Part 1, Chapter XXI.
At Kilby Farm.
“Well—well—well—well,” said Mrs Portlock, folding her apron full of pleats, as Luke Ross sat talking to her for a while, and ended by telling her his intentions for the future. “Barrister, eh? Well, of all the trades I ever heard tell of—but can barristers make a living?”
“Yes, and a good one, too,” said Luke, laughing.
“Then you are not going to take to the school after all?”
“No, I have quite altered my plans, and I hope all will turn out for the best.”
“Ah, I hope so, I’m sure,” said Mrs Portlock, smoothing down her black silk dress, and then arranging a necklace of oblong amber beads, which she wore on market-days, one which bore a striking resemblance to a string of bilious beetles. “But what does your father say?”
“I have not told him my plans yet, for they have only been made since the governor’s meeting.”
“Well, Luke Ross,” said Mrs Portlock, in a resigned fashion, “I’m sure I don’t wish you any harm.”
“I’m sure you do not,” he said, laughing.
“Indeed I do not,” she continued: “but, for my part, I think you had a great deal better have kept to your father’s trade. Such a business as that is not to be picked up every day. But there, I suppose you know best.”
“Of course he does,” said the Churchwarden, who heard the latter part of her sentence. “You let Luke Ross alone for that. His head’s screwed on the right way.”
“Don’t be so foolish, Joseph,” cried Mrs Portlock. “Do talk sense. Has Mr Cyril Mallow gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone back home,” said the farmer.
“Why didn’t you ask him to stay and have a bit of dinner with us?”
“Because I didn’t want him, mother. He only walked home with me to ask about a bit o’ rabbit shooting.”
“But still, it would have been civil to ask him to stop. It’s market-day, and there’s the hare you shot on Friday, and a bit o’ sirloin.”
“Tchah! he wouldn’t have cared to stay. He dines late and fashionable-like at home.”
“I’ll be bound to say he’d have been very glad to stop,” said Mrs Portlock, bridling. “Fashionable, indeed! He got no fashionable dinners when he was working his way home at sea, nor yet when he was out in the bush.”
“Where he had much better have stayed—eh, Luke?” said the farmer. “He does no good but idle about here.”
“Idle, indeed!” cried Mrs Portlock, taking up the cudgels, rather indignantly, on the young man’s behalf. “It might be idling if it was Luke Ross here, but Mr Cyril Mallow’s a gentleman and a gentleman’s son, and he has a right to work when he likes and leave off when he likes.”
“Oh! has he?” said the Churchwarden, smiling at their visitor, as much as to say, ‘Now, just you listen.’ “Well, I’m not a learned man, like Luke Ross here, who has got his Bible at his tongue’s end.”
“As every man who calls himself a good man ought to,” said Mrs Portlock, tartly. “Sage!”
“Yes, aunt,” came from the next room, where the speaker could hear every word.
“Tell them to take the dinner in directly. And, for my part, Joseph, I think if you’d read your Bible a little more o’ Sundays you’d be a better man.”
“You wouldn’t like me so well if I was a better man, old lady,” he laughed; “but, as I was going to say, when I used to read of such things I got it into my head that the first specimen of a man as was made was a working man, to till the ground, and not idle and loaf about, and eat the fruit and shoot the rabbits in the Garden of Eden.”
“For shame, father, to talk in that way!” cried the lady. “And I wonder that you speak so disrespectfully of Mr Cyril Mallow. For my part, I think he’s a very nice, gentlemanly young fellow, and it’s too bad for people to be always sneering about him as they are.”
“And, for my part,” said the Churchwarden, good-humouredly, “I’m a bit of a Radical, and don’t believe in taking off your hat to a man because he happens to have a few thousand pounds more than one’s got oneself. If he’s a wonderful clever chap, with more brains than I’ve got, why, I do look up to him; but I’m not going down on my knees to a set of folks who yawn through their lives, doing nothing, except telling you by word and look that they are a better class of people than you are; and as for Master Cyril Mallow, he’s a well-built, strapping young fellow, who can talk well, and shoot well, but if he had happened to be my sod, instead of old Mallow’s, I’d have licked him into a different shape to what he’s in now, ay, and his brother too, or I’d have known the reason why. Dinner in, my lass? That’s well. Come along, Luke. Tchah! nonsense! you shall stay. You can tell the old man your reasons better when you’ve got a bit of roast beef under your waistcoat, and some of my ale. Why, Sage, lass, what ails you? Your face is as white as a bit o’ dough.”
“Oh, nothing, uncle, nothing,” she replied, forcing a smile, as she hurried to a tall press to get out a napkin for their visitor, and soon after they were seated at the hospitable meal, which was more bounteous on a market-day, the nearness of the farm to the town making it always probable that the Churchwarden might bring up a friend.
But Luke Ross was the only stranger on that occasion, and he sat opposite Sage, whose countenance, though less troubled than when she had overheard her uncle’s words, was lacking in its ordinary composure.
Luke saw this, and attributed it to their conversation, and the interest she took in his affairs. Her aunt saw it, too, and, with the idea of comforting her niece, kept turning the conversation to the Rector and his family, but not to do any good, for out of mere contrariety, and with a twinkle in his eye as he glanced at Luke, the Churchwarden set to and roundly abused the Rector and his sons for their ways.
“Come, Luke,” he said, “you are not making half a meal. I suppose by and by, sir, you will be as fashionable as Master Cyril Mallow, and won’t eat a bit at dinner-time without calling it lunch. Ha, ha, ha!”
“There, do have done, Joseph,” cried Mrs Portlock. “What have you got to laugh at now?”
“I was thinking of the horse-whipping I gave the young dogs—ay, it’s twelve or fourteen years ago now—that night I caught them in the orchard.”
“There, do let bygones be bygones, Joseph,” cried Mrs Portlock, sharply. “Boys will be boys. I’ll be bound to say you stole apples yourself when you were young.”
“Ay, that I did, and got thrashed for it, too. But I must say that Cyril Mallow don’t bear any malice for what I did.”
A regular duel was fought over that meal between the heads, Sage hardly raising her eyes, but looking more and more troubled as the Mallow attack and defence went on, while Luke Ross was so intent upon his own thoughts that he hardly heard a word.
It was with quite a feeling of relief, then, that Sage heard her uncle say—
“I like parson, not as a parson, but as a man: for the way in which he has tended that poor sick woman ’s an honour to him; but, as for his way of bringing up children, why, if I had carried on my farm in such a fashion I should have been in the Court o’ Bankruptcy years ago. Best thing Mallow could do would be to put the fellow with me to learn farming, and me have the right to do what I liked with him, and five-and-twenty to two? Is it, my dear? I didn’t know it was so late—and make us truly thankful, Amen.”
There was a general scrooping of chairs after this condensed grace, Sage hurrying off to put on her hat and jacket, and her aunt running after her to say, in a mysterious whispered confidence—
“Don’t you take any notice of uncle, my dear. He don’t mean half he says.”
“You’ll walk back with Sage, of course, Luke?” said the Churchwarden, quietly, as he drew his chair to the fire for his after-dinner pipe. “Well, my boy, I think you’re right about what you settled; but I suppose I had something to do with your altering your mind?”
“Yes, sir, I must own to that.”
“Well,” said the Churchwarden, thoughtfully, “I hope it’s for the best; I meant it to be. You’ll go back to London, then, soon?”
“Almost directly, sir, to begin working hard.”
“That’s right, my boy. I believe in work. Come over here whenever you are down at Lawford. I shall be very glad to see you, my lad, very.”
Then, pulling out his watch, he consulted it, and went on chatting for a few minutes as if to keep Luke from speaking about the subject near to his heart, but at last he broke in—“I need hardly say, sir, that I go meaning to work up to the point you named, and—”
“Yes, yes, yes, my lad; let that rest. Let’s see how things go. You’re both young,” he cried, pulling out his big silver watch once more. “I say, mother,” he shouted, “tell Sage that Luke’s waiting to walk back with her. She’ll be late for school.”
Then like a chill to Luke Ross came back Mrs Portlock’s voice—
“Sage? Oh, she went out by the back way ten minutes ago.”