When I came into supper that evening my friend of the fog was standing
beside father on the parlor hearth-rug. Directly I saw him, I wondered
how I could have been such a fool as not to have guessed at once that
that was Mr. Trayton Harrod. But it had never occurred to me for a
moment; and when I recognized in the man to whom I had promised to be
friendly, also the person who had presumed to take me by the waist and
pitch me over a gate, all my bad temper of before swelled up within me
worse than ever, and I felt as though it would be quite impossible for
me even to be civil. And yet I had since promised somebody, even more
definitely than I had promised Joyce, that I would do my best to make
matters run smoothly.
On that very evening father had made an appeal to my better feelings.
It seems that, while I had been out, Reuben Ruck and mother had had a
real pitched battle. Mother had told him to do something in preparation
for the arrival of the bailiff, which he had refused to do; and upon
that mother had gone to father, and had said that it was absolutely
necessary that Reuben should leave.
When I came home I had found father standing on the terrace in the
sunset. It was a very unwise thing for him to do, for the air was
chill. I wondered what had brought him out, and whether he could be
looking for me. The little feeling of estrangement that had been
between us since he had settled for the bailiff to come to the farm had
given me a great deal of pain, and a lump rose in my throat as I saw
him there watching me come up the hill. It was partly repentance for
the feelings I had had towards him, partly hope that he was going to
want me again as he used to do.
"Where have you been, lass?" said he, when I reached him. "You look
sadly."
I laughed. The tears were near, but I laughed. My arm hurt me very
much, and my head ached strangely; but I was so glad to hear him speak
to me again like that.
"The mist has taken my hair out of curl," said I; "that's all. I have
been down to the cliffs to take old Warren some tea. Did you want me?"
"Yes," answered he; "I want to have a talk with you."
"Well, come in-doors then," said I. "You know you oughtn't to be out so
late."
We went into the study. Mother and Deb were getting supper ready in the
front dwelling-room. There was no lamp lit; we sat down in the dusk.
"Your mother and Reuben have had a row, Meg," began father, with a kind
of twinkle in his eye, although he spoke gravely.
"A row!" echoed I; "what about?"
"About Mr. Trayton Harrod," answered father; "she wants me to send
Reuben away."
"Send Reuben away!" cried I, aghast. "Why, it wouldn't be possible.
There would be more harm done by the old folks going away than any good
that would come of new folks coming; that I'll warrant."
"That's not the question," said father, tapping the table with his
hand. "Mr. Harrod has got to come, you know, and if the old folks don't
like it, why, they'll have to go."
"There's one thing certain," added I, "Reuben wouldn't go if he were
sent away fifty times."
Father laughed; the first time I had heard him laugh for a fortnight.
"Well, he'll have to be pleasant if he does stay," said he.
"Oh, you none of you understand Reuben," said I. "He's not so stupid as
you all think. He'll be pleasant if he thinks it's for our good that he
should be pleasant. He wishes us well. But he'll want convincing first.
And," I added, with a little laugh, "maybe I want convincing myself
first."
And it was then that father appealed to my better feelings.
"Yes, Meg," said he, "I know that. I've seen that all along, and maybe
it's natural. We none of us like strangers about. But I thought fit to
have Mr. Harrod come for the good of the farm, and now what we all have
to do is to treat him civilly, and make the work easy for him." I was
silent, but father went on: "And what I want you to do, Meg, is to help
me make the work easy for him. It won't be easier to him than it is to
us. If his father had not died beggared I suppose he would have had his
own by now. It is a hard thing for children when their parents beggar
them." It being dark, I could not see his face, but I heard him sigh,
and I saw him pass his hand over his brow. "Mother is right," he added.
"We ought to make him feel it as little as we can, and as Joyce is
away, you're the daughter of the house now, Meg. I want you to remember
that. I want you to do the honors of the house as a daughter should.
What a daughter is at home a wife will be when she is married."
"I shall never marry," said I, with a short laugh. "But I'll behave
properly, father, never fear."
"That's right, my lass," said father, who seemed to take this speech as
meaning something more conciliatory than it looks now as I set it down.
"He is coming to-night to supper. Mother means to ask him to come every
night to supper. She would have liked to give him house-room, but that
don't seem to be possible. So we mean to make him welcome to our board."
"All right," said I. "I suppose mother knows best."
"Yes," echoed father; "mother always knows best. She's a wise woman,
that's why every one loves her."
Again I promised to do what I could to resemble mother--to conciliate
Reuben, and to make myself agreeable to our guest. And yet, alas! in
spite of all that, I could not conquer my petty feelings of ill-temper
when I came into the parlor and found that the man to whom I intended
to be polite was the man who had offended me by being polite to me.
What a foolish girl I was! As I look back upon it now I am half
inclined to smile. But I was only nineteen.
Mr. Harrod had his back towards me when I came into the room. But I
could not have failed to recognize the broad, strong shoulders and the
very black curly hair. I must have been the more changed of the two,
for I had brushed and braided my locks, which curled all the merrier
for the wetting, and I had put on another dress. Nevertheless, his eyes
had scarcely rested upon me before his mouth broke again into that
smile that showed the strong white teeth.
"I hope you're none the worse, miss," said he. "I was afraid you had
got a bad shaking."
Deborah, who was bringing in the supper, looked at me sharply. Mother
had not yet come in, and father was in a brown-study, but the remark
had not escaped old Deb. She could not keep silence even before a
stranger.
"I thought you looked as if you had been up to some mischief again,"
said she. "Your face is a nice sight."
I flushed angrily. I think it was enough to make any girl angry.
It was bad enough to know that I was disfigured by a scratch on my
cheek without having a stranger's attention attracted to it, and
running a risk besides of a scolding from mother, who came in at the
moment. Luckily she did not hear what Deborah had said. She was too
much engaged in welcoming her guest, which she did with that gentle
dignity that to some might have looked like a want of cordiality, but
to me seems, as I look back upon it, to be just what a welcome should
be--hospitable without being anxious. But when we were seated at the
supper-table she noticed the mark on my face.
"It's only a fall that I got on the marsh," said I, in answer to her
inquiry. "It isn't of the slightest consequence."
She said no more, neither did Mr. Harrod. I must say I was grateful to
him. He saw that I wished the matter to be forgotten, and he respected
my desire; but I have often wondered since, what construction he
put upon my behavior. If he thought about me at all, he must have
considered me a somewhat extraordinary example of a young lady, but I
do not suppose that he did consider me at all. Of course I was nothing
but a figure to him; he had plenty to do feeling his level in the new
life upon which he had just entered.
I am sure that Mr. Harrod was a very shy and a very proud man. When
mother said that she should expect him every evening to sup at the
Grange, he refused her invitation with what I thought scant gratitude,
although the words he used were civil enough; and when father spoke
of his friendship with the squire, he said that he was beholden to
the squire for his recommendation, but that he should never consider
himself a friend of a man who was in a different station of life to
himself.
I think in my heart I admired him for this sentiment, and father should
also have approved of it; but if I remember rightly, mother made
some quiet rejoinder to the effect that it was not always the people
who were on one's own level that were really one's best friends. I
recollect that she, who was wont generally to sit and listen, worked
hard that evening to keep up the conversation.
Dear mother! whom with the arrogance of youth I had never considered
excellent excepting as a housewife or a sick-nurse. County news, the
volunteer camp, the drainage of the marsh, the scarcity of well-water,
the want of enterprise in the towns-people, the coming elections--dear
me, she had them all out, whereas father and I, who had undertaken,
as it were, to put our best legs foremost, sat silent and glum. To do
myself justice, I had a racking headache, and for once in my life I
really felt ill, but I might have behaved better than I did.
Mr. Harrod began to thaw slowly under the influence of mother's
kindness. She had such a winning way with her when she chose, that
everybody gave way before it; and I noticed that even from the very
first, when he was certainly in a touchy frame of mind towards these,
his first employers, Mr. Harrod treated mother with just the same
reverential consideration that every one always used towards her.
In spite of it all that first evening was not a comfortable time.
Father and Mr. Harrod compared notes upon different breeds of cattle
and upon different kinds of grains; but there was a restraint upon us
all, and I think every one was glad when mother made the move from the
table and father lit his pipe. I have no knowledge of how they got on
afterwards over their tobacco; when I rose from the table the room swam
around me, and if it had not been for Deborah, who, entering on some
errand at the moment, took me by the shoulders and pushed me out of the
door in front of her, I am afraid I should have made a most unusual and
undignified exhibition of myself in the Grange parlor. As it was I had
to submit to be tucked up in bed by the old woman, and only persuaded
her with the greatest difficulty not to tell mother of my accident,
some account of which, as was to be expected, she wrung from me in
explanation of Mr. Harrod's words in the parlor.
"I'd not have been beholden to him if I could have helped it," were the
consoling words with which she left me; and as I lay there, aching and
miserable, I became quite convinced that any comradeship between myself
and my father's bailiff had become all the more impossible because of
the occurrence of the afternoon.