergusons, and that was saying a great deal, for they were not a family whose society he could enjoy. But his mother was a Ferguson, and he was bound to stand by them, and if the vulgarity of Mrs. Lydia, his Uncle Tom’s wife, or the silly affectation of his cousin Anna, ever made him shudder, he never gave a sign, but bore up bravely and proudly, secure in his own position as a Rossiter and a gentleman.
To his grandmother he was always attentive and kind. She was not his own blood relation, he reasoned, and she was old, and so he allowed her to pet and fondle him to such an extent as sometimes to fill him with disgust. Only once had he rebelled, and that when a boy of ten. “Granny’s baby,” she sometimes called him, and this sobriquet had been adopted by his schoolfellows, who made his life so great a burden that at last on one occasion, when she said to him as she patted his young, fresh face, “Yes, he is granny’s baby,” he revolted openly, and turning fiercely upon her, exclaimed:
“You just hush up, old woman, I’ve had enough of that. I ain’t your baby. I’m ten years old, and wear roundabouts, and I’ll be darned if I’ll be called baby any longer.”
She never called him so again, or kissed him either, until the night three years later when he was going away to school next day. And then she did not offer it herself. She said good-by to him at his father’s house, and went back to her own home, where she had lived alone since her husband’s death, and which seemed lonelier to her than ever, because on the morrow Phil would be gone. Phil was her idol, her pride, and his daily visits had made much of the sunshine of her life, and as she undressed herself for bed, and then went to wind the tall clock in the kitchen corner, the tears rolled down her face and dropped upon the floor. She was a little deaf, and standing with her back to the street door she neither saw nor heard anything until she felt a pair of arms close tightly around her neck, and Phil’s lips were pressed against hers.
“For the dear Lord’s sake how you scart me. What on airth brought you here!” she exclaimed, turning toward him with her nightcap border flying back, and her tallow candle in her hand.
Phil was half crying, too, as he replied:
“I could not go away without kissing you once more, and having you kiss me. You haven’t done so since that time I got so plaguy mad and called you names. I’ve cried about it fifty times, I’ll bet. I want you to forgive it, and kiss me, too. I’m awful sorry granny.”
The pet name for her in his babyhood, and which he had long since discarded, dropped from his lips naturally now, and putting down her candle the old lady took him in her arms and nearly strangled him as she sobbed:
“Forgive you, Phil? Of course I will, with all myheart, and kiss you, too. Any woman, young or old, would like to kiss a mouth like yours.”
We do not believe our readers will like Philip Rossiter the less for this little incident, or because even in his young manhood he had a mouth which any woman, young or old, might like to kiss. A handsome mouth it was, with full red lips which always seemed just ready to break into a merry, saucy laugh, but which you felt intuitively had never been polluted by an oath, or vulgar word, or low insinuation against any one. In thought, and word, and deed, he was as pure as any girl, and held all women in the utmost respect, because his mother was a woman.
At the time our story opens Phil was twenty-five years old, though from the delicacy of his complexion he looked younger, and might easily have passed for twenty-one. Tall, willowy, and graceful in figure, he was, like all the Ferguson race, blue-eyed and fair, with a profusion of soft brown hair, which curled just enough to save it from stiffness. People called him handsome, with his frank, open, boyish face and winning smile but he hated himself for it, as a handsome man was an abomination, he thought, and he had times of hating himself generally, because of that natural distaste to application of any kind, which kept him from being what he felt sure he was capable of being if he could but rouse himself to action. Had he been a woman, he would have made a capital dressmaker, for he knew all the details of a lady’s dress, from the arrangement of her hair to the fit of her boot, and could detect at a glance any incongruity in color, and style, and make-up. To his sisters he was invaluable as a critic, and no article which he condemned was ever worn again. It was strange, considering how unlike to each other they were, that Phil and Mr. Beresford should be such friends, but each understood perfectly the peculiarities of the other, and each sought the other’s society continually. WithMr. Beresford the fact that Phil was a Rossiter covered a multitude of sins, while more democratic Phil cared but little who Mr. Beresford’s family were, but liked the lawyer for himself, and spent a great deal of time in his office, where he once actually begun the study of law, but gave it up as soon as a party of his college friends asked him to join an excursion to the Adirondacks, and he never resumed it again.