“No hurry,” said the skipper, somewhat incensed at his haste. “It
wouldn’t have hurt _you_ to have waited a bit.”
“Waited?” said the other. “What for?”
“For my visitors,” was the reply.
The mate bit a piece off a crust and stirred his tea. “No use waiting
for them,” he said, with a grin. “They ain’t coming.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the skipper.
“I mean,” said the mate, continuing to stir his tea with great
enjoyment—“I mean that all that kind’artedness of yours was clean
chucked away on that cook. He’s got a berth ashore and he’s gone for
good. He left you ’is love; he left it with Bill Hemp.”
“Berth ashore?” said the skipper, staring.
“Ah!” said the mate, taking a large and noisy sip from his cup. “He’s
been fooling you all along for what he could get out of you. Sleeping
aft and feeding aft, nobody to speak a word to ’im, and going out and
being treated by the skipper; Bill said he laughed so much when he was
telling ’im that the tears was running down ’is face like rain. He said
he’d never been treated so much in his life.”
“That’ll do,” said the skipper, quickly.
“You ought to hear Bill tell it,” said the mate, regretfully. “I can’t
do it anything like as well as what he can. Made us all roar, he did.
What amused ’em most was you thinking that that gal was cookie’s
sister.”
The skipper, with a sharp exclamation, leaned forward, staring at him.
“They’re going to be married at Christmas,” said the mate, choking in
his cup.
The skipper sat upright again, and tried manfully to compose his
features. Many things he had not understood before were suddenly made
clear, and he remembered now the odd way in which the girl had regarded
him as she bade him good-night on the previous evening. The mate eyed
him with interest, and was about to supply him with further details
when his attention was attracted by footsteps descending the
companion-ladder. Then he put down his cup with great care, and stared
in stolid amazement at the figure of Miss Jewell in the doorway.
“I’m a bit late,” she said, flushing slightly.
She crossed over and shook hands with the skipper, and, in the most
natural fashion in the world, took a seat and began to remove her
gloves. The mate swung round and regarded her open-mouthed; the
skipper, whose ideas were in a whirl, sat regarding her in silence. The
mate was the first to move; he left the cabin rubbing his shin, and
casting furious glances at the skipper.
“You didn’t expect to see me?” said the girl, reddening again.
“No,” was the reply.
The girl looked at the tablecloth. “I came to beg your pardon,” she
said, in a low voice.
“There’s nothing to beg my pardon for,” said the skipper, clearing his
throat. “By rights I ought to beg yours. You did quite right to make
fun of me. I can see it now.”
“When you asked me whether I was Bert’s sister I didn’t like to say
‘no,’ continued the girl; “and at first I let you come out with me for
the fun of the thing, and then Bert said it would be good for him, and
then—then—”
“Yes,” said the skipper, after a long pause.
The girl broke a biscuit into small pieces, and arranged them on the
cloth. “Then I didn’t mind your coming so much,” she said, in a low
voice.
The skipper caught his breath and tried to gaze at the averted face.
The girl swept the crumbs aside and met his gaze squarely. “Not quite
so much,” she explained.
“I’ve been a fool,” said the skipper. “I’ve been a fool. I’ve made
myself a laughing-stock all round, but if I could have it all over
again I would.”
“That can never be,” said the girl, shaking her head. “Bert wouldn’t
come.”
[Illustration: “‘Good-by,’ he said, slowly; ‘and I wish you both
every happiness.’”]
“No, of course not,” asserted the other.
The girl bit her lip. The skipper thought that he had never seen her
eyes so large and shining. There was a long silence.
“Good-by,” said the girl at last, rising.
The skipper rose to follow. “Good-by,” he said, slowly; “and I wish you
both every happiness.”
“Happiness?” echoed the girl, in a surprised voice. “Why?”
“When you are married.”
“I am not going to be married,” said the girl. “I told Bert so this
afternoon. Good-by.”
The skipper actually let her get nearly to the top of the ladder before
he regained his presence of mind. Then, in obedience to a powerful tug
at the hem of her skirt, she came down again, and accompanied him
meekly back to the cabin.
HIS LORDSHIP
[Illustration]
HIS LORDSHIP
Farmer Rose sat in his porch smoking an evening pipe. By his side, in a
comfortable Windsor chair, sat his friend the miller, also smoking, and
gazing with half-closed eyes at the landscape as he listened for the
thousandth time to his host’s complaints about his daughter.
“The long and the short of it is, Cray,” said the farmer, with an air
of mournful pride, “she’s far too good-looking.”
Mr. Cray grunted.
“Truth is truth, though she’s my daughter,” continued Mr. Rose,
vaguely. “She’s too good-looking. Sometimes when I’ve taken her up to
market I’ve seen the folks fair turn their backs on the cattle and
stare at her instead.”
Mr. Cray sniffed; louder, perhaps, than he had intended. “Beautiful
that rose-bush smells,” he remarked, as his friend turned and eyed him.
“What is the consequence?” demanded the farmer, relaxing his gaze. “She
looks in the glass and sees herself, and then she gets miserable and
uppish because there ain’t nobody in these parts good enough for her to
marry.”
“It’s a extraordinary thing to me where she gets them good looks from,”
said the miller, deliberately.
“Ah!” said Mr. Rose, and sat trying to think of a means of enlightening
his friend without undue loss of modesty.
“She ain’t a bit like her poor mother,” mused Mr. Cray.
“No, she don’t get her looks from her,” assented the other.
“It’s one o’ them things you can’t account for,” said Mr. Cray, who was
very tired of the subject; “it’s just like seeing a beautiful flower
blooming on an old cabbage-stump.”
The farmer knocked his pipe out noisily and began to refill it. “People
have said that she takes after me a trifle,” he remarked, shortly.
“You weren’t fool enough to believe that, I know,” said the miller.
“Why, she’s no more like you than you’re like a warming-pan—not so
much.”
Mr. Rose regarded his friend fixedly. “You ain’t got a very nice way o’
putting things, Cray,” he said, mournfully.
“I’m no flatterer,” said the miller; “never was. And you can’t please
everybody. If I said your daughter took after you I don’t s’pose she’d
ever speak to me again.”
“The worst of it is,” said the farmer, disregarding his remark, “she
won’t settle down. There’s young Walter Lomas after her now, and she
won’t look at him. He’s a decent young fellow is Walter, and she’s been
and named one o’ the pigs after him, and the way she mixes them up
together is disgraceful.”
“If she was my girl she should marry young Walter,” said the miller,
firmly. “What’s wrong with him?”
“She looks higher,” replied the other, mysteriously; “she’s always
reading them romantic books full o’ love tales, and she’s never tired
o’ talking of a girl her mother used to know that went on the stage and
married a baronet. She goes and sits in the best parlor every afternoon
now, and calls it the drawing-room. She’ll sit there till she’s past
the marrying age, and then she’ll turn round and blame me.”
“She wants a lesson,” said Mr. Cray, firmly. “She wants to be taught
her position in life, not to go about turning up her nose at young men
and naming pigs after them.”
Mr. Rose sighed.
“What she wants to understand is that the upper classes wouldn’t look
at her,” pursued the miller.
“It would be easier to make her understand that if they didn’t,” said
the farmer.
“I mean,” said Mr. Cray, sternly, “with a view to marriage. What you
ought to do is to get somebody staying down here with you pretending to
be a lord or a nobleman, and ordering her about and not noticing her
good looks at all. Then, while she’s upset about that, in comes Walter
Lomas to comfort her and be a contrast to the other.”
Mr. Rose withdrew his pipe and regarded him open-mouthed.
“Yes; but how—” he began.
“And it seems to me,” interrupted Mr. Cray, “that I know just the young
fellow to do it—nephew of my wife’s. He was coming to stay a fortnight
with us, but you can have him with pleasure—me and him don’t get on
over and above well.”
“Perhaps he wouldn’t do it,” objected the farmer.
“He’d do it like a shot,” said Mr. Cray, positively. “It would be fun
for us and it ’ud be a lesson for her. If you like, I’ll tell him to
write to you for lodgings, as he wants to come for a fortnight’s fresh
air after the fatiguing gayeties of town.”
“Fatiguing gayeties of town,” repeated the admiring farmer.
“Fatiguing—”
He sat back in his chair and laughed, and Mr. Cray, delighted at the
prospect of getting rid so easily of a tiresome guest, laughed too.
Overhead at the open window a third person laughed, but in so quiet and
well-bred a fashion that neither of them heard her.
The farmer received a letter a day or two afterwards, and negotiations
between Jane Rose on the one side and Lord Fairmount on the other were
soon in progress; the farmer’s own composition being deemed somewhat
crude for such a correspondence.
“I wish he didn’t want it kept so secret,” said Miss Rose, pondering
over the final letter. “I should like to let the Grays and one or two
more people know he is staying with us. However, I suppose he must have
his own way.”
“You must do as he wishes,” said her father, using his handkerchief
violently.
Jane sighed. “He’ll be a little company for me, at any rate,” she
remarked. “What is the matter, father?”
“Bit of a cold,” said the farmer, indistinctly, as he made for the
door, still holding his handkerchief to his face. “Been coming on some
time.”
He put on his hat and went out, and Miss Rose, watching him from the
window, was not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a
man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned
at one o’clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm
which was raging in the house, she noted with pleasure that his sense
of humor was more under control.
“Dinner?” she said, as he strove to squeeze past the furniture which
was piled in the hall. “We’ve got no time to think of dinner, and if we
had there’s no place for you to eat it. You’d better go in the larder
and cut yourself a crust of bread and cheese.”
Her father hesitated and glared at the servant, who, with her head
bound up in a duster, passed at the double with a broom. Then he walked
slowly into the kitchen.
Miss Rose called out something after him.
“Eh?” said her father, coming back hopefully.
“How is your cold, dear?”
The farmer made no reply, and his daughter smiled contentedly as she
heard him stamping about in the larder. He made but a poor meal, and
then, refusing point-blank to assist Annie in moving the piano, went
and smoked a very reflective pipe in the garden.
[Illustration: “‘She’s got your eyes,’ said his lordship.”]
Lord Fairmount arrived the following day on foot from the station, and
after acknowledging the farmer’s salute with a distant nod requested
him to send a cart for his luggage. He was a tall, good-looking young
man, and as he stood in the hall languidly twisting his mustache Miss
Rose deliberately decided upon his destruction.
“These your daughters?” he inquired, carelessly, as he followed his
host into the parlor.
“One of ’em is, my lord; the other is my servant,” replied the farmer.
“She’s got your eyes,” said his lordship, tapping the astonished Annie
under the chin; “your nose too, I think.”
“That’s my servant,” said the farmer, knitting his brows at him.
“Oh, indeed!” said his lordship, airily.
He turned round and regarded Jane, but, although she tried to meet him
half-way by elevating her chin a little, his audacity failed him and
the words died away on his tongue. A long silence followed, broken only
by the ill-suppressed giggles of Annie, who had retired to the kitchen.
“I trust that we shall make your lordship comfortable,” said Miss Rose.
“I hope so, my good girl,” was the reply. “And now will you show me my
room?”
Miss Rose led the way upstairs and threw open the door; Lord Fairmount,
pausing on the threshold, gazed at it disparagingly.
“Is this the best room you have?” he inquired, stiffly.
“Oh, no,” said Miss Rose, smiling; “father’s room is much better than
this. Look here.”
She threw open another door and, ignoring a gesticulating figure which
stood in the hall below, regarded him anxiously. “If you would prefer
father’s room he would be delighted for you to have it. Delighted.”
“Yes, I will have this one,” said Lord Fairmount, entering. “Bring me
up some hot water, please, and clear these boots and leggings out.”
Miss Rose tripped downstairs and, bestowing a witching smile upon her
sire, waved away his request for an explanation and hastened into the
kitchen, whence Annie shortly afterwards emerged with the water.
It was with something of a shock that the farmer discovered that he had
to wait for his dinner while his lordship had luncheon. That meal,
under his daughter’s management, took a long time, and the joint when
it reached him was more than half cold. It was, moreover, quite clear
that the aristocracy had not even mastered the rudiments of carving,
but preferred instead to box the compass for tit-bits.
He ate his meal in silence, and when it was over sought out his guest
to administer a few much-needed stage-directions. Owing, however, to
the ubiquity of Jane he wasted nearly the whole of the afternoon before
he obtained an opportunity. Even then the interview was short, the
farmer having to compress into ten seconds instructions for Lord
Fairmount to express a desire to take his meals with the family, and
his dinner at the respectable hour of 1 p.m. Instructions as to a
change of bedroom were frustrated by the reappearance of Jane.
His lordship went for a walk after that, and coming back with a bored
air stood on the hearthrug in the living-room and watched Miss Rose
sewing.
“Very dull place,” he said at last, in a dissatisfied voice.
“Yes, my lord,” said Miss Rose, demurely.
“Fearfully dull,” complained his lordship, stifling a yawn. “What I’m
to do to amuse myself for a fortnight I’m sure I don’t know.”
Miss Rose raised her fine eyes and regarded him intently. Many a lesser
man would have looked no farther for amusement.
“I’m afraid there is not much to do about here, my lord,” she said
quietly. “We are very plain folk in these parts.”
“Yes,” assented the other. An obvious compliment rose of itself to his
lips, but he restrained himself, though with difficulty. Miss Rose bent
her head over her work and stitched industriously. His lordship took up
a book and, remembering his mission, read for a couple of hours without
taking the slightest notice of her. Miss Rose glanced over in his
direction once or twice, and then, with a somewhat vixenish expression
on her delicate features, resumed her sewing.
“Wonderful eyes she’s got,” said the gentleman, as he sat on the edge
of his bed that night and thought over the events of the day. “It’s
pretty to see them flash.”
He saw them flash several times during the next few days, and Mr. Rose
himself, was more than satisfied with the hauteur with which his guest
treated the household.
“But I don’t like the way you have with me,” he complained.
“It’s all in the part,” urged his lordship.
“Well, you can leave that part out,” rejoined Mr. Rose, with some
acerbity. “I object to being spoke to as you speak to me before that
girl Annie. Be as proud and unpleasant as you like to my daughter, but
leave me alone. Mind that!”
His lordship promised, and in pursuance of his host’s instructions
strove manfully to subdue feelings towards Miss Rose by no means in
accordance with them. The best of us are liable to absent-mindedness,
and he sometimes so far forgot himself as to address her in tones as
humble as any in her somewhat large experience.
“I hope that we are making you comfortable here, my lord?” she said, as
they sat together one afternoon.
“I have never been more comfortable in my life,” was the gracious
reply.
Miss Rose shook her head. “Oh, my lord,” she said, in protest, “think
of your mansion.”
His lordship thought of it. For two or three days he had been thinking
of houses and furniture and other things of that nature.
“I have never seen an old country seat,” continued Miss Rose, clasping
her hands and gazing at him wistfully. “I should be so grateful if your
lordship would describe yours to me.”
His lordship shifted uneasily, and then, in face of the girl’s
persistence, stood for some time divided between the contending claims
of Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London. He finally decided
upon the former, after first refurnishing it at Maple’s.
“How happy you must be!” said the breathless Jane, when he had
finished.
He shook his head gravely. “My possessions have never given me any
happiness,” he remarked. “I would much rather be in a humble rank of
life. Live where I like, and—and marry whom I like.”
There was no mistaking the meaning fall in his voice. Miss Rose sighed
gently and lowered her eyes—her lashes had often excited comment. Then,
in a soft voice, she asked him the sort of life he would prefer.
In reply, his lordship, with an eloquence which surprised himself,
portrayed the joys of life in a seven-roomed house in town, with a
greenhouse six feet by three, and a garden large enough to contain it.
He really spoke well, and when he had finished his listener gazed at
him with eyes suffused with timid admiration.
“Oh, my lord,” she said, prettily, “now I know what you’ve been doing.
You’ve been slumming.”
“Slumming?” gasped his lordship.
“You couldn’t have described a place like that unless you had been,”
said Miss Rose nodding. “I hope you took the poor people some nice hot
soup.”
His lordship tried to explain, but without success. Miss Rose persisted
in regarding him as a missionary of food and warmth, and spoke
feelingly of the people who had to live in such places. She also warned
him against the risk of infection.
“You don’t understand,” he repeated, impatiently. “These are nice
houses—nice enough for anybody to live in. If you took soup to people
like that, why, they’d throw it at you.”
“Wretches!” murmured the indignant Jane, who was enjoying herself
amazingly.
His lordship eyed her with sudden suspicion, but her face was quite
grave and bore traces of strong feeling. He explained again, but
without avail.
“You never ought to go near such places, my lord,” she concluded,
solemnly, as she rose to quit the room. “Even a girl of my station
would draw the line at that.”
She bowed deeply and withdrew. His lordship sank into a chair and,
thrusting his hands into his pockets, gazed gloomily at the dried
grasses in the grate.
During the next day or two his appetite failed, and other well-known
symptoms set in. Miss Rose, diagnosing them all, prescribed by stealth
some bitter remedies. The farmer regarded his change of manner with
disapproval, and, concluding that it was due to his own complaints,
sought to reassure him. He also pointed out that his daughter’s opinion
of the aristocracy was hardly likely to increase if the only member she
knew went about the house as though he had just lost his grandmother.
“You are longing for the gayeties of town, my lord,” he remarked one
morning at breakfast.
His lordship shook his head. The gayeties comprised, amongst other
things, a stool and a desk.
“I don’t like town,” he said, with a glance at Jane. “If I had my
choice I would live here always. I would sooner live here in this
charming spot with this charming society than anywhere.”
Mr. Rose coughed and, having caught his eye, shook his head at him and
glanced significantly over at the unconscious Jane. The young man
ignored his action and, having got an opening, gave utterance in the
course of the next ten minutes to Radical heresies of so violent a type
that the farmer could hardly keep his seat. Social distinctions were
condemned utterly, and the House of Lords referred to as a human
dust-bin. The farmer gazed open-mouthed at this snake he had nourished.
“Your lordship will alter your mind when you get to town,” said Jane,
demurely.
“Never!” declared the other, impressively.
The girl sighed, and gazing first with much interest at her parent, who
seemed to be doing his best to ward off a fit, turned her lustrous eyes
upon the guest.
“We shall all miss you,” she said, softly. “You’ve been a lesson to all
of us.”
“Lesson?” he repeated, flushing.
“It has improved our behavior so, having a lord in the house,” said
Miss Rose, with painful humility. “I’m sure father hasn’t been like the
same man since you’ve been here.”
“What d’ye mean Miss?” demanded the farmer, hotly.
“Don’t speak like that before his lordship, father,” said his daughter,
hastily. “I’m not blaming you; you’re no worse than the other men about
here. You haven’t had an opportunity of learning before, that’s all. It
isn’t your fault.”
“Learning?” bellowed the farmer, turning an inflamed visage upon his
apprehensive guest. “Have you noticed anything wrong about my
behavior?”
“Certainly not,” said his lordship, hastily.
“All I know is,” continued Miss Rose, positively, “I wish you were
going to stay here another six months for father’s sake.”
“Look here—” began Mr. Rose, smiting the table.
“And Annie’s,” said Jane, raising her voice above the din. “I don’t
know which has improved the most. I’m sure the way they both drink
their tea now—”
Mr. Rose pushed his chair back loudly and got up from the table. For a
moment he stood struggling for words, then he turned suddenly with a
growl and quitted the room, banging the door after him in a fashion
which clearly indicated that he still had some lessons to learn.
“You’ve made your father angry,” said his lordship.
“It’s for his own good,” said Miss Rose. “Are you really sorry to leave
us?”
“Sorry?” repeated the other. “Sorry is no word for it.”
“You will miss father,” said the girl.
He sighed gently.
“And Annie,” she continued.
He sighed again, and Jane took a slight glance at him cornerwise.
“And me too, I hope,” she said, in a low voice.
“_Miss_ you!” repeated his lordship, in a suffocating voice. “I should
miss the sun less.”
“I am so glad,” said Jane, clasping her hands; “it is so nice to feel
that one is not quite forgotten. Of course, I can never forget you. You
are the only nobleman I have ever met.”
“I hope that it is not only because of that,” he said, forlornly.
Miss Rose pondered. When she pondered her eyes increased in size and
revealed unsuspected depths.
“No-o,” she said at length, in a hesitating voice.
“Suppose that I were not what I am represented to be,” he said slowly.
“Suppose that, instead of being Lord Fairmount, I were merely a clerk.”
“A clerk?” repeated Miss Rose, with a very well-managed shudder. “How
can I suppose such an absurd thing as that?”
“But if I were?” urged his lordship, feverishly.
“It’s no use supposing such a thing as that,” said Miss Rose, briskly;
“your high birth is stamped on you.”
His lordship shook his head. “I would sooner be a laborer on this farm
than a king anywhere else,” he said, with feeling.
Miss Rose drew a pattern on the floor with the toe of her shoe.
“The poorest laborer on the farm can have the pleasure of looking at
you every day,” continued his lordship passionately. “Every day of his
life he can see you, and feel a better man for it.”
Miss Rose looked at him sharply. Only the day before the poorest
laborer had seen her—when he wasn’t expecting the honor—and received an
epitome of his character which had nearly stunned him. But his
lordship’s face was quite grave.
“I go to-morrow,” he said.
“Yes,” said Jane, in a hushed voice.
He crossed the room gently and took a seat by her side. Miss Rose,
still gazing at the floor, wondered indignantly why it was she was not
blushing. His Lordship’s conversation had come to a sudden stop and the
silence was most awkward.
“I’ve been a fool, Miss Rose,” he said at last, rising and standing
over her; “and I’ve been taking a great liberty. I’ve been deceiving
you for nearly a fortnight.”
“Nonsense!” responded Miss Rose, briskly.
“I have been deceiving you,” he repeated. “I have made you believe that
I am a person of title.”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Rose again.