“There!” he cried, with comical discomfiture, “dash the little aristocrat! He has the last word—that’s the worst, or the best of them. They have their senses always about them. No flurry—no feeling. Well, Paul, aren’t you going? Be off with you and explain, like a good boy, to your mamma and your papa.”
“What is it all about?” said a girl’s voice from the top of the stairs; and first one, then another, fair, curly, somewhat unkempt head appeared peeping down upon the group below. “And who is the little old gentleman? Father, may we come down stairs?”
“Go back to your work, on the instant,” said Spears; “I want no girls here. Well, Markham, why don’t you go? Is your father to wait for you all day—and I too?”
“I shall go when I am ready,” said Paul, gloomily.
He took a long time to put on that coat. He was not of a temper to be cowed or frightened, and for a moment he was undecided whether to defy his father directly and deny all jurisdiction or control on his part, or to take the more difficult part of extending to Sir William that courtesy which his teacher had instructed him was due from all men to each other—from rebellious sons to fathers as well as in every other relation of life—hearing what he had to say with politeness as he would have heard any other opponent in argument. But the fact is that an argument between father and son on their reciprocal duties is a thing more difficult to maintain with perfect temper and politeness than any argument that ever took place in the Union or perhaps in Parliament itself. And Paul was bitterly angry that his father should have invaded this place, and dismayed to hear that his mother had come, and that he should have her entreaties to meet. He had not anticipated anything of the kind, strangely enough. He had expected letters of all kinds—angry, reproachful, entreating—but it had not occurred to him that his father would come in person, much less any other of the family. He was dismayed and he was angry; his heart failed him in spite of all his courage. Pride and temper forbade him to run away, yet he would have escaped if he could. He took a long time to put on his coat; he said nothing to either of the two men that stood by, and pushed Fairfax aside when he tried to help him. Spears had given up his work altogether, and stood watching his pupil with a smile upon his face.
“When does that fellow mean to go?” he said. “What is he waiting for? I like the looks of the little old gentleman, as the girls call him. There’s stuff in that man. But for him and such as him the people would have had their rights long ago; but I respect the man for all that. Markham, what do you mean by keeping him kicking his heels outside my shop in the sun? That is not the respect due from one man to another. He’s an older man than you are, and merits more consideration. What are you frightened for, man alive? Can’t you go?”
“Frightened!” cried Paul, with an indignant curl of his lip.
“Yes, frightened, nothing else; or you wouldn’t take so long a time about going. Ah, that’s driven him out at last! Do you know those people, Fairfax, or how did you come to bring the father here?”
“I know them? I am not half grand enough. How should I know a man who is a Right Honourable? I met them by chance. Spears, you may say what you like, but even a little rank, however it may go against reason, has an effect—”
“Do you think I need you to tell me that? If it hadn’t an effect what would be the use of all we’re doing? ‘Why stand I in peril every day?’ as that fine democrat Paul says somewhere. To be sure there’s something in it. I once lived three days in that man’s house. I didn’t know he was absent, as he says he was. I should have liked to have stood up to him and stated my way of thinking, and seen what he had to say for himself. It was the first sneaking thing I ever knew in Markham to take me there while his father was away. Life goes on wheels in those houses,” said Spears, taking his seat again upon his bench. “It was all one could do after a day or two to keep one’s moral consciousness awake. A footman waited upon me hand and foot, and I never spoke to him—not as I ought to have done—about the unnatural folly of his position, till the last day. I couldn’t do it; a fortnight in that place would have demoralised even me. The mother—ah, there it is! We can’t build up women like that. I don’t know how you’re to do it without their conditions. We have good women, and brave women, and pure women, but nothing like that. You have to see it,” said Spears, shaking his head, “even to know what it is.”