"I suppose," said Sir Lacy, in his insolent manner, "that school-masters, like footmen, expect their masters to give a month's warning. What day is this?—the sixth of July. Well, on the sixth of August you will bundle yourself off, my fine fellow, and I'll take precious good care not to consult the old parson as to whom your successor should be. He might, in his wisdom, recommend some saint from the Idiot Asylum!" and with another laugh at this brilliant joke, which was echoed by his two companions, but by none of the boys, who stood aghast at the sudden dismissal of their master, Sir Lacy sauntered out of the school-room, accompanied by the lawyer and medical student.
There were a few moments of silence after they had left, during which the ticking of the large school-clock sounded almost painfully loud. It was broken by Ned Franks himself, who, turning towards his class, resumed the interrupted thread of the morning studies by asking Sims for the third time the question, "What was the text of yesterday's sermon?"
XXXV.
Village Talk.
Very uneasy had Persis felt while Sir Lacy was in the school-room; very anxiously she watched the porch, in hopes of seeing him and his visitors quit it. She could hear from beneath the sound of laughter; but it was laughter which raised in her soul a very opposite feeling to that of mirth. She listened intently; but her baby was fretful from cutting teeth, and his crying soon drowned every other noise. Persis fondled him in her arms, and hushed him on her bosom, and just as she had succeeded in quieting the child, saw, to her relief, the three strangers issue from under the porch. She did not, however, like their looks, still less the laughter which followed words of which she could not catch the exact meaning, but which she was certain had none which was good. Persis watched the three men till they disappeared down a turn in the road, and then heaved a long, anxious sigh. Lessons were evidently going on as usual below,—Persis knew that from the hum of voices from the school-room. She had to wait in restless expectation till the school broke up for an hour's recess, and she saw the stream of boys come issuing forth from the porch.
Their grave yet excited looks frightened the wife yet more. That something remarkable had happened was written on every young face, as the boys thronged together in knots of three or four, all seeming far more eager to speak than to listen. But Persis was not much longer to be kept in suspense; she knew the step of her husband; she saw him enter, looking paler than she had ever seen him before. Franks seated himself beside his wife, put his arm round her, and drew her tenderly towards him, unwilling to inflict pain, scarcely knowing how to break the news that he was a ruined man. Persis had guessed the truth before Franks said, in a tone which he vainly tried to make cheerful, "Well, sweetheart, you and I will have to set out on our travels together."
But when Ned gave his wife a more detailed account of what had occurred; when he told of the absurd questions, the mocking laughter, the insolent taunts which had made his blood boil, even natural anxiety concerning his future prospects was swallowed up for the time in passionate indignation. "I longed to strike him," exclaimed the late sailor, "and I had to chain even my tongue! Wife—wife—it is no easy matter to endure, or to forgive insults and injuries such as that man has heaped upon me! To hold me up to the contempt of my own boys,—that was the most intolerable wrong of all! I actually heard Sam Barker and Peter Core tittering behind me, the little sneaking—But your fire-ships are bearing down upon me full sail; I must not trust myself to speak on these matters,—I must try not to let my mind brood over them,—would that I could drive the whole scene out of my memory forever!"
Persis did not, as most wives would have done, stir up her husband's wrath to a blaze, and heap on it the fuel of her own grief, fears, and regrets. She tried in her gentle, loving way to make him look beyond second causes, to see that the trial—bitter as it was—was sent in wisdom and love, and that man could inflict no real injury except by drawing into sin. Persis did not say much, but she looked bright and hopeful, to keep up the spirits of her husband. If they were to leave their happy home at Colme, their pleasant occupation in the village, it might be because God had provided for them something better still, some wider field of usefulness in which they might humbly serve him. They were spared to one another, and their darling was left to them still. "Whilst I have you and our boy," cried Persis, as she rested her head on her husband's shoulder, "I feel that I could be contented in a hovel, or in a prison."
The news that Ned Franks, the one-armed school-master, had been dismissed by Sir Lacy, spread like wildfire through Colme. The tidings were received with almost universal regret and indignation, for both Ned and Persis were great favorites in the village. Mrs. Fuddles of the "Chequers," indeed, observed, as she wiped the dust from a bottle of whiskey, "I guess that Sir Lacy knows what he's about. It aint likely that a sailor that's been spending his life in mopping up decks should know much about hedication." But the publican's wife was almost the only person who did not regret the disgrace of the Frankses. Bat Bell, the miller, declared that to send off an honest fellow like Franks from the school was like damming up a mill-stream; and that everything would come to a dead lock,—while his little girl cried as if her heart would break, and wished that that wicked Sir Lacy never had come to make every one unhappy. Ben Stone the carpenter, on his bed of sickness, heard the news with less than his usual placid calmness.