Part 35 (2/2)
”I forgive you with all my heart,” cried the Mayor, interpreting the look aright. ”And now try and compose yourself and sleep while I talk with your grandpapa below.”
”I don't see how it is possible that I can leave her,” said Waife, when the two men had adjourned to the sitting-room. ”I am sure,” quoth the Mayor, seriously, ”that it is the best thing for her: her pulse has much nervous excitability; she wants a complete rest; she ought not to move about with you on any account. But come: though I must not know, it seems, who and what you are, Mr. Chapman, I don't think you will run off with my cow; and if you like to stay at the bailiff's cottage for a week or two with your grandchild, you shall be left in peace, and asked no questions. I will own to you a weakness of mine: I value myself on being seldom or never taken in. I don't think I could forgive the man who did take me in. But taken in I certainly shall be, if, despite all your mystery, you are not as honest a fellow as ever stood upon shoe-leather!
So come to the cottage.”
Waife was very much affected by this confiding kindness; but he shook his head despondently, and that same abject, almost cringing humility of mien and manner which had pained at times Lionel and Vance crept over the whole man, so that he seemed to cower and shrink as a Pariah before a Brahmin. ”No, sir; thank you most humbly. No, sir; that must not be. I must work for my daily bread; if what a poor vagabond like me may do can be called work. I have made it a rule for years not to force myself to the hearth and home of any kind man, who, not knowing my past, has a right to suspect me. Where I lodge, I pay as a lodger; or whatever favour shown me spares my purse, I try to return in some useful humble way. Why, sir, how could I make free and easy with another man's board and roof-tree for days or weeks together, when I would not even come to your hearthstone for a cup of tea?” The Mayor remembered, and was startled. Waife hurried on. ”But for my poor child I have no such scruples,--no shame, no false pride. I take what you offer her gratefully,--gratefully. Ah, sir, she is not in her right place with me; but there's no use kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks. Where was I? Oh! well, I tell you what we will do, sir. I will take her to the cottage in a day or two,--as soon as she is well enough to go,--and spend the day with her, and deceive her, sir! yes, deceive, cheat her, sir! I am a cheat, a player, and she'll think I'm going to stay with her; and at night, when she's asleep, I'll creep off, I and the other dog. But I'll leave a letter for her: it will soothe her, and she'll be patient and wait. I will come back again to see her in a week, and once every week, till she's well again.”
”And what will you do?”
”I don't know; but,” said the actor, forcing a laugh, ”I 'm not a man likely to starve. Oh, never fear, sir.”
So the Mayor went away, and strolled across the fields to his bailiff's cottage, to prepare for the guest it would receive. ”It is all very well that the poor man should be away for some days,” thought Mr. Hartopp.
”Before he comes again, I shall have hit on some plan to serve him; and I can learn more about him from the child in his absence, and see what he is really fit for. There's a schoolmaster wanted in Morley's village.
Old Morley wrote to me to recommend him one. Good salary,--pretty house. But it would be wrong to set over young children--recommend to a respectable proprietor and his parson--a man whom I know nothing about.
Impossible! that will not do. If there was any place of light service which did not require trust or responsibility,--but there is no such place in Great Britain. Suppose I were to set him up in some easy way of business,--a little shop, eh? I don't know. What would Williams say?
If, indeed, I were taken in! if the man I am thus credulously trusting turned out a rogue,”--the Mayor paused and actually s.h.i.+vered at that thought,--”why then, I should be fallen indeed. My wife would not let me have half-a-crown in my pockets; and I could, not walk a hundred yards but Williams would be at my heels to protect me from being stolen by gypsies. Taken in by him! No, impossible! But if it turn out as I suspect,--that, contrary to vulgar prudence, I am divining a really great and good man in difficulties, aha, what a triumph I shall then gain over them all! How Williams will revere me!” The good man laughed aloud at that thought, and walked on with a prouder step.
CHAPTER, XXIII.
A pretty trifle in its way, no doubt, is the love between youth and youth,--gay varieties of the bauble spread the counter of the great toy-shop; but thou, courteous dame Nature, raise thine arm to yon shelf, somewhat out of every-day reach, and bring me down that obsolete, neglected, unconsidered thing, the love between age and childhood.
The next day Sophy was better; the day after, improvement was more visible; and on the third day Waife paid his bill, and conducted her to the rural abode to which, credulous at last of his promises to share it with her for a time, he enticed her fated steps. It was little more than a mile beyond the suburbs of the town; and, though the walk tired her, she concealed fatigue, and would not suffer him to carry her. The cottage now smiled out before them,--thatched gable roof, with fancy barge board; half Swiss, half what is called Elizabethan; all the fences and sheds round it, as only your rich traders, condescending to turn farmers, construct and maintain,--sheds and fences, trim and neat, as if models in waxwork. The breezy air came fresh from the new haystacks; from the woodbine round the porch; from the breath of the lazy kine, as they stood knee-deep in the pool, that, belted with weeds and broad-leaved water-lilies, lay calm and gleaming amidst level pastures.
Involuntarily they arrested their steps, to gaze on the cheerful landscape and inhale the balmy air. Meanwhile the Mayor came out from the cottage porch, his wife leaning on his arm, and two of his younger children bounding on before, with joyous faces, giving chase to a gaudy b.u.t.terfly which they had started from the woodbine.
Mrs. Hartopp had conceived a lively curiosity to see and judge for herself of the objects of her liege lord's benevolent interest. She shared, of course, the anxiety which formed the standing excitement of all those who lived but for one G.o.dlike purpose, that of preserving Josiah Hartopp from being taken in. But whenever the Mayor specially wished to secure his wife's countenance to any pet project of his own, and convince her either that he was not taken in, or that to be discreetly taken in is in this world a very popular and sure mode of getting up, he never failed to attain his end. That man was the cunningest creature! As full of wiles and stratagems in order to get his own way--in benevolent objects--as men who set up to be clever are for selfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made good woman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been a shrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poor lady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutely cowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for in Hartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid oppression, wholly irresistible. It would have buried a t.i.taness under a Pelion of moral feather-beds. Ma.s.s upon ma.s.s of downy influence descended upon you, seemingly yielding as it fell, enveloping, overbearing, stifling you; not presenting a single hard point of contact; giving in as you pushed against it; supplying itself seductively round you, softer and softer, heavier and heavier,--till, I a.s.sure you, ma'am, no matter how high your natural wifely spirit, you would have had it smothered out of you, your last rebellious murmur dying languidly away under the descending fleeces.
”So kind in you to come with me, Mary,” said Hartopp. ”I could not have been happy without your approval: look at the child; something about her like Mary Anne, and Mary Anne is the picture of you!”
Waife advanced, uncovering; the two children, having lost trace of the b.u.t.terfly, had run up towards Sophy. But her shy look made themselves shy,--shyness is so contagious, and they stood a little aloof, gazing at her. Sir Isaac stalked direct to the Mayor, sniffed at him, and wagged his tail.
Mrs. Hartopp now bent over Sophy, and acknowledging that the face was singularly pretty, glanced graciously towards the husband, and said, ”I see the likeness!” then to Sophy, ”I fear you are tired, my dear: you must not overfatigue yourself; and you must take milk fresh from the cow every morning.” And now the bailiff's wife came briskly out, a tidy, fresh-coloured, kind-faced woman, fond of children; the more so because she had none of her own.
So they entered the farm-yard, Mrs. Hartopp being the chief talker; and she, having pointed out to Sophy the cows and the turkeys, the hen-coops, and the great China gander, led her by the one hand--while Sophy's other hand clung firmly to Waife's'--across the little garden, with its patent bee-hives, into the house, took off her bonnet, and kissed her. ”Very like Mary Anne!--Mary Anne, dear.” One of the two children owning that name approached,--snub-nosed, black-eyed, with cheeks like peonies. ”This little girl, my Mary Anne, was as pale as you,--over-study; and now, my dear child, you must try and steal a little of her colour. Don't you think my Mary Anne is like her papa, Mr.
Chapman?”
”Like me!” exclaimed the Mayor, whispering Waife, ”image of her mother!
the same intellectual look!”
Said the artful actor, ”Indeed, ma'am, the young lady has her father's mouth and eyebrows, but that acute, sensible expression is yours,--quite yours. Sir Isaac, make a bow to the young lady, and then, sir, go through the sword exercise!”
The dog, put upon his tricks, delighted the children; and the poor actor, though his heart lay in his breast like lead, did his best to repay benevolence by mirth. Finally, much pleased, Mrs. Hartopp took her husband's arm to depart. The children, on being separated from Sir Isaac, began to cry. The Mayor interrupted his wife,--who, if left to herself, would have scolded them into worse crying,--told Mary Anne that he relied on her strong intellect to console her brother Tom; observed to Tom that it was not like his manly nature to set an example of weeping to his sister; and contrived thus to flatter their tears away in a trice, and sent them forward in a race to the turnstile.
<script>