CHAPTER IV.—IN THE OAK PARLOUR.
And so, it had been only a bit of Uncle Dick’s kindly forethought and common-sense which had prompted the alarming words he had spoken to Madge. How she and Philip laughed at the chimerical idea that there could be any possible combination of circumstances in time or space which could alter their thoughts regarding each other! The birds in the orchard, in the intervals of pecking the fruit, seemed to sing a joyous laughing chorus at the absurdity of it—notwithstanding that the admission of it might be prudent.
But when they came down to the point of vague admission that in the abstract and in relation to other couples—of course it could not apply to their own case—Uncle Dick’s counsel was such as prudent young people about to separate should keep in mind, an expression of perplexity flitted across Madge’s face. She looked at him with those tenderly wistful serious eyes, half doubting whether or not to utter the thought which had come to her.
‘But what I cannot understand,’ she said slowly, ‘is why Uncle Dick should have been in such a temper. You know that although he may fly into a passion at anything that seems to him wrong, he never keeps it up. Now he had all the time riding home from Kingshope to cool, and yet when he spoke to me he seemed to be as angry as if he had just come out of the room where the quarrel took place.’
‘What can it matter to us?’ was the blithe response. ‘He is not angry with me or with you, and so long as that is the case we need not mind if he should quarrel with all creation.’
‘I’ll tell you what we will do,’ she said, and the disappearance of all perplexity from her face showed that she was quite of his opinion, although she wanted to have it supported by another authority.
‘What is that?’
‘We will go in and ask Aunt Hessy what she thinks about it.... Are you aware, sir’ (this with a pretty assumption of severity), ‘that you have not seen aunty to-day, and that you have not even inquired about her?’
‘That is bad,’ he muttered; but it was evident that the badness which he felt was the interruption of the happy wandering through the orchard by this summary recall to duty.
In his remorse, however, he was ready to sacrifice his present pleasure; for Aunt Hessy was a stanch friend of theirs, and it might be that her cheery way of looking at things would dispel the last lingering cloud of doubt from Madge’s mind regarding the misunderstanding between his father and Uncle Dick.
‘Then we had better go in at once; we shall find her in the dairy.’
Mrs Crawshay was superintending the operations of three buxom maidens who were scalding the large cans in which the milk was conveyed every morning to the metropolis. Her ruddy face with the quiet, kindly gray eyes was that of a woman in her prime, and even her perfectly white hair did not detract from the sense of youth which was expressed in her appearance: it was an additional charm. She was nearly sixty. Her age was a standing joke of Uncle Dick’s. He had made the discovery that she was a month older than himself, and he magnified it into a year.
‘Can’t you see?’ he would say, ‘if you are born in December and I am born in January, that makes exactly a year’s difference?’
Then there would be a loud guffaw, and Uncle Dick would feel that he had completely overcome the Missus. The words and the guffaw were as a rule simultaneous, and if nobody happened to be present, it usually ended in Uncle Dick putting his arm round her neck and saying with a lump in his throat: ‘My old lass—young always to me.’
He had not the slightest notion of the poetry that was in his soul whilst he spoke.
Mrs Crawshay believed in young love. She had been very happy in hers. She had been brought up on a farm. Lads had come about her of course, and she had put them aside with a—‘Nay, lad, I’m not for thee,’ and had thought no more about them. Then Dick Crawshay had come, and—she did not know why—she had said: ‘Yes, thou art my lad.’
They had been very happy notwithstanding their losses—indeed the losses seemed to have drawn them closer together.
‘It’s only you and me, my old lass,’ he would say in their privacy.
‘Only you and me, Dick,’ she would say as her gray head rested on his breast with all the emotion of youth in her heart.
‘Go into the oak parlour,’ said Mrs Crawshay cheerily to the young folks, when she understood their mission; ‘and I’ll be with you in a minute.’
The oak parlour was the stateroom of the house. It was long and high; the oak of the panels and beams which supported the pointed roof were of that dark hue which only time can impart. The three narrow windows had been lengthened by Dick’s father, and when the moon shone through them they were like three white ghosts looking in upon the dark chamber. But the moon did not often get a chance of doing this, for there was only a brief period of the year during which there was not a huge fire blazing in the great old-fashioned ingle. There were four portraits of former Crawshays and three of famous horses; with these exceptions the walls were bare, for none of the family had ever been endowed with much love of art.
There were some legends still current about the mysteries hidden behind the sombre panels. One of the panels was specially honoured because it was reputed to have a recess behind it in which the king had found shelter for a time during his flight from the Roundheads. But owing to the indifference or carelessness of successive generations, nobody was now quite sure to which of the panels this honour properly belonged. There had been occasional attempts made to discover the royal hiding-place, but they had hitherto failed.
The furniture was plain and substantial, displaying the styles of several periods of manufacture. In spite of the stiff straight lines of most of the things in the room, the red curtains, the red table-cover, the odd variety of the chairs gave the place a homely and, when the fire was ablaze, a cosy expression. This stateroom was correctly called ‘parlour,’ and it had been the scene of many a revel.
As Philip and Madge were on their way to the oak parlour, a servant presented a card to the latter.
‘He asked for you, miss,’ said the girl, and passed on to the kitchen.
Madge looked at the card, and instantly held it out to Philip.
‘Hullo!—my father,’ ejaculated he, adding with a laugh: ‘Now you can see that this mountain of yours is not even a molehill.’
‘How can you tell that?’
‘Because my father is the reverse of Uncle Dick. He never forgets—I doubt if he ever forgives—an unpleasant word. And yet here he is. Come along at once—but we had better say nothing to him about the affair unless he speaks of it himself.’
They entered the room together, smiling hopefully.
Mr Lloyd Hadleigh was standing at a window, hat in one hand, slim umbrella in the other, and staring hard at the shrubs. He had a way of staring hard at everything, and yet the way was so calm and thoughtful that he did not appear to see anything or anybody, and thus the stare was not offensive.
‘The guv’nor always seems to be dreaming about you when he looks at you, and you never know when he’s going to speak—that’s awk’ard,’ was the description of his expression given by Caleb Kersey, one of the occasional labourers on Ringsford.
He was a man of average height, firmly built; square face; thick black moustache; close cropped black hair, with only an indication of thinning on the top and showing few streaks of white. His age was not more than fifty, and he had attained the full vigour of life.
‘People talk about the fire and “go” of thirty,’ he would say in his dry way. ‘It is nonsense. At that age a man is either going downhill or going up it, and in either case he is too much occupied and worried to have time to be happy. That was the most miserable period of my life.’
Coldness was the first impression of his outward character. No one had ever seen him in a passion. Successful in business, he had provided well for the five children of a very early marriage. He never referred to that event, and had been long a widower without showing the slightest inclination to establish a new mistress at Ringsford.
He turned on the entrance of Madge and Philip, saluting the former with grave politeness; then to the latter: ‘There are some letters for you at home, Philip.’
‘Thank you, sir; but I have no doubt they can wait. I am to stay for dinner here.’
‘From the postmarks I judge they are of importance.’
‘Ah—then I know who they are from, and in that case there is no hurry at all, for the mail does not leave until Monday.’
Mr Hadleigh addressed himself to Madge—no sign of annoyance in voice or manner.
‘May I be permitted to have a few minutes’ conversation with you in private, Miss Heathcote?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ broke in Philip hastily; ‘I did not understand you to mean that you found me in the way.—If your aunt should ask for me, Miss Heathcote, I shall be in the garden.’
With a good-natured inclination of the head, he went out. And as he walked down the garden path filling his pipe, he muttered to himself thoughtfully: ‘Seems to me he grows queerer and queerer every day. What can be the matter with him? If anybody else had asked for a private interview so solemnly, I should have taken it for granted that he was going to propose.... Daresay he wants to give some explanation of that confounded row, and make his apologies through Madge. I should like him to do that.’
But Mr Hadleigh was neither going to propose nor to make apologies. He smiled, a curious sort of half-sad, half-amused smile, and there was really something interesting in the expression of his eyes at the moment.
‘The truth is, Miss Heathcote, that I cannot acknowledge weakness before Philip. He is such a reckless fellow about money, that he would tell me I ought to give in at once to the labourers.’
‘I am sure he would not, Mr Hadleigh, if he thought you were in the right.’
‘I am not one likely to hold out if convinced that I am in the wrong.’
‘Few men do under these conditions, Mr Hadleigh,’ said Madge, smiling.
‘Well, at anyrate, I want your assistance very much; will you give it?’
‘With great pleasure, if it is worth anything to you.’
‘It is worth everything; for what harvest I might have on the home-farm—and I understand it promises to be a good one—is likely to be lost unless you help me.’
‘How can that be, Mr Hadleigh?’
‘Through beer. This is how the matter stands. You know the dispute about the wages, and I am willing to give in to that. But on this question of beer in the field I am firm. The men and women shall have the price of it; but I will neither give beer on the field nor permit them to bring it there. A great reform is to be worked in this matter, and I mean to do what little I can to advance it. I am sure, Miss Heathcote, you must acknowledge that I am right in adhering to this resolution.’
‘I have been brought up in some very old-fashioned notions, Mr Hadleigh,’ she answered with pretty evasiveness.
‘There is a high principle at stake in it, my dear Miss Heathcote, and it is worth fighting for.’
‘But I do not yet see how my services are to be of use to you,’ she said, anxious to avoid this debatable subject. It was one on which her uncle had quite different views from those of Mr Hadleigh. And, therefore, she could not altogether sympathise with the latter’s enthusiasm, eager as she was to see the people steady and sober, for she remembered at the moment that he had made a considerable portion of his fortune out of a brewery.
‘That was exactly what I was about to explain,’ he replied. ‘I came to beg you to speak to Caleb Kersey.’
‘Caleb!—why, he never touches anything stronger than tea.’
‘That may be; but he believes that other people have a right to do so if they like. He has persuaded every man and woman who comes to me or my bailiff to put the question: “Is there to be beer?” When they are answered: “No; but the money,” they turn on their heels and march off, so that at this moment we have only two men. Now, my dear Miss Heathcote, will you persuade Kersey to stop his interference?’
‘I do not see that he is interfering; but I will speak to him.’
‘Thanks, thanks. If you were with me I should have no difficulty.’
‘You would find me a very bad second,’ she answered, laughing, ‘for I should say—submit to old customs until persuasion alters them, since force never can.’
Two things struck Madge during this interview and the commonplaces about nothing which followed it: The first, how much more frank and at ease he seemed to be with her than with any one else; and the second was, how loath he seemed to go.
The owner of Ringsford said to himself as he was driven away: ‘I shall be glad when she is Philip’s wife.’