“Mr. Fairfax! Oh, nothing, but that he was so kind; he helped papa up stairs. He came for you when mamma sent him. I do not know what we should have done without him; for—you were not there, Paul!”
“Not much wonder if I was not there!”
“Why? Mamma does nothing but blame herself. She cries and says we should not have come. Oh, Paul! and papa, I told you, has had one of his faints. Will you come?” cried Alice, moved to tears, yet flushing high with a generous impatience; “or are we to be left to shift for ourselves?”
“She deserves it,” he said. “What had she to do with it? Surely I am old enough to manage my own affairs.”
“Is it mamma you mean by she? Then stay—or go where you like. Oh, how dare you!” cried Alice, wildly angry. “Mamma!” This stung her so that she went to the door hurriedly, going away; but that little flash of wrath was soon over. She stopped and turned round upon him, making another appeal. “You don’t deserve that we should care for you; but we do care for you,” she said. “Oh, Paul! when I tell you papa has had one of his faints—for what? because to think of you going away, forsaking us, giving up home, and your own place, and the people that you ought to care for, was more than he could bear. Paul! how can you leave us—leave Markham and everything you were once fond of—leave your duty, and the place you were born to?”
“My dear little Alice,” he said, with a smile, glad to conceal a little melting of his own heart which was beyond his power of resisting, by this fine superiority, “speak of things you understand.”
Then Alice flashed upon him with all the visionary vehemence of a girl in her own defence.
“How should I not understand?” she cried, “Am I so stupid? It is you who make yourself little, pretending to despise us girls. What is there to despise in us? We do not fill our head with pride and fancies like you. We love those who belong to us, and serve them, and do our duty as we know how. It is not we who leave our old father to suffer, or tear our mother’s heart in two. It is not we that turn peace into trouble. There you stand,” cried Alice, “a man! fit to be in parliament making the laws better—fit to be doing something for them that belong to you, after learning, learning all your life, doing nothing but learn, that you might be good for something. And now, all you think you are good for is to emigrate, like the poor Irish. Is that all you are good for? Then you ought to be humble, and not dare to turn round and sneer and tell us to speak of things we understand. Understand! I understand that if you can do nothing better than that—if, after all, you can only betray us and forsake us, and be no use, no help to any one, it is a shame!”
Who can doubt that Alice’s eloquence was broken with sobs, and her fury all blind with tears? She would not, however, for pride, let him see them fall, but turned away from the door with passionate haste, and flew down the deserted staircase, swallowing her sobs as best she could, and dashing away the hasty torrent from her eyes. She heard him laugh as she got out into the air in all her agitation, and this sound stung Alice to the heart.
But if she had known it, Paul’s laugh was like the ploughboy’s whistle to keep his courage up. He had not expected any such onslaught, and he was not insensible to it, any more than she was to his scorn. For, after all, he did not in the least despise his sister, though it was so handy to pretend to do so. When he was left again among his ruins, though he stimulated himself, as by a sickly trumpet note of pretended victory by that laugh, Paul did not feel half so grand a personage as he could have wished, and for the next half hour or so there came and stabbed at him a little array of by no means pleasant thoughts.