Part 15 (1/2)
cried May, with a burst of laughter. ”As far as I follow you, you wish to lower my dress allowance by act of parliament. I sincerely trust you will fail. By the way you may set your mind at rest about my dressmaker; her bill is paid, and all my other outstanding accounts too. With your rather eccentric views about property, it will annoy you considerably to hear that I have had a fortune left me; so that I may not be in debt again for some considerable time.”
”To her that hath,” said Paul, with a glance at the elegantly clad figure. ”It really seems to me as if you could not want it, and I need it so much.”
”You!” echoed May. ”For real inconsistency commend me to yourself!”
”I scarcely require it for my personal wants, but money is sorely needed to carry out my wishes for this village. As landlord, I feel myself responsible for many things that cannot be set right without it.”
”But--but--mother always told me that Major Lessing was rich; and you are his heir.”
”I can only a.s.sure you that I am poor,” said Paul, simply. ”Now, I hope, I have proved satisfactorily to you that circ.u.mstances, tastes, and opinions differing so greatly between us, make anything like friends.h.i.+p impossible. Whenever we come across each other we quarrel; we can't help it.”
May flushed to the roots of her hair. ”Thank you,” she said haughtily.
”It is kind of you to put it so clearly. I simply tried to put things on a kinder footing, as we are your tenants and your neighbours, but I see I have made a mistake. It surprises me to find you so painfully prejudiced. Good-bye. I've kept you too long from your one friend.”
She opened the gate and pa.s.sed on her way with never a look behind; but Paul followed with long, rapid strides.
”Miss Webster! stay one moment, please! I believe I've been behaving like a perfect brute,” he said hurriedly. ”At first I thought you were simply playing a game with me; but, without knowing it, we drifted into earnestness. If any word of mine has seriously vexed you, I apologize and retract.”
”You could even believe it possible that I might feel a ray of interest in some of the big subjects which absorb your life,” said May.
”To have made a man acknowledge himself a prig once in an afternoon is enough,” retorted Paul. ”I will not do it again. You know the worst of me: that I have an uncertain temper, which betrays me occasionally into blurting out unpleasant truths: that I have absolutely no small talk. I shall be at best but a rough-and-ready friend; but if in your kindness you still care to cultivate Sally and me, we will gratefully accept the cultivation, and be the better for it. There's my hand on it,” and Paul stretched out his hand. And May gave him her small gloved one for an instant with a very sunny smile.
”And you will come to dinner soon and not feel you need talk down to us.”
”When all the smart people have gone,” Paul said smiling.
”Smart people are your pet aversion, apparently. Is that why you would not come lately?”
”Yes; if you wish to hear the truth,” Paul admitted as he turned back to the rectory.
”And I have made a pretty big fool of myself this afternoon,” was his mental comment as he let the gate clang behind him. ”I first lost my temper, and then let a woman twist me round her finger simply because she is beautiful.”
Needless to relate he made no confession of his folly to Sally when he got home that night. He resolved simply to change his tactics about the people at the Court, and preserve safe silence about his altered mind.
The following afternoon he stopped at the forge to speak to the blacksmith about some repairs that were to be set on foot on his premises. Allison stood at the open door of the smithy with his head turned in the opposite direction from the squire, looking after the rector, who had just left him, with something of the sullen satisfaction with which a bulldog might regard a vanquished foe.
Indignation still simmered when Paul accosted him. One glance at the purple face showed the squire that, for some reason as yet unknown, the blacksmith was in a towering pa.s.sion.
”Confound his impudence!” he said, throwing a dark look after the rector. ”I've let him know once for all that I'll have no more of it!
I'm not answerable to him, nor any man, for what I says and does. His business, indeed, to come and tell me, if I choose to have a bit of fun with a young fellow in a public-house. What does it hurt him to be drunk for once in his life? A lesson I call it! just a bit of a lesson as will teach him that his head ain't so strong as mine, nor likely to be till he gets seasoned a bit. I give it him straight enough, and no humbug about it. 'Look here, sir,' I says, 'you go your way, and leave me to go mine. I don't deny as you've been kind to my old mother, and she'd fret sore if she didn't see you. Psalm-singing and such comes natural-like to most women; but for my part I want nothing better than to be letted alone.'”
Allison came to a stop; breath rather than words had failed him. Paul, who had been an unwilling listener to this tirade against the rector, took advantage of the pause to turn the subject.
”Afraid I can't attend to you this afternoon sir,” said Allison, when Paul stated the object of his call. ”Reason why, my mates are out for a holiday, and this mare here is just brought in to be shod. I said at first I would not do her to-day; she's a savage brute to tackle alone.
I don't let any one touch her but myself when the men are here. It's wonderful now what a difference there is in the tempers of horses; but I ain't come across the one I couldn't master in the forge. They feel I ain't afeared on 'em.”
Boasting of his prowess in his art was fast restoring Allison's temper, which, though violent, was not enduring.
”Very well; I'll come again to-morrow,” said Paul.
”And you'll thank missy for lookin' up my mother as she does,” said Allison, referring to Sally's visits to the old lady, his mother.
”She's one as it does you good to see, so pleasant and free-spoken.