"SHE'S MINE!"
"Mr Lambent treats me with respect," reasoned Hazel one afternoon when
the soreness had somewhat worn off, leaving a feeling that perhaps after
all it would be possible to stay on at Plumton All Saints.
She had been very low-spirited for some time, but as she recalled the
quiet, gentlemanly manner of the vicar, she felt relieved, and wished
she had said a few words of thanks, making up her mind to atone for the
omission at the first opportunity, and then setting so busily to work
that her troubles were temporarily forgotten.
While she was very busy, a lad arrived with a note from Miss Burge,
asking her to come up to the house to tea and talk over a proposal Mr
William Forth Burge had made about the schools, and ending with a
promise to drive her back in the pony-chaise. Hazel hesitated for a few
moments, but she did not like to slight Miss Burge's invitation, so she
wrote back saying that she would come.
Then the girls had to be dismissed, and the pence counted up and placed
in a canvas-bag along with the money received for the month's coal and
blanket club, neither of the amounts being heavy as a sum total, but,
being all in copper, of a goodly weight avoirdupois.
Just as the bag was tied up and the amounts noted down, there was a
light tap at the door, and Mr Chute stepped in, glancing quickly up at
the slit made by the half-closed partition shutters to see if it was
observable from this side.
"I just came in to say, Miss Thorne--well, that is odd now, really."
Hazel looked her wonder, and he went on:
"It's really quite funny. I said to myself, `the pence will mount up so
that they will be quite a nuisance to Miss Thorne, and I'll go and offer
to get them off her hands.'"
"Thank you, Mr Chute, I won't trouble you," replied Hazel.
"Trouble? Oh, it's no trouble," he said, laughing in a peculiar way.
"I get rid of mine at the shops, and I can just as easily put yours with
them, and of course it's much easier to keep shillings than pence; and
then when you've got enough you can change your silver for gold."
"By-the-way," said Hazel, "when do we have to give up the school pence
and club money?"
"Only once a year," said Mr Chute, who was in high glee at this
approach to intimacy. "You'll have to keep it till Christmas."
"Keep it--till Christmas! What! all that money!"
"To be sure! Oh, it isn't much. May I--send your--coppers with mine?"
Hazel paused for a moment, and then accepted the offer, the schoolmaster
noting in his pocket-book the exact amount, and waiting while Hazel went
into the cottage to fetch the other sums she had received, the whole of
which Mr Chute bore off in triumph, smiling ecstatically, and
exclaiming to himself as soon as he was alone:
"She's mine!--she's mine!--she's mine!"
After which he performed a kind of triumphal dance around the bags of
copper, rubbing his hands with satisfaction at this step towards making
himself useful to Hazel Thorne, until Mrs Chute came into the room, and
asked him what he meant by making such a fool of himself.
Mrs Chute was a hard-looking little woman, with fair hair and a
brownish skin, and one who had probably never looked pleasant in her
life. She was very proud of her son, "My Samoowel," as she always
persisted in calling him, in despite of large efforts upon the part of
that son to correct her pronunciation; and she showed her affection by
never hardly speaking to him without finding fault, snapping him up, and
making herself generally unpleasant; though, if anybody had dared to
insinuate that Samuel Chute was not the most handsome, the most clever,
and the best son in the world, it would have been exceedingly unpleasant
for that body, for Mrs Chute, relict of Mr Samuel Chute, senior, of
"The Docks," possessed a tongue.
What Mr Samuel Chute, senior, had been in "The Docks," no one ever
knew, and it had not been to any one's interest to find out. Suffice it
that, after a long course of education somewhere at a national school in
East London, Mr Samuel Chute, junior, had risen to be a pupil-teacher,
and thence to a scholarship, resulting in a regular training; then after
a minor appointment or two, he had obtained the mastership at Plumton
School, where he had proved himself to be a good son by taking his
mother home to keep house for him, and she had made him miserable ever
since.
"Why, what are you thinking about, Samoowel, dancing round the money
like a mad miser?"
"Oh, nonsense, mother! I was only--only--"
"Only, only making a great noodle of yourself. Money's right enough,
but I'd be ashamed of myself if I cared so much for it that I was bound
to dance about that how."
Mr Chute did not answer, so she went on:
"I don't think much of these Thornes, Samoowel."
"Not think much of them, mother?"
"There, bless the boy, didn't I speak plain? Don't keep repeating every
word I say. I don't think much of them. That Mrs Thorne's the
stuck-uppest body I ever met."
"Oh no, she's an invalid."
"I daresay she is! But I'd have every complaint under the sun, from tic
to teething, without being so proud and stuck-up as she is. I went in
this afternoon quite neighbourly like, but, oh dear me! and lor' bless
you! she almost as good as ast me what I wanted."
"But--but I hope you didn't say anything unpleasant mother?"
"Now, am I a woman as ever did say anything unpleasant, Samoowel? The
most unpleasant thing I said was that I hoped she was as proud of her
daughter as I was of my son."
"And did you say that mother?"
"Of course I did, and then she began to talk about her girl, and grew a
little more civil; but I don't like her, Samoowel. She smells of pride,
'orrid; and as for her girl--there--"
Mr Samuel Chute did not stop to hear the latter part of the lady's
speech, for just then he caught sight of the top of a bonnet passing the
window, and he ran into the next room, so as to be able to see its
wearer going along the road towards the market-place.
"What is the matter, Samoowel? Is it an acciden'?" cried Mrs Chute,
running after him.
"No, no, nothing, mother," he replied, turning away from the window to
meet the lady. "Nothing at all!"
"Why, Samoowel," she cried, looking at him with an aspect full of
disgust, "don't tell me that--you were staring after that girl!"
"I wasn't going to tell you I was looking after her, mother," said the
young man sulkily.
"No, but I can see for myself," cried Mrs Chute angrily. "The idea of
a boy of mine having no more pride than to be running after a stuck-up,
dressy body like that, who looks at his poor mother as if she wasn't fit
to be used to wipe her shoes on, and I dessey they ain't paid for."
"Mother," cried the young man, "if you speak to me like that you'll
drive me mad!"
"And now he abuses his poor mother, who has been a slave to him all her
life!" cried the lady. "Oh, Samoowel, Samoowel, when I'm dead and cold
and in my grave, these words of yours'll stand out like fires of
reproach, and make you repent and--There, if he hasn't gone after her,"
she cried furiously; for, finding that her son did not speak, she
lowered the apron that she had thrown over her face, slowly and softly,
till she found that she was alone, when she jumped up from the chair
into which she had thrown herself, ran to the window, and was just in
time to see Mr Samuel Chute walking quickly towards the town.
"He don't have her if I can prevent it!" cried Mrs Chute viciously, and
the expression of her face was not pleasant just then.
But Samuel Chute neither heard her words nor saw her looks, as a matter
of course, for he was walking steadily after Hazel, wondering whither
she was bound.
It was the last thing in the world that he would do--watch her, but all
the same he wanted to know where she went, and if it was for a walk, why
he might turn up by accident just as she was coming back; and then, of
course, he could walk with her, and somehow, now that he had so far been
taken into her confidence in being trusted to change the school and club
money for her, it would be easy to win another step in advance.
"I lay twopence she walks out with me arm-in-arm before another month's
out," he said triumphantly; "and mother must get over it best way she
can."
All this while Hazel was some two hundred yards ahead, for the
schoolmaster did not attempt to overtake her, but merely noted where she
went, and followed.
"She's turned off by the low road," said Samuel Chute to himself.
"She's going by old Burge's. Well, that is the prettiest walk, and--of
course, I could go across by the footpath, and come out in the road this
side of Burge's, and meet her, and that would be better than seeming to
have followed her."
Acting upon this idea, Samuel Chute struck out of the main street and
went swiftly along a narrow lane, and then by the footpath over the
meadows to the road, a walk of a good mile and a half before he was out
into the winding road that led by Mr Burge's.
"She'll come upon me here, plump," he said with a laugh. "I wonder what
she'll say, and whether she'll look at me again in that pretty, shy way,
same as she did when I took the school pence! Hah, things are going on
right for you, my boy; and what could be better?"
There was no answer to his question, so Samuel Chute went on making
arrangements, like the Eastern man with his basket of crockery ware.
"I'll tell you what we'll do; we'll put both the old ladies together in
one house, while we live in the other. Nothing could be easier. I say,
isn't it time she was here?"
He glanced at his watch, and it certainly seemed to be time for Hazel to
have reached as far. She was not long, however, in appearing now round
the bend of the road, looking brighter and more attractive than Samuel
Chute had seen her yet, for there was a warm flush in her cheek, and her
eyes were sparkling and full of vivacity. But in spite of this the
schoolmaster drew his breath through his teeth with a spiteful hiss, and
as he leaned a little forward and stared at Hazel Thorne, his
countenance assumed the same ugly look, full of dislike and spite, that
had been seen in his mother's face only a short time before.