"Well?" Mr. Sam lifted his eyes from his writing-table.
"Miss Marvin has arrived, sir, and is waiting in the morning-parlour," Mr. Benny announced.
"Let her wait a moment. I suppose she takes the line that we've definitely engaged her?"
"I don't know, sir, that she takes what you might call a line; but there's no doubt she believes herself engaged. She talks very frankly, and is altogether a nice, pleasant-spoken young person."
"You didn't happen to find out what my father wrote to her?"
"Of her own accord she offered to show me his letter."
"Well, and what did it say?"
"I didn't read it, sir."
"You didn't read it?" Mr. Sam repeated in slow astonishment.
"No, sir. I felt it wasn't fair to her," said Mr. Benny.
His employer regarded him for a moment with sourly meditative eyes.
"You had best show her in at once," he commanded sharply.
He reseated himself, and did not rise when Hester entered, but slewed his chair around, nodded gloomily in response to her slight bow, and, tapping his knees with a paper-knife, treated her to a long, deliberate stare.
"Take a seat, please."
Hester obeyed with a quiet 'Thank you.'
"You have come, I believe, in answer to a letter of my father's? Might I ask you what he said, exactly?"
Hester's hand went towards her pocket, but paused. She had taken an instant aversion from this man.
"My father," he went on, noting her hesitation, "has since died suddenly, as you know. His affairs are in some confusion, of course." This was untrue, but Mr. Sam had no consciousness of telling a lie. The phrase was commonly used of dead men's affairs. "In this matter of your engagement, for instance, I am moving in the dark. I can find no record of it among his papers."
"I answered him, sir; but my letter arrived, it seems, after his death. Mr. Benny replied to it."
"Yes, to be sure, I saw your letter, but it did not tell me how far the negotiations had gone."
"You are one of the Managers, sir?"
"Well, not precisely; but you will find that makes little difference. I am to be placed on the Board as my father's successor."
"The offer was quite definite," said Hester calmly. "I would show you the letter, but some parts of it are private."
"Now why in the world was she ready to show it to Benny?" he asked himself. Aloud he said, "You were a friend, then, of my father's? Is it for him, may I ask, that you wear mourning?"
"No, sir; for my own father. Mr. Rosewarne and he were friends—oh, for many years. I asked about it once, when I was quite a girl, and why Mr. Rosewarne came to visit us once every year as he did. My father told me that it had begun in a quarrel, when they were young men; it may have been when my father served in the army, in the barracks at Warwick. I don't remember that he said so, yet somehow I have always had an idea that the quarrel went back to that time; but he said that they had hated one another, and made friends after a long time, and that your father had the most to forgive, being in the wrong. I remember those words, because they sounded so queer to me and I could not understand them. When I was eighteen, I went out to get my living, and did not see Mr. Rosewarne for many years until the other day, though he came regularly."
"The other day?" Mr. Sam stared at her blankly.
"On the 5th. Mr. Rosewarne always paid his visit on the 5th of June."
"I don't understand you in the least. A minute ago you told me that your father was dead!"
"Yes; he died almost two months ago. But Mr. Rosewarne wrote and asked leave to come, since it was for the last time."
"Your mother entertained him?"
Hester shook her head. "I have no mother. He came as my guest, and that evening—for he never spent more than one night with us—we talked for a long while. He knew, of course, that I was a schoolmistress; and he began to mock at some things in which I believe very deeply. He did it to try me, perhaps. I don't know whether he came meaning to try me, or seeing me alone in the world, and making ready to leave the old home, he suddenly took this notion into his head. At any rate, I did not guess for a moment; and when he spoke scorn of girls' teaching, I answered him—too hotly, I thought at the time; but it seems that he forgave me." She rose. "I have told you all this, sir, because you say you are in the dark. I am here because Mr. Rosewarne offered me the post. But you seem disposed to deny this; and so in fairness I must consult a friend, if I can find one, or a lawyer perhaps, before showing you the letter."
"Wait a moment, please." Hester's story had held a light as it were, though but a faint one, to an unexplored passage in old Rosewarne's life; and to Mr. Sam every unexplored corner in that life was now to be suspected. "You jump to conclusions, Miss Marvin. I merely meant to say that as my father's executor I have to use reasonable caution. Might I inquire your age? Excuse me, I know that ladies—"
"I am twenty-five," she struck in sharply.
"Married, or unmarried?"
"Unmarried."
"You will excuse me for saying that I am surprised. A young person of your attractiveness—"
"Have you any more questions, sir?"
"Eh?—ah, to be sure! Qualifications?"
Hester briefly enumerated these. He did not appear to be listening, but sat eyeing her abstractedly, while he rattled the point of the paper-knife between his Upper and lower teeth.
"Yes, yes—quite satisfactory. Religious views?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Religious views?"
"If you really think that a necessary question, I was baptised and brought up in the Church of England."
"Not a bigoted Churchwoman, I hope?"
"Not bigoted, I certainly hope," Hester answered demurely.
"I feel sure of it," said Mr. Sam, rising gallantly. "In the matter of so-called apostolic succession, for instance—"
But here there came a tap at the door, and Elizabeth Jane, the housemaid, announced that Parson Endicott had called. "Show him in," ordered Mr. Sam promptly, and at the same time—having suddenly made up his mind—he flung Hester an insufferably confidential glance, which seemed to say, "Never mindhim; you and I are in the same boat."
Parson Endicott suffered from shortness of sight and a high parsonic manner. He paused on the threshold to wipe his eyeglasses, adjusted them on his nose, and gazing around the room, cleared his throat as if about to address a congregation.
"Good-day, parson." Mr. Sam saluted him amiably, still without rising. "You've come in the nick of time. I have just been chatting with Miss Marvin here—our new schoolmistress."
Hester divined that, for some reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but to accept it.
"Indeed?—er—yes, to be sure, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Marvin," said Parson Endicott mellifluously, with a glance which seemed to distinguish Hester kindly from the ordinary furniture of the room. This was his habitual way of showing cordial goodwill to his social inferiors, and the poor man had lived to the age of fifty-six without guessing that they invariably saw through it. Having bestowed this glance of kindness upon Hester, he turned to Mr. Sam with another, which plainly asked how far (as one person of importance conferring with another) he might take it that the creature before them was a satisfactory creature.
"You're in luck's way," said Mr. Sam, answering this look. "She's a Churchwoman."
"My dear Mr. Rosewarne,"—Parson Endicott pressed the finger-tips of both hands together, holding them in front of his stomach—"I am gratified— deeply gratified; but you must not suppose for one moment—h'm—whatever my faults, I take some credit to myself for broad-mindedness. A Churchwoman, eh?"—he beamed on Hester—"and in other respects, I hope, satisfactory?"
"Quite." Mr. Sam turned to Hester. "Would you mind running over your qualifications again? To tell the truth, I've forgotten 'em."
Hester, with an acute sense of shame, again rehearsed the list.
"Quite so," said Parson Endicott, who had obviously not been listening. He turned to Mr. Sam with inquiry in his eye. "I think, perhaps—if Miss Marvin—"
"I daresay she won't mind stepping into the next room," said Mr. Sam, turning his back on her, and calmly reseating himself. The parson glanced at Hester with polite inquiry, and, as she bowed, stepped to open the door for her. With head bent to hide the flush on her cheeks, she passed out into the great parlour.
Now the great parlour overlooked the garden through three tall windows, of which Susannah had drawn down the blinds half-way and opened the lower sashes, so that the room seemed to Hester deliciously fresh and cool. It was filled, too, with the fragrance of a jarful of peonies, set accurately in the middle of the long bare table; and she stood for a moment—her sight yet misty with indignant, wounded pride—staring at the reflection of their crimson blooms in the polished mahogany.
These two men were intolerable: and yet they only translated into meaner terms the opinion which everyone in this strange country seemed to have formed of her. She thought of the young sailor, of Nuncey, of Mr. Benny. All these were simple souls, and patently willing to believe the best of a fellow-creature; yet each in a different way had treated her with suspicion, as though she were here to seek her own interests, and with a selfish disregard of others'. The young sailor had openly and hotly accused her of it. Nuncey and her father, though kind, and even delicately eager to make her welcome, as clearly held some disapproval in reserve—were puzzled somehow to account for her. And she was guiltless. She had come in response to a plain invitation, thinking only of good work to be done. No; what she found intolerable was not these two men, but the whole situation.
She turned with a start. Something had flown in through the open midmost window, and fallen with a thud on the floor a few yards from her feet.
She stepped across and stooped to examine it. It was the upper half of a tattered and somewhat grimy rag doll.
To account for this apparition we must cross the garden, to the summer-house, where Myra and Clem had hidden themselves away from the heat with a book, and, for the twentieth time perhaps, were lost in the adventures of Jack the Tinker and the Giant Blunderbuss. As a rule Myra would read a portion of the story, and the pair then fell to acting it over together. In this way Clem had slain, in the course of his young life, many scores of giants, wizards, dragons, and other enemies of mankind, his sister the while keeping watch over his blindness, and calling to him when and where to deliver the deadly stroke. But to-day the heat disinclined them for these dramatic exertions, and they sat quiet, even on reaching the point at which Jack the Tinker, his friend Tom, the good-natured giant, and Tom's children, young Tom and Jane, fare forth with slings for their famous hunting.
"'They soon knocked down as many kids, hares, and rabbits as they desired. They caught some colts, placed the children on two of them and the game on the others, and home they went.'"
Myra glanced up at Clem, for this was a passage which ever called to him like a trumpet. But to-day Clem spread out both hands, protesting.
"'On their return, whilst waiting for supper, Jack wandered around the castle, and was struck by seeing a window which he had not before observed. Jack was resolved to discover the room to which this window belonged; so he very carefully noticed its position and then threw his hammer in through it, that he might be certain of the spot when he found his tool inside the castle. The next day, after dinner.'"—
"Wait a moment, Clem dear!"
"Oh, but wemust!" Clem had jumped to his feet.
"It's too dreadfully hot. Very well, then; but wait for the end.
"'The next day, after dinner, when Tom was having his snooze, Jack took Tom's wife Jane with him, and they began a search for the hammer near the spot where Jack supposed the window should be; but they saw no signs of one in any part of the walls. They discovered, however, a strangely fashioned worm-eaten oak hanging-press. They carefully examined this, but found nothing. At last Jack, striking the back of it with his fist, was convinced from the sound that the wall behind it was hollow. He and Jane went steadily to work, and with some exertion they moved the press aside and disclosed a stone door. They opened this, and there was Jack's hammer lying amidst a pile of bones, evidently the relics of some of old Blunderbuss's wives, whom he had imprisoned in the wall and left to perish there!'"
Myra shut the book with a slam, and, groping beneath the seat of the summer-house, found and handed to Clem the torso of an old rag doll, which, because it might be thrown against a window without breaking the glass, served as their wonted substitute for the Tinker's hammer.
"O-oh!" cried Myra, clutching at Clem and drawing him back from the sudden apparition in the window; and so for a dozen seconds she and Hester stared at one another.
"Good-morning!"
"Good-morning!" Myra hesitated a moment. "Though I don't know who you are. Oh, but yes I do! You're the new teacher, and it's no use your pretending."
"Am I pretending?" asked Hester.
"Yes; but I know what to do." The child nodded her head defiantly and made an elaborate sign of the cross, first over Clem and then upon the front of her own bodice. "That's against witches," she announced.
"Please don't take me for a witch!" It was absurd, but really Hester began to wonder where these misunderstandings would end. The look, too, on the boy's face puzzled her.
"I always wondered," said Myra, unmoved, "if the new teacher would turn out a witch. Witches always start by making themselves into young and beautiful ladies; that's their trick. Whoever heard of a teacher being a young and beautiful lady?"
"Well," answered Hester, between a sigh and a smile, "a compliment's a compliment, however it comes. I am the witch, then; and who may you be?— Hansel and Grethel, I suppose? I don't think, though, that Hansel really believes me a witch, by the way he's looking at me."
"He isn't looking at you at all. Come away, Clem!" She led the boy away by the hand, which he gave to her obediently, but left him when half-way across the turf and came swiftly back. "He wasn't looking at you. He's blind."
"Ah, poor child! I am sorry—please tell me your name, and believe that I am sorry."
"If you were sorry, you'd go away, and not come teaching here." Myra delivered this Parthian shaft over her shoulder as she walked off. At the same moment Hester heard a door open in the room behind her, and Parson Endicott came forth from the counting-house.
"Ah—er—Miss Marvin "—He paused with a lift of his eyebrows at the sight of the rag doll in Hester's hand. She, on her part, felt a sudden hysterical desire to laugh wildly.
"It—it isn't mine!" she managed to say in a faint voice and with a catch in her throat.
"I had not supposed so," Parson Endicott answered gravely. "I came to tell you, Miss Marvin, that Mr. Samuel Rosewarne and I have agreed to recognise your claim. By so doing we shall be piously observing his father's wishes, and—er—I anticipate no opposition from my fellow-members on the Board. The school—you have already paid it a visit, perhaps? No? It will, I venture to think, exceed your expectations. The school is furnished and ready. I suggest—if the other Managers consent—that we open it formally on Tuesday next, with a short religious service, consecrating, so to speak, your future labours. Yours is a wonderful sphere of usefulness, Miss Marvin; and may I say what pleasure it gives me to learn that you are a Churchwoman. A regular communicant, I hope?"
Hester was silent. She disliked this man, and saw no reason to be hurried into making any confession to him.
"It is a point upon which I am accustomed to lay great stress. In these days, with schismatics on all hands to contend against, it behoves all members of the true Church to show a bold and united front." He leaned his head on one side and looked at her interrogatively. "Do you play the harmonium?" he asked.
But at this point Mr. Sam thrust his head out through the counting-house doorway, and the parson coughed discreetly, as much as to say that the answer might wait.
"Well, Miss Marvin," said Mr. Sam jocosely, "we've fixed it up for you between us!"
Hester thanked them both briefly, and wished them good-day.
"She dresses respectably," said the parson, when the two were left alone. "I detect a certain earnestness in her, though I cannot say as yet how far it is based on genuine religious principles."
"She is more comely than I expected," said Mr. Sam.
At the ferry Hester found Nuncey awaiting her with a boat-load of the Benny children.
"I reckoned you'd be here just-about-now," Nuncey hailed her. "Come'st along for a bathe wi' the children! I've a-brought a bathin' suit for 'ee."
"But I can't swim," Hester answered in alarm, and added, as she stepped into the boat, "Nuncey, don't laugh at me, but until to-day I had never seen the sea in my life."
Nuncey looked her up and down quizzically. "And I've never seen Lunnon! Never mind, my dear; 'tisn' too late to begin. There's none of this crew knows how to swim but me and Tenny here," she pointed out a boy of eleven or twelve. "We'll just row out to harbour's mouth; there's a cove where we can put the littlest ones to paddle. And after that I'll larn 'ee how to strike out and use your legs, if you've a mind to. It'll do 'ee good to kick a bit, I'll wage, after a dose of Mister Sam. Well, and how did you like 'en?"
"I didn't like him at all." Hester almost broke down. "Please, Nuncey, be good to me! It—it seems as everyone was banded against me to-day, to think badly of me."
"Be good to 'ee? Why, to be sure I will! Sit 'ee down and unlace your boots, while me and Tenny pulls. Care killed the cat—'cos why? He wouldn't wash it off in salt water."
They rowed down past the quays and out beyond the ancient fort at the harbour's mouth. On the opposite shore a reef of rock ran out, and on the ridge stood a white wooden cross, "put up," so Nuncey informed her, "because Pontius Pilate landed here one time." Beyond this ridge they found a shingly beach secluded from the town, warmed by the full rays of the westering sun. There they undressed, one and all, and for half an hour were completely happy. To be sure, Hester's happiness contained a fair admixture of fright when Nuncey took her hand and led her out till the water rose more than waist-high about her.
"Now trust to me; lean forward, and see if you can't lift your feet off the ground," said Nuncey, slipping a hand under her breast. Hester tried her hardest to be brave, and although no swimming was accomplished that day, the trial ended in peals of laughter. She splashed ashore at length, gleeful, refreshed in body and mind, and resolved to make herself as good a swimmer as Nuncey, who swam like a duck.
It often happens, when a number of persons meet together for some purpose in itself unselfish, that there prevails in the assembly a spirit of its own, recognisably good, surprising even the pettiest with a sudden glow in their hearts, and a sudden revelation that the world is a cheerfuller place than in their daily lives they take it for. This cheerful congregational spirit I take to flow from a far deeper source than the emotion, for example, which a great preacher commands in his audience. It may be—indeed, usually is—accompanied by very poor oratory. The occasion may be trivial as you please; that it be unselfish will suffice to unlock the goodness within men, who, if often worse than they believe, and usually than they make believe, are always better than they know.
This spirit prevailed at the school opening, and because of it Hester felt happy and confident during the little function, and ever afterwards remembered it with pleasure. For the moment Church and Dissent seemed to forget their meannesses and jealousies. The morning sun shone without; the breeze played through the open windows with a thousand hedgerow scents; the two score of children ranged by their desks, fresh-faced and in their cleanest clothes, suggested thoughts innocent and deep as the gospel story; and if Parson Endicott was long-winded, and Mr. Sam spoke tunelessly and accompanied his performance on the bones, so to speak—that is, by pulling at his knuckles till the joints cracked—consolation soon followed. For third and last came the turn of the Inspector, who had halted on his progress through the county to attend a ceremony of the kind in which he took delight. He had lately been transferred from the Charity Commission to this new work, and it fell to him at a time when the selfish ambitions die down, and in their place, if a man's heart be sound, there springs up a fatherly tenderness for the young, with a passionate desire to help them. Hester could not guess that this grave and courteous gentleman, grey-haired, clean shaven, scholarly in his accent, neat even to primness in his dress, spoke with a vision before him of an England to be made happy by making its children happy, that the roots of the few simple thoughts he uttered were watered by ideal springs—
"I will not cease from mental fight,Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,Till we have built JerusalemIn England's green and pleasant land."
"I will not cease from mental fight,Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,Till we have built JerusalemIn England's green and pleasant land."
"I will not cease from mental fight,Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,Till we have built JerusalemIn England's green and pleasant land."
Simple as the thoughts were, and directly spoken, the children gazed at him with set faces, not appearing to kindle with any understanding; and yet, after the manner of children, they were secreting a seed here and there, to germinate in their dark little minds later on, as in due time Hester discovered. She herself, seated at the harmonium, felt a lift of the heart and mist gathering over her sight at the close of his quiet peroration, and a tear fell as she stretched out her hands over the opening chords of the 'Old Hundredth.' All sang it with a will, and Parson Endicott with an unction he usually reserved for 'The Church's One Foundation.'
With a brief prayer and the benediction the ceremony ended, and while the elders filed out the Inspector walked over for a few words with Hester.
"Ever since I learnt your name, Miss Marvin—excuse me, it is not a common one—I have been wanting to ask you a question. I used to have an old friend—Jeremy Marvin—who lived at Warwick, and found for me some scores of old books in his time. I was wondering—"
"He was my father, sir."
"Indeed? Then, please, you must let me shake hands with his daughter. Yes, yes,"—with a glance down at her black skirt—"I heard of his death, and with a real sense of bereavement."
"I have addressed and posted many a parcel to you, sir, in the days before I left home to earn my living."
"And you weren't going to tell me that? You left me to find out—yes, yes; 'formidable Inspector,' and that sort of thing, eh? I'm not an ogre, though. Now this little discovery has just put the finishing touch to a delightful morning!"
Hester, encouraged by his smile, laughed merrily, and so did he; less at the spoken words than because of the good gladness brimming their hearts.
"But tell me," he went on, becoming serious again, "if a child, out of shyness, hid from you a small secret of that sort, you would be sorry—eh? And you would rightly be sorry, because by missing that little of his entire trust you had by so much fallen short of being a perfect teacher."
"And two of these children," thought Hester, with a glance at Clem and Myra, "solemnly believe I am a witch!"
As the Inspector went down the hill towards the ferry, he overtook another and older acquaintance in an old college friend. This was Sir George Dinham of Troy, who had attended the ceremony uninvited, and greatly to the awe of everyone assembled—the Inspector and Hester alone excepted. Indeed, his presence had bidden fair at the start to upset the proceedings; for Parson Endicott and Mr. Sam had both approached him hat in hand, and begged him, not without servility, to preside. This proposal he had declined with his habitual shy, melancholy smile, and shrunk away to a back row of the audience. In his great house over Troy he lived a recluse: a scholar, a childless man, the last of his race, rarely seen by the townsfolk, of whom two-thirds at least were his tenants. He had heard of the Inspector's coming, and some ray of remembered affection had enticed him forth from his shell, to listen. Now, at the sound of the Inspector's footstep on the road behind him, he turned and waited, leaning on his stick. The two men had not met since a Commemoration Ball when young Dinham led his friend proudly up to a beautiful girl, his bride that was to be. She died a bare six weeks later; and from that day her lover had buried himself with his woe.
"George!"
"How d'ye do, Jack? I had to turn out to listen, you see—ecce quam sempiterna vox juventutis!You have improved on your old debating style, having, as I gather, found belief."
The Inspector flushed. "Ah, you gathered that?"
"Yes, I haven't lost the knack of understanding those I once understood. Not that it needed anything of the sort. Man, you were admirably straight—and gentle, too—you that used to be intolerant. You mustn't think, though, that I'm convinced; I can't afford to be."
"You mean—?"
"I mean that, if you are right, I ought to be a sun worshipper, and sit daily at dawn on top of my tower yonder, warming my hands against the glow of children's faces, trooping to school. Whereas the little beggars run wild and rob my orchards, and I don't remember at this moment my parish schoolmaster's name."
The Inspector bethought him of the broken bridge in his friend's life—the bridge by which men cross over from self into love of a new generation— and was silent.
"But look here," Sir George went on, "the fun was your preaching the doctrine in that temple. You didn't know the man who built it. He died a week or two ago; a man of character, I tell you, and a big fellow, too, in his way."
"I have heard of this Rosewarne. All I know of him is that he's to be thanked for the best-fitted school, for its size, in all Cornwall. I'm not talking of expense merely; he used thought, down to the details. When you begin to study these things, you recognise thought, down to the raising or lowering of a desk, or the screws in a cupboard. You don't get your fittings right by givingcarte blancheto a wholesale firm."
"Of course you don't. But what, think you, had the man in view? I tell you, Jack, you are a fossil beside him. You talk of making good citizens, quite in the old Hellenic style. Oh yes, I recognised the incurable Aristotle in your exhortation, though youdidaddress it to two score of rustic British children. But, my dear fellow, you are a philosopher in a barbarian's court, and your barbarian has been reading his Darwin. Where you see a troop of little angels—"
"Non Angeli sed Angli," the Inspector put in, with a smile.
"Where you behold a vision, then, of little English citizens growing up to serve the State, he saw a horde of little struggle-for-lifers climbing on each other's backs; and these fellows—that son of his, and the parson— will follow his line by instinct. They don't reason; but Darwin and the rest have flung them on the scent of selfishness, and they have a rare nose for self. Struggle-for-life or struggle-for-creed, the scent is the same, and they're hot upon it."
"Think of these last fifty years of noble reform. Is England going back upon herself—upon the spirit, for instance, that raised Italy, freed the slave, and cared for the factory child?"
"To be sure she will. She has found a creed to vindicate the human brute, and the next generation—mark my words—will be predatory. Within twenty years we shall be told that it is inevitable the weak should suffer to enrich the strong; we shall accept the assurance, and our poets will hymn it passionately."
"If that day should ever come, we can still die fighting it. But I trust to Knowledge to do her own work. You remember that sentence in theLaws, 'Many a victory has been and will be suicidal to the victors, but education is never suicidal'? Nor will you persuade me easily that the new mistress up yonder,"—the Inspector nodded back at the school building—"is going to train her children to be little beasts of prey."
"The girl with the Madonna face? No; you're right there. But the Managers will find a short way with her; she'll go."
"She turns out to be the daughter of an old friend of mine, Marvin of Warwick, the second-hand bookseller."
"Marvin? Jeremiah Marvin? Why, I must have received his catalogues by the score."
"Jeremy," his friend corrected him. "He was christened Jeremiah, to be sure, and told me once it was the handiest name on earth, and could be made to express anything, 'from the lugubrious, sir, to the rollicking. In my young days, sir,'—for he had been a soldier in his time—'I was Corporal Jerry. Corporal Jerry Marvin! How's that for a name? Jeremiah I hold in reserve against the blows of destiny or promotion to a better world. But Jeremy, sir, as I think you'll allow, is the only wear for a second-hand bookseller.' A whimsical fellow!"
"He is dead, then?"
"Yes, he died a few weeks since; and poorly-off, I'm afraid. He had a habit of reading the books he vended. Look here, George,"—the Inspector halted in the middle of the roadway—"I want you to do me a favour, or rather, to promise one."
"What is it?"
"I want you to promise that, if these fellows get rid of Miss Marvin, you will see that she suffers no harsh treatment from them. I can find her another post, no doubt; but there may be an interval in which you can help."
"Very well," Sir George answered, after a pause. "I can manage that.
But they'll eject her, you may bet."
When the company had departed Hester arranged her small troop at their desks—boys and girls and 'infants'—and made them a speech. It was a very short speech, asking for their affection, and somehow she found herself addressing it to Myra, whose dark eyes rested on her with a stare of unyielding suspicion. On hearing that the two children were to attend the Board School, Aunt Purchase had broken out into vehement protest, the exact purport of which Myra did not comprehend. But she gathered that a wrong of some kind was being done to her and (this was more important) to Clem, and she connected it with the loss of their liberty. Until this moment she had known no schooling. Her grandmother in stray hours had taught her the alphabet and some simple reading, and the rest of her knowledge she had picked up for herself. She well remembered the last of these stray hours. It fell on a midsummer evening, three years before, when she and Clem—then a child of four—had spent a long day riding to and fro in the hay waggons. Now Mrs. Rosewarne for the last few years of her life, and indeed ever since Myra could remember, had been a cripple, confined to the house or to her small garden, save only when she entered an ancient covered vehicle (called 'the Car') and was jogged into Liskeard to visit her dressmaker, or over to Damelioc to attend one of Lady Killiow's famous rose fêtes. It was the hour of sunset, then, and in the shadow of the hedge old Pleasant, the waggon-horse, having Clem on his back, stood tethered, released from his work, contentedly cropping the rank grass between the clusters of meadow-sweet, and whisking his tail to brush off the flies. The horse-flies had been pestilent all day, and Myra was weaving a frontlet of green hazel twigs to slip under Pleasant's headstall, when she happened to turn and caught sight of her grandmother standing by the upper gate, leaning on her ivory-headed staff, and shading her eyes against the level sun. No one ever knew how the old lady had found strength to walk the distance from the house—for walked it she had. It may have been that some sudden fright impelled her; some unreasoning panic for the children's safety. Old Rosewarne, seated on horseback and watching the rick-makers in the far corner, caught sight of her, cantered across to the gate, dismounted there, and led her home on his arm; and the children had followed. So far as Myra could remember, nothing came of this apparition—nothing except that she found herself, a little later, seated in her grandmother's dressing-room and reading aloud; and this must have happened soon after they reached home, for while she read she heard the fowls settling themselves to roost in the hen-house beneath the open window. Three weeks later Mrs. Rosewarne was dead—had faded out like a shadow; and since then the children had run wild, no one constraining them to tasks.
She sat with eyes fixed sullenly on Hester, and fingers ready at any moment to make the sign of the cross. To the other children she paid no heed; they were merely so many victims entrapped, ready to be changed into birds and put into cages, as inJorinda and Jorindel. "Why was this woman separating the girls from the boys? She should not take away Clem. Let her try!" Hester had too much tact. Having marshalled the others, she set a pen and copy-book before Myra, and bending over Clem, asked him in the gentlest voice to sit and wait; she would come back to him in a moment (she promised) and with a pretty game for him to play.
"Don't you listen to a single word she says," Myra whispered; but Clem had already taken his seat.
Hester had sent for a book of letters in raised type for the blind boy. Before setting him down to this, however, she wished to try the suppleness and accuracy of his touch with some simple reed-plaiting.
The reeds lay within the cupboard across the room. She went to fetch them, and at this moment the schoolroom door opened behind her.
She heard the lift of the latch, and turned with a smile. But the smile faded almost at once as she recognised her visitor. It was Tom Trevarthen, and he entered with a grin and a defiant, jaunty swagger which did not at all become him.
In an instant she scented danger, and felt her cheeks paling; but she lifted her head none the less, looking him straight in the eyes.
"I beg your pardon. Are you in search of someone?"
"Seems I'm too late for the speechifying," said the young sailor, avoiding her gaze, and winking at two or three elder boys on the back benches. "Well, never mind; must do a little speechifyin' of my own, I suppose. By your leave, miss," he added, seating himself on the end of a form and fanning himself with his seaman's cap, which he had duly doffed on entering.
"I think," said Hester quietly, and prayed that he might not hear the tremble in her voice, "I think you have come on purpose to annoy, and that you do not like the business."
"It's this way, miss. I've no grudge at all againstyou, except to wonder how such a gentle-spoken young lady can have the heart to come here ruinin' an old 'ooman that never done you a ha'p'orth of harm in her life." He was looking at her firmly now, with a rising colour in his tan cheeks, and Hester's heart sank as she noted his growing confidence. "But I've told 'ee that a'ready," he said, and turned to the boys again. "What I wonder at more isyou, Billy Sweet—an'you, Dave Polseath— an'you, Rekkub Johns—that'll be growin' up for men in a year or two. Seems to me there's some spirit gone out o' this here parish since I used to be larrupped for minchin'. Seems to me a passel o' boys in my day would have had summat to say afore they sat here quiet, helpin' to steal the bread out of an old 'ooman's mouth, an' runnin' to heel for a furriner."
The boys glanced at one another and grinned, then at the intruder, lastly at Hester. Her look held them, and some habit of discipline learnt from the old woman they were being invited to champion. One or two began shuffling in their seats.
But it was Myra who led the rebellion. She stepped to Tom's side at once, and cried she, pointing a finger at Hester, "She's a witch! Look at her—she's a witch! I know now why Aunt Hannah called it a burning shame. She's robbing Mother Butson, and she's a witch and ought to be burnt. Come along, Clem!"
Hester, turning from the child between pain and disgust, intent only on holding the bigger boys in check while she could, did not note that Clem made no movement to obey his sister.
"Well done, Miss Myra!—though you needn't talk vindictive. There's no need to harmher. Now look here, boys! Mother Butson gives you a holiday, and sent me up with the message. What do 'ee say to it?"
"Stop!" Hester lifted a hand against the now certain mutiny. "Your name is Trevarthen, I believe?"
"Tom Trevarthen, miss."
"Then, Tom Trevarthen, you are a poor coward. Now do your worst and go your way. You have heard the truth."
"'Tidn' best a man said that to me," answered Tom, with a lowering brow.
"A man?" she replied, with a short laugh of contempt which in her own ears sounded like a sob. "There were men here just now; but you waited till they were gone!"
"No, miss; I did not, you'll excuse me. I only knew the school was to open to-day. I came ashore half an hour ago, and walked up here across the fields." He stood for a second or two meditatively twisting his round cap between his hands. "We'll play fair, though," he said, and faced round on the benches. "Sorry to disappoint 'ee, boys, but you must do without your holiday, after all. This here is a man's job, as Miss Marvin says, and 'tis for men to settle it. Only,"—he turned upon Hester again— "you must name your man quick. My ship sails early in the week; let alone that there's cruel wrong being done, and the sooner 'tis righted the better."
Hester's hand went up to her throat. Was this extraordinary youth actually proposing a wager of battle? His eyes rested on hers seriously; his demeanour had become entirely courteous.
"Ah," she gasped, "but cannot you see that the mischief is done! You behave shamefully, and now you talk childishly. You have made these children disloyal, and what hold can I have on them except through their loyalty? You have thrown me back at the start—I cannot bear to think how far—and you talk as if some foolish violence could mend this for me! Please—please go away! I have no patience to argue with you."
"Yes, go away!" broke in a shrill treble voice. It was Clem's. The child had risen from his bench and stood up, gripping the desk in front and trembling.
"Clem dear, you don't understand—" began Myra.
"Yes, I do understand!" For the first time in his life his will clashed with hers. "Tom Trevarthen is wrong, and ought to go away."
"She's a nasty, deceitful witch!"
"She's not a witch!" The child's eyes turned towards Hester, as if seeking to behold her and be assured. "You're not a witch, are you?" he asked; and at the question Hester's tears, so long held back, brimmed over.
Before she could answer him the door opened, and Mr. Sam stood in the entry with Mrs. Purchase close behind his shoulder, in a sky-blue and orange bonnet.
"Eh? Hullo! what's all this?" demanded Mr. Sam, staring around the schoolroom; and Mrs. Purchase, bustling in and mopping her face, paused too to stare.
For a moment no one spoke. Mr. Sam's eyes passed over Tom Trevarthen in slow, indignant wonder, and rested on Hester's flushed cheeks and tear-reddened lids.
"Why, whatever on earth is Tom Trevarthen doin' here?" cried Mrs. Purchase.
"I've a-come here, ma'am," spoke up Tom, kindling, "to say a word against a cruel shame; for shame it is, to take the food away from a poor old 'ooman's mouth!"
"Meanin' Mother Butson?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"An' your way to set things right is to come here and browbeat a poor girl before the children till her eyes be pink as garden daisies! Go'st 'way home, thou sorry fool! I'm ashamed of 'ee!"
"As for that, ma'am, I did wrong," Tom admitted sullenly, "and I beg her pardon for't. But it don't alter the hurt to Mother Butson."
"You're mistaken, my friend," broke in Mr. Sam, in his rasping voice. "To be sure you haven't closed Mother Butson's school for her, because 'tis closed already. Twopence a week is the lowest she could ever charge, to earn a living, and I leave to judge how many sensible folks will be paying twopence a week for her ignorance when they can get sound teaching up here for a penny. But a worse thing you've done for her. She lodges with your mother, I believe? Very well; you can go home and tell your mother to get rid of her lodger. Eh, what are you staring at?"
The young man had fallen back, and stared from face to face, incredulous. There was a bewildered horror in his eyes, and it cut Hester to the heart. Her own eyes sank as he challenged them.
"No, Sam—no!" Mrs. Purchase interposed. "Don't 'ee go to punish the lad that way. He've made a mistake; but he's a well-meanin' lad for all, and I'll wage he'll tell you he's sorry."
"Well-meaning, is it, to come here bullying a young lady? Sorry, is he? I promise he'll be sorrier before I've done. Answer me, sir. Did Mrs. Butson know of your visit here to-day?"
"I told her I was coming," Tom answered dully.
"That settles it. Heaven is my witness," said Mr. Sam, with sudden unction, "I was willing to let the old woman wind up her affairs in peace. But mutiny I don't stand, nor molesting. You go home, sir, to your mother, and tell her my words. I give her till Saturday—"
The words ended in a squeal as Tom, with a sharp intake of breath like a sob, sprang and gripped him by the throat, bearing him back and overturning Hester's desk with a crash. One or two of the girls began to scream. The boys scrambled on top of their forms, craning, round-eyed with excitement. The little ones stood up with white faces, shrinking with terror, as Hester ran and placed herself between them and the struggle.
"You cur! You miserable—dirty—cur!" panted Tom, shaking Mr. Sam to and fro. "Leave me alone, missus!"—for Mrs. Purchase was attempting to clutch him by the collar. "Leave me deal with him, I tell you! Stand clear, there!"
With a sharp thrust he loosened his hold, and Mr. Sam went flying backwards, missed his footing, and fell, his head striking the corner of a form with a thud.
"Get up! Up on your legs, and have it out like a man!"
But Mr. Sam lay where he had fallen in a heap, with the blood oozing from an ugly cut across the left temple.
"Get up?" vociferated Mrs. Purchase. "Lucky for you if he ever gets up! You've gone nigh to killing 'en, mean it or no. Out of my sight, you hot-headed young fool! Be off to the ship, pack up your kit, and run. 'Tis a jailin' matter, this; and now you've done for yourself as well as your mother."
For a moment the young man stared at her, not seeming to comprehend. "Eh, missus?" he muttered. "Be you agen' me too?"
Mrs. Purchase positively laughed, and a weird cackling sound it made in Hester's ears as she bent to support one of the smaller girls, who had fainted. "Agen' you? Take an' look around on your mornin's work! You've struck down my brother's son, Tom Trevarthen—isn't that enough? Go an' pack your kit; I'll have no jail-birds aboard my ship."
He turned and went. On the way his foot encountered Mr. Sam's tall silk hat, and he kicked it viciously through the doorway before him.