I went into the sunlight and stood leaning upon the garden-hedge
looking out over the glittering plain of snow to the glittering blue
of the sea beyond. The whole scene was set with jewels of light, and
even the gray fortress in the marsh seemed to awaken for once out
of its sleep; but I was in no mood to laugh with the sunbeams, for
my heart was beating with angry thoughts. A bailiff, a manager for
Knellestone--and Knellestone that had been managed by nobody but its
own masters for three hundred years! It was impossible! Why, the very
earth would rise up and rebel! From where I stood I could see our
meadows down on the marsh, our fields away on the hills towards the
sunset, the pastures where our shepherds spent cold nights in huts
at the lambing-time, the land where our oxen drew the plough and our
laborers tilled the soil and harvested the ingatherings. Would the men
and the beasts work for the manager as they worked for us? Would the
land prosper for a stranger and a hireling, who would not care whether
the cattle lived or died, whether the seasons were kind or cruel,
whether the trees and the flowers flourished or pined away, who would
get his salary just the same, though the frost nipped the new crops,
though the wheat dried up for want of rain or rotted in the ear for
lack of sun, though the cows cast their calves and the lambs died at
the birth? How absurd, how ridiculous it was! Did it not show that it
had been suggested by one who took no interest in the land, but who let
it all out to others to care for? Of course this was some spendthrift
younger son of a ruined gentleman's family, or some idiot who had
failed at every other profession, and was to be sent here to ruin other
people without having any responsibility of his own--somebody to whom
the squire owed a duty or a favor. Perhaps a man who had never been on
a farm in his life, maybe had not even lived in the country at all.
In my childish anger I became utterly unreasonable, and gave vent in
my solitude to any absurd expressions that occurred to me. I smile to
myself as I remember the impotent rage of that afternoon. Indeed, I
think I hated the squire most thoroughly that day. It was the idea,
too, that I was being set at naught that added to my anger. Hitherto
it was I who had transmitted father's orders to the men whenever he
was laid by or busy; and, as I have said before, he often trusted me
to ride to the bank with money, and even to take stock of the goods
before sales and fairs came on. Of course I know now that I was worse
than useless to him. I was a clever girl enough, and dauntless in
the matter of fatigue or trouble, but I was entirely ignorant of the
hundred little details that make all the difference in matters of that
kind, and pluck and coolness stood me in poor stead of experience.
But at that time I was confident, and as I stood there looking at
the brightness that I did not see, tears came into my eyes--tears
of mortification, that even the squire should have considered me so
perfectly useless that I could be set aside as though I did not exist.
How often I had wished to be a boy! How heartily I wished it that
afternoon! If I had been a boy there would never even have been a
question of getting a paid manager to help father. I should have been a
man by this time, nearly of age, and no one would have doubted that I
was clever enough and strong enough to see after my own.
Father called from the window, and I went in. He was sitting by the
table, surrounded by papers, his foot supported on a chair.
"Sit down, Meg," said he. "I want you to help me remember one or two
things in the books that I don't quite understand--I think you can."
He spoke quite cheerfully. I had been setting down things in the book
while he had been ill, and paying the wages to the men, and it was
quite natural he should want to see me about it. I sat down, and we
went over the books item by item. We had had a very sound education,
though simple, quite as good as most girls have, and I had been
considered more than usually smart at figures. But that day I think I
was dazed. I could not remember things; I could not tell why the books
were not square; my wits were muddled on every point. Father was most
patient, most kind. I think he must have seen that I was over-anxious,
but his kindness only made me more disgusted with myself; for I knew
that that dreadful question was in his mind the whole time, as it was
in mine.
Whenever I told him anything that was not satisfactory in the conduct
of affairs, or anything that had failed to turn out as he expected, I
knew that it was in his mind, although he did not think I saw it.
"We can't expect old heads to grow on young shoulders," said he at
last, patting mine gently, a thing most rare for him to do. "It takes
many a long day to learn experience, my dear. And sometimes we don't do
so much better with it than we did without it." He put the books away
as he spoke, and leaned back in his chair. "That'll do now, child," he
added; "to-morrow I shall be able to see the men myself. I am well and
hearty again now--thank the Lord--and a good bit of work will do me
good."
"You mustn't begin too soon, father," said I, timidly; "you know the
weather is very cold and treacherous yet."
"Oh, you women would keep a man in-doors forever for fear the wind
should blow in his face," cried he, testily. "But there's an end to
everything. When I'm ill you shall all do what you like with me, but
when I'm well I mean to be my own master."
"But I shall still be able to help you, father, as I have done
before, sha'n't I?" added I, still, singularly, without my accustomed
self-confidence.
"Why, yes, child, of course," he replied. "And you and I will be able
to get on yet awhile without a stranger's help, I'll warrant." It was
the only allusion he had made to the horrible subject during the whole
of our interview. It was the only allusion he made to it in my presence
for many a long day. He rose from his chair as he spoke the last words,
and walked across to the window.
The afternoon was beginning to sink, and the sun had paled in its
splendor. The lights were gray now over the whiteness of the marsh, and
the snow looked cold and cruel. Something made my heart sink, too, as
I noticed how gray was father's face in the scrutinizing light of the
afternoon. I had not noticed before that he had really been ill. I left
the room quickly, and went out again. The stinging March air struck a
chill into my bones, and yet it was scarcely more than four o'clock.
Two hours of daylight yet! How was it possible that any man but the
strongest should work as a man must work whose farm should prosper? And
was father really a strong man? I was sick with misgivings. What if,
after all, the squire were right? But I would not believe it. Father
had had the gout; it was always the strongest men who had the gout.
I turned to go in-doors. A laugh greeted my ears from the library. I
passed before the window. Yes; it was father who was laughing as he
shook hands with a man who had just entered the room. I looked. The
man was a tall, blond, spare fellow, with a sanguine complexion, very
marked features, small gray eyes, and a bald head. I knew him to be a
Mr. Hoad, father's solicitor in town. He was well dressed in a black
suit and gray trousers. He was a very successful man for his time of
life, people said. I knew that father liked him, and I was glad that
father should have a visitor who cheered him to-day. But for my own
part, I knew no one who filled me with such a peculiar antipathy. I
could not bear the sight of the man. Yet he was a harmless kind of
fellow, and very polite to ladies. Joyce often used to take me to
task for my excessive dislike to him. If it was because I did not
consider him on equal terms with us, from a social point of view--for
I must confess I was ridiculously prejudiced on this score, and where
I had learned such nonsense I do not know--then the ship-owners and
other people of that class to whom I could give "good-day" in town
were much less so. But I could not have told why I disliked him so
particularly; I could not have told why I wondered that father could
have any dealings with him--why I was always on the watch for something
that should prove that I was in the right in my instinct. And somehow
his appearance on this particular evening affected me even more
uncomfortably than usual, and I felt that I could not go in and see
him--perhaps even have to discuss the very subject that was weighing
on my mind, when I wanted to be alone to nurse my own mortification,
and lull my fears to rest by myself. I crept into the hall quietly and
fetched a cloak and hood, and then, running round to the yard, I called
the St. Bernard. He came, leaping and jumping upon me, this friend with
whom I was always in tune. I opened the gate gently, and together we
went out upon the road.
I think Taff and I must have walked three miles. The roads were stiff
and slippery, the air was like a knife; but I did not care. The quick
movement and the solitude and the quiet of the coming night soothed
me. We got up upon the downs where lonely homesteads stud the country
here and there, and came back again along the cliffs that crown the
marsh-land. There I stood a long while face to face with the quiet
world upon which the moon had now risen in the deep blue of a twilight
sky. It looked down upon the wide, white marsh upon whose frozen bosom
gray vapors floated lightly; it looked down upon the dark town that
rose yonder so sombre and distinct out of the mystery of the landscape;
the channel that flows to the sea lay cold and blue and motionless at
the foot of the hill like a sheet of steel. It made me shudder. There
was not a ripple upon its deathly breast. The snow around was far more
tender. For the first time in my life I felt the sadness of the world;
I realized that there was something in it which I could not understand;
I remembered that there was such a thing as death.