“I’m sure it’s small enough, sir,” Miss Peacock answered, feebly defending herself. “You said you liked it small, Mr. Griffin.”
“I never said I liked mince-meat! Where is the girl? What ails her?”
“It’s nothing, sir. She’s been looking a little peaky the last week or two. That’s all. And to-day——”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s only a headache, sir. She’ll be well enough when the spring comes. Josina was always nesh—like her mother.”
The Squire huddled his spoon and fork together, and pushed his plate away, muttering something about d—d sausage meat. Her mother? How old had her mother been when she—he could not remember, but certainly a mere child beside him. Twenty-five or so, he thought. And she was nesh, was she? He sat, shaving his chin with unsteady fingers, eating nothing; and when Calamy, hovering over his plate, hinted that he had not finished, he blew the butler out of the room with a blast of language that made Miss Peacock, hardened as she was, hold up her hands. And though Jos was at breakfast next morning, and answered his grumpy questions as if nothing were amiss, a little seed of fear had been sown in the Squire’s mind that grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd, and before noon threatened to shut out the sun.
A silk purse could not be made out of a sow’s ear. But a good leather purse, that might pass in time—the lad was stout and honest. And his father, mud, certainly, and mud of the pretentious kind that the Squire hated: mud that affected by the aid of gilding to pass for fine clay. But honest? Well, in his own way, perhaps: it remained to be seen. And times were changing, changing for the worse; but he could not deny that they were changing. So gradually, slowly, unwelcome at the best, there grew up in the old man’s mind the idea of surrender. If the money were paid back, say in three months, say in six months—well, he would think of it. He would begin to think of it. He would begin to think of it as a thing possible some day, at some very distant date—if there were more peakiness. The girl did not whine, did not torment him, did not complain; and he thought the more of her for that. But if she ailed, then, failing her, there was no one to come after him at Garth, no one of his blood to follow him—except that Bourdillon whelp, and by G—d he should not have an acre or a rood of it, or a pound of it. Never! Never!
Failing her? The Squire felt the air turn cold, and he hung, shivering, over the fire. What if, while he sought to preserve the purity of the old blood, the old traditions, he cut the thread, and the name of Griffin passed out of remembrance, as in his long life he had known so many, many old names pass away—pass into limbo?
Ay, into limbo. He saw his own funeral procession crawl—a long black snake—down the winding drive, here half-hidden by the sunken banks, there creeping forth again into the light. He saw the bleak sunshine fall on the pall that draped the farm-wagon, and heard the slow heavy note of the Garthmyle bell, and the scuffling of innumerable feet that alone broke the solemn silence. If she were not there at window or door to see it go, or in the old curtained pew to await its coming—if the church vault closed on him, the last of his race and blood!
He sat long, thinking of this.