CHAPTER XLI.
What more is there to say? If I had written all this ten years ago I should have said that there was nothing more to say, I should have said that my life was ended. But now I am not of that mind. Thank God! there is more to say, and though there have been sad hours to live through, the haven has been reached at last.
When father was dead and buried, they told us that we should have to leave the Grange. I can remember how the blow fell on me. Reuben had just buried Luck, the old sheep-dog, under the big apple-tree.
"The Lord'll have to take me now," he had said, with tears in his dim eyes; "but I'd sooner die than see the old place go to the bad. I knowed what it 'd be when the master was called; and now that the dog's gone as well, there's no more luck for us. Ay, if he'd ha' stuck to Early Perlifics we shouldn't ha' seen old Knellestone come to the hammer."
I don't believe I felt the thrust, I don't believe I ever saw the comic incongruity of the situation, when, leaning forward on his spade and gazing tearfully at the grave of his old dumb comrade, he had turned to me saying, confidentially: "There'll be a rare crop of apples this year, miss. There's nothing for an apple-tree like a dead dog."
But Reuben was a philosopher and I was no philosopher; and of the days that followed, the days when Deborah went about with a grim, wise air, as one who had known all along what would happen—the days when mother wandered aimlessly from the chairs and presses to the old writing-table where father had sat so many years, and the eight-day clock that had summoned us as children to breakfast and prayers—of those horrible days I cannot speak. I dare not remember the guilty feeling with which I felt mother's eyes upon me when the squire delayed to come for that "business talk" that he had asked leave for; I might have found spirit once more to scorn Deborah's more openly expressed upbraiding, but mother's silent reproach made my heart sick.
We were wrong, however, to doubt the squire. He came in spite of Deb's cruel, covert taunts, in spite of mother's hopeless eyes. If he had not come earlier, it was only because he was waiting till he had good news to bring. I can see him now as he walked once more into that parlor where we had had so many eager discussions, so many friendly meetings and half-fancied quarrels, so many affectionate reconciliations! The late autumn sun shone in through the three deep windows upon the worn old Turkey carpet and leather chairs, upon the polished spindle-backed seats that stood on either side of the hearth—one empty now forever; it almost put the fire out, and touched the copper fire-irons into flame. I suppose it was the sun that made the squire's face look so ruddy and so radiant.
Radiant it most certainly was, and yet, at the same time, half shamefaced too as he said that he had just come from a meeting of the creditors, and that he had every reason to hope that father's affairs would be satisfactorily arranged. I don't think I believed him at the time, I think I was almost hurt when he met my trembling question, as to whether we should have to leave Knellestone, with a laugh. But oh, what a relief was that laugh from the visits of condolence we had had!
He did not forget father although he did not speak of him in words: the awe that had surrounded the death-bed was gone, but not the sacred burden that it had left. Yet I did not understand when he said that the creditors had been satisfied. Even when the dreaded day of the sale came, and mother kept her old friends in chairs and tables and presses, and linen within the presses, and Joyce kept her favorite cows in the dairy, and I even the mare that had been the innocent means of first bringing romance within our quiet family—when the farm was not even deprived of a single one of the mowing and threshing machines that had caused so much strife—I, ignorant as I was of business, never even guessed in what way an "arrangement" had been come to!