his tall figure and his clipped hair, as he pushed forward into the
hall, that the servant momentarily lost his wits. A light, in a room on
the left, guided Reed; he entered it, and found himself face to face
with Major Parrifer, who was seated in an easy-chair before a good fire,
spirits on the table, and a cigar in his mouth. What with the smoke from
that, what with the faint light--for all the candles had been put out
but one--the Major did not at first distinguish his late visitor's face.
When the bare head and the resolute eyes met his, he certainly paled a
little, and the cigar fell on to the carpet.
"I want my daughter, Major Parrifer."
To hear a demand made for a daughter when the Major had possibly been
thinking the demand might be for his life, was undoubtedly a relief. It
brought back his courage.
"What do you mean, fellow?" he growled, stamping out the fire of the
cigar. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Not quite. You might have driven some men out of theirs, though, by
what you've done. _We'll let that part be_, Major. I have come to-night
about my daughter. Where is she?"
They stood looking at each other. Reed stood just inside the door, hat
in hand; he did not forget his manners even in the presence of his
enemy; they were a habit with him. The Major, who had risen in his
surprise, stared at him: he really knew nothing whatever of the matter,
not even that the girl was missing; and he did think Reed's imprisonment
must have turned his brain. Perhaps Reed saw that he was not understood.
"I come home from prison, into which you put me, Major Parrifer, to find
my daughter Catherine gone. She went away the day I was taken up. Where
she went, or what she's doing, Heaven knows; but you or yours are
answerable for it, whichever way it may be."
"You have been drinking," said Major Parrifer.
"_You_ have, maybe," returned Reed, glancing at the spirits on the
table. "Either Cathy went out on a harmless jaunt, and is staying away
because she can't face the shame at home which you have put there; or
else she went out to meet your son, and has been taken away by him. I
think it must be the last; my fears whisper it to me; and, if so, you
can't be off knowing something of it. Major Parrifer, I must have my
daughter."
Whether the hint given about his son alarmed the Major, causing him to
forget his bluster for once, and answer civilly, he certainly did it.
His son was in Ireland with his regiment, he said; had not been at the
Hall for weeks and weeks; he could answer for it that Lieutenant
Parrifer knew nothing of the girl.
"He was here at Christmas," said George Reed. "I saw him."
"And left two or three days after it. How dare you, fellow, charge him
with such a thing? He'd wring your neck for you if he were here."
"Perhaps I might find cause to wring his first. Major Parrifer, I want
my daughter."
"If you do not get out of my house, I'll have you brought before me
to-morrow for trespassing, and give you a second month's imprisonment,"
roared the Major, gathering bluster and courage. "You want another month
of it: this one does not appear to have done you the good it ought.
Now--go!"
"I'll go," said Reed, who began to see the Major really did not know
anything of Cathy--and it had not been very probable that he did. "But
I'd like to leave a word behind me. You have succeeded in doing me a
great injury, Major Parrifer. You are rich and powerful, I am poor and
lowly. You set your mind on my bit of a home, and because you could
not drive me from it, you took advantage of your magistrate's post to
sentence me to prison, and so be revenged. It has done me a great deal
of harm. What good has it done you?"
Major Parrifer could not speak for rage.
"It will come home to you, sir, mark me if it does not. God has seen my
trouble, and my wife's trouble, and I don't believe He ever let such a
wrong pass unrewarded. _It will come home to you, Major Parrifer._"
George Reed went out, quietly shutting the hall-door behind him, and
walked home through the thick flakes of snow that had begun to fall.
V.
COMING HOME TO HIM.
The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm
spring, and hot weather was upon us early.
One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned
up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in
their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone
into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in
attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put
him into prison. The month's imprisonment had altered him; his daughter
Cathy's mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to
face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping
away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby's illness. Reed
said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep
the place quiet.
Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him
she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that
she was "all right, and he had no call to fret after her." Whether this
was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he
used to be.
Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his
garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to
the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had
taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was passing along
slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop
of grass was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the
hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and
looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in
Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.
Major Parrifer had been suffering from a slight temporary indisposition.
He did not consider himself sufficiently recovered to attend service,
but neither was he ill enough to lie in bed. With the departure of his
family for church, the Major had come strolling out in the garden in an
airy dressing-gown, and there saw his gardener picking peas.
"Halloa, Hotty! This ought to have been done before."
"Yes, sir, I know it; I'm a little late," answered Hotty; "I shall have
done in two or three minutes. The cook makes a fuss if I pick 'em too
early; she says they don't eat so well."
The peas were for the gratification of the Major's own palate, so he
found no more fault. Hotty went on with his work, and the Major gave
a general look round. On a near wall, at right angles with the hedge
through which Reed was then peering, some fine apricots were growing,
green yet.
"These apricots want thinning, Hotty," observed the Major.
"I have thinned 'em some, sir."
"Not enough. Our apricots were not as fine last year as they ought to
have been. I said then they had not had sufficient room to grow. Green
apricots are always useful; they make the best tart known."
Major Parrifer walked to the greenhouse, outside which a small basket
was hanging, brought it back, and began to pick some of the apricots
where they looked too thick. Reed, outside, watched the process--not
alone. As luck had it, a man appeared on the field-path, who proved to
be Gruff Blossom, the Jacobsons' groom, coming home to spend Sunday with
his friends. Reed made a sign to Blossom to be silent, and caused him to
look on also.
With the small basket half full, the Major desisted, thinking possibly
he had plucked enough, and turned away carrying it. Hotty came out from
the peas, his task finished. They strolled slowly down the path by the
hedge; the Major first, Hotty a step behind, talking about late and
early peas, and whether Prussian blues or marrowfats were the best
eating.
"Do you see those weeds in the onion-bed?" suddenly asked the Major,
stopping as they were passing it.
Hotty turned his head to look. A few weeds certainly had sprung up. He'd
attend to it on the morrow, he told his master; and then said something
about the work accumulating almost beyond him, since the under-gardener
had been at home ill.
"Pick them out now," said the Major; "there's not a dozen of them."
Hotty stooped to do as he was bid. The Major made no more ado but
stooped also, uprooting quite half the weeds himself. Not much more, in
all, than the dozen he had spoken of: and then they went on with their
baskets to the house.
Never had George Reed experienced so much gratification since the day
he came out of prison. "Did you see the Major at it?--thinning his
apricots and pulling up his weeds?" he asked of Gruff Blossom. And
Blossom's reply, gruff as usual, was to ask what might be supposed to
ail his eyes that he shouldn't see it.
"Very good," said Reed.
One evening in the following week, when we were sitting out on the
lawn, the Squire smoking, Mrs. Todhetley nursing her face in her hand,
with toothache as usual, Tod teasing Hugh and Lena, and I up in the
beech-tree, a horseman rode in. It proved to be Mr. Jacobson. Giles took
his horse, and he came and sat down on the bench. The Squire asked him
what he'd take, and being thirsty, he chose cider. Which Thomas brought.
"Here's a go," began Mr. Jacobson. "Have you heard what's up?"
"I've not heard anything," answered the Squire.
"Major Parrifer has a summons served on him for working in his garden
on a Sunday, and is to appear before the magistrates at Alcester
to-morrow," continued old Jacobson, drinking off a glass of cider at a
draught.
"No!" cried Squire Todhetley.
"It's a fact. Blossom, our groom, has also a summons served on him to
give evidence."
Mrs. Todhetley lifted her face; Tod left Hugh and Lena to themselves: I
slid down from the beech-tree; and we listened for more.
But Mr. Jacobson could not give particulars, or say much more than he
had already said. All he knew was, that on Monday morning George Reed
had appeared before the magistrates and made a complaint. At first they
were unwilling to grant a summons; laughed at it; but Reed, in a burst
of reproach, civilly delivered, asked why there should be a law for
the poor and not for the rich, and in what lay the difference between
himself and Major Parrifer; that the one should be called to account and
punished for doing wrong, and the other was not even to be accused when
he had done it.
"Brandon happened to be on the bench," continued Jacobson. "He appeared
struck with the argument, and signed the summons."
The Squire nodded.
"My belief is," continued old Jacobson, with a wink over the rim of
the cider glass, "that granting that summons was as good as a play to
Brandon and the rest. I'd as lieve, though, that they'd not brought
Blossom into it."
"Why?" asked Mrs. Todhetley, who had been grieved at the time at the
injustice done to Reed.
"Well, Parrifer is a disagreeable man to offend. And he is sure to visit
Blossom's part in this on me."
"Let him," said Tod, with enthusiasm. "Well done, George Reed!"
Be you very sure we went over to the fight. Squire Todhetley did not
appear: at which Tod exploded a little: he only wished _he_ was a
magistrate, wouldn't he take his place and judge the Major! But the
Pater said that when people had lived to his age, they liked to be at
peace with their neighbours--not but what he hoped Parrifer would "get
it," for having been so cruelly hard upon Reed.
* * * * *
Major Parrifer came driving to the Court-house in his high carriage
with a great bluster, his iron-grey hair standing up, and two grooms
attending him. Only the magistrates who had granted the summons sat.
The news had gone about like wild-fire, and several of them were in and
about the town, but did not take their places. I don't believe there
was one would have lifted his finger to save the Major from a month's
imprisonment; but they did not care to sentence him to it.
It was a regular battle. Major Parrifer was in an awful passion the
whole time; asking, when he came in, how they dared summon him. _Him!_
Mr. Brandon, cool as a cucumber, answered in his squeaky voice, that
when a complaint of breaking the law was preferred before them and sworn
to by witnesses, they could only act upon it.
First of all, the Major denied the facts. _He_ work in his garden on a
Sunday!--the very supposition was preposterous! Upon which George Reed,
who was in his best clothes, and looked every bit as good as the Major,
and far pleasanter, testified to what he had seen.
Major Parrifer, dancing with temper when he found he had been looked at
through the hedge, and that it was Reed who had looked, gave the lie
direct. He called his gardener, Richard Hotty, ordering him to testify
whether he, the Major, ever worked in his garden, either on Sundays or
week-days.
"Hotty was working himself, gentlemen," interposed George Reed. "He was
picking peas; and he helped to weed the onion-bed. But it was done by
his master's orders, so it would be unjust to punish him."
The Major turned on Reed as if he would strike him, and demanded of the
magistrates why they permitted the fellow to interrupt. They ordered
Reed to be quiet, and told Hotty to proceed.
But Hotty was one of those slow men to whom anything like evasion is
difficult. His master had thinned the apricot tree that Sunday morning;
he had helped to weed the onion-bed; Hotty, conscious of the fact, but
not liking to admit it, stammered and stuttered, and made a poor figure
of himself. Mr. Brandon thought he would help him out.
"Did you see your master pick the apricots?"
"I see him pick--just a few; green 'uns," answered Hotty, shuffling from
one leg to the other in his perplexity. "'Twarn't to be called work,
sir."
"Oh! And did he help you to weed the onion-bed?"
"There warn't a dozen weeds in it in all, as the Major said to me at the
time," returned Hotty. "He see 'em, and stooped down on the spur o' the
moment, and me too. We had 'em up in a twinkling. 'Twarn't work, sir;
couldn't be called it nohow. The Major, he never do work at no time."
Blossom had not arrived, and it was hard to tell how the thing would
terminate: the Major had this witness, Hotty, such as he was, protesting
that nothing to be called work was done. Reed had no witness, as yet.
"Old Jacobson is keeping Blossom back, Johnny," whispered Tod. "It's a
sin and a shame."
"No, he is not," I said. "Look there!"
Blossom was coming in. He had walked over, and not hurried himself.
Major Parrifer plunged daggers into him, if looks could do it, but it
made no difference to Blossom.
He gave his evidence in his usual surly manner. It was clear and
straightforward. Major Parrifer had thinned the apricot tree for its own
benefit; and had weeded the onion-bed, Hotty helping at the weeds by
order.
"What brought _you_ spying at the place, James Blossom?" demanded a
lawyer on the Major's behalf.
"Accident," was the short answer.
"Indeed! You didn't go there on purpose, I suppose?--and skulk under the
hedge on purpose?--and peer into the Major's garden on purpose?"
"No, I didn't," said Blossom. "The field is open to every one, and I was
crossing it on my way to old father's. George Reed made me a sign afore
I came up to him, to look in, as he was doing; and I did so, not knowing
what there might be to see. It would be nothing to me if the Major
worked in his garden of a Sunday from sunrise to sunset; he's welcome to
do it; but if you summon me here and ask me, did I see him working, I
say yes, I did. Why d'you send me a summons if you don't want me to tell
the truth? Let me be, and I'd ha' said nothing to mortal man."
Evidently nothing favourable to the defence could be got out of James
Blossom. Mr. Brandon began saying to the Major that he feared there was
no help for it; they should be obliged to convict him: and he was met by
a storm of reproach.
_Convict_ him! roared the Major. For having picked two or three green
apricots--and for stooping to pull up a couple or so of worthless weeds?
He would be glad to ask which of them, his brother-magistrates sitting
there, would not pick an apricot, or a peach, or what not, on a Sunday,
if he wanted to eat one. The thing was utterly preposterous.
"And what was it _I_ did?" demanded George Reed, drowning voices that
would have stopped him. "I went to the garden to get up a bunch of
turnips for my sick wife, and seeing some withered weeds flung on the
bed I drew them off with the hoe. What was that, I ask? And it was no
more. No more, gentlemen, in the sight of Heaven."
No particular answer was given to this; perhaps the justices had none
ready. Mr. Brandon was beginning to confer with the other two in an
undertone, when Reed spoke again.
"I was dragged up here in handcuffs, and told I had broken the law;
Major Parrifer said to me himself that I had violated the sanctity of
the Sabbath (those were the words), and therefore I must be punished;
there was no help for it. What has he done? I did not do as much as he
has."
"Now you know, Reed, this is irregular," said one of the justices. "You
must not interrupt the Court."
"You put me in prison for a month, gentlemen," resumed Reed, paying no
attention to the injunction. "They cut my hair close in the prison, and
they kept me to hard labour for the month, as if I did not have enough
of hard labour out of it. My wife was sick and disabled at the time, my
three little children are helpless: it was no thanks to the magistrates
who sentenced me, gentlemen, or to Major Parrifer, that they did not
starve."
"Will you be quiet, Reed?"
"If I deserved one month of prison," persisted Reed, fully bent on
saying what he had to say, "Major Parrifer must deserve two months, for
his offence is greater than mine. The law is the same for both of us, I
suppose. He----"
"Reed, if you say another word, I will order you at once from the room,"
interrupted Mr. Brandon, his thin voice sharp and determined. "How dare
you persist in addressing the Bench when told to be quiet!"
Reed fell back and said no more. He knew that Mr. Brandon had a habit
of carrying out his own authority, in spite of his nervous health and
querulous way of speaking. The justices spoke a few words together, and
then said they found the offence proved, and inflicted a fine on Major
Parrifer.
He dashed the money down on the table, in too great a rage to do it
politely, and went out to his carriage. No other case was on, that day,
and the justices got up and mixed with the crowd. Mr. Brandon, who felt
chilly on the hottest summer's day, and was afraid of showers, buttoned
on a light overcoat.
"Then there are _two_ laws, sir?" said Reed to him, quite civilly, but
in a voice that every one might hear. "When the law was made against
Sabbath-breaking, those that made it passed one for the rich and another
for the poor!"
"Nonsense, Reed."
"_Nonsense_, sir? I don't see it. _I_ was put in prison; Major Parrifer
has only to pay a bit of money, which is of no more account to him than
dirt, and that he can't feel the loss of. And my offence--if it was an
offence--was less than his."
"Two wrongs don't make a right," said Mr. Brandon, dropping his voice to
a low key. "You ought not to have been put in prison, Reed; had I been
on the bench it should not have been done."
"But it was done, sir, and my life got a blight on it. It's on me yet;
will never be lifted off me."
Mr. Brandon smiled one of his quiet smiles, and spoke in a whisper. "He
has got it too, Reed, unless I am mistaken. He'll carry that fine about
with him always. Johnny, are you there? Don't go and repeat what you've
heard me say."
Mr. Brandon was right. To have been summoned before the Bench, where he
had pompously sat to summon others, and for working on a Sunday above
all things, to have been found guilty and fined, was as the most bitter
potion to Major Parrifer. The bench would never again be to him the seat
it had been; the remembrance of the day when he was before it would, as
Mr. Brandon expressed it, be carried about with him always.
They projected a visit to the sea-side at once. Mrs. Parrifer, with
three of the Miss Parrifers, came dashing up to people's houses in the
carriage, finer and louder than ever; she said that she had not been
well, and was ordered to Aberystwith for six weeks. The next day
they and the Major were off; and heaps of cards were sent round with
"P. P. C." in the corner. I think Mr. Brandon must have laughed when he
got his.
* * * * *
The winter holidays came round again. We went home for Christmas, as
usual, and found George Reed down with some sort of illness. There's
an old saying, "When the mind's at ease the body's delicate," but Mr.
Duffham always maintained that though that might apply to a short period
of time, in the long-run mind and body sympathized together. George Reed
had been a very healthy man, and as free from care as most people; this
last year care and trouble and mortification had lain on his mind, and
at the beginning of winter his health broke down. It was quite a triumph
(in the matter of opinion) for old Duffham.
The illness began with a cough and low fever, neither of which can
labourers afford time to lie up for. It went on to more fever, and to
inflammation of the lungs. There was no choice then, and Reed took to
his bed. For the most part, when our poor people fell ill, they had to
get well again without notice being taken of them; but events had drawn
attention to Reed, and made him a conspicuous character. His illness was
talked of, and so he received help. Ever since the prison affair I had
felt sorry for Reed, as had Mrs. Todhetley.
"I have had some nice strong broth made for Reed, Johnny," she said to
me one day in January; "it's as good and nourishing as beef-tea. If you
want a walk, you might take it to him."
Tod had gone out with the Squire; I felt dull, as I generally did
without him, and put on my hat and coat. Mrs. Todhetley had the broth
put into a bottle, and brought it to me wrapped in paper.
"I would send him a drop of wine as well, Johnny, if you'd take care not
to break the bottles, carrying two of them."
No fear. I put the one bottle in my breast-pocket, and took the other
in my hand. It was a cold afternoon, the sky of a steely-blue, the sun
bright, the ground hard. Major Parrifer and two of his daughters, coming
home from a ride, were cantering in at the gates as I passed, the groom
riding after them. I lifted my hat to the girls, but they only tossed
their heads.
Reed was getting over the worst then, and I found him sitting by the
kitchen fire, muffled in a bed-rug. Mrs. Reed took the bottles from me
in the back'us--as they called the place where the washing was done--for
Reed was sensitive, and did not like things to be sent to him.
"Please God, I shall be at work next week," said Reed, with a groan: and
I saw he knew that I had brought something.
He had been saying that all along; four or five weeks now. I sat down
opposite to him, and took up the boy, Georgy. The little shaver had come
round to me, holding by the chairs.
"It's going to be a hard frost, Reed."
"Is it, sir? Out-o'-door weather don't seem to be of much odds to me
now."
"And a fall o' some sort's not far off, as my wrist tells me," put in
Mrs. Reed. Years ago she had broken her wrist, and felt it always in
change of weather. "Maybe some snow's coming."
I gave Georgy a biscuit; the two little girls, who had been standing
against the press, began to come slowly forward. They guessed there was
a supply in my pocket. I had dipped into the biscuit-basket at home
before coming away. The two put out a hand each without being told, and
I dropped a biscuit into them.
It had taken neither time nor noise, and yet there was some one
standing inside the door when I looked up again, who must have come
in stealthily; some one in a dark dress, and a black and white plaid
shawl. Mrs. Reed looked and the children looked; and then Reed turned
his head to look also.
I think I was the first to know her. She had a thick black veil before
her face, and the room was not light. Reed's illness had left him thin,
and his eyes appeared very large: they assumed a sort of frightened
stare.
"Father! you are sick!"
Before he could answer, she had run across the brick floor and thrown
her arms round his neck. Cathy! The two girls were frightened and flew
to their mother; one began to scream and the other followed suit.
Altogether there was a good deal of noise and commotion. Georgy, like
a brave little man, sucked his biscuit through it all with great
composure.