The Mr. Foxleys, after a week's sojourn or so at the Ipswich Inn, made a
mutual discovery. This was, that not only were the landlady of the Inn,
her son and the ostler all of English origin and descent, but that the
entire village appeared to be populated by people of English extraction.
The butcher was a Englishman, the blacksmith was a Cockney answering to
the name of 'Enry Ide, the cobbler was from South Devon somewhere,
and the parson was an undergraduate of Oxford. The farmers were mostly
Scotch, and the village store-keeper was David Macpherson. The driver
of the stage was an Irishman, and the sexton of the pretty church on
the hill was an odd product of that odd corner of the world known as
the Isle of Man. Certainly the two brothers found and made themselves at
home. Milly perhaps was the only native Canadian that came in their way.
It was a thoroughly British settlement, and it is a noteworthy fact
that the only well-to-do man in the place was an American. It was he
who lived in the square, red brick house with white blinds always pulled
down, even in soft welcome spring days, and with plaster casts of lions
and deer couchant on futile little wooden pedestals in the garden. It
was he who owned the new and prosperous mill which had superseded the
worn-out one lower down the stream, the old mill that the artists loved,
and that reminded the Mr. Foxley's of home. It was he who owned the only
family carriage in the neighborhood, other people had “buggies.” It was
his daughter who had been sent to New York for her education--who now
appeared in church on Sundays, in muslin costumes garnished with a
greater number of yards of ribbons in myriads of bows and ends than the
village store had ever possessed at one time in its life. It was he who
once or twice a year walked as far as the Inn and sitting down stiffly
in the stiff dining room would hold a short conversation with the
landlady on village matters and subjects in general. On these occasions
the good woman was secretly amused and not a little bored. She knew
gentlemen when she saw them and he was not one--that is, he was not one
according to her knowledge of types. The aristocracy of money was as
yet a phase unknown to her simple English mind accustomed to move in
traditional and accepted groves. So not much interchange of civilities
took place between the mill and the Inn. Not for Mr. Simon P. Rattray
did the oleanders blossom in the big green tubs and the wall-flowers and
mignonette in the windows. Not for him did the Jessamine climb and the
one hawthorn tree at the back gate leading to the orchard yield its
sweet white May, not for him did the tall clock strike and the parrot
talk. Talk!! Why, the only time the creature was ever known to be quiet
was when Mr. Simon P. Rattray made his portentous visits twice or three
times a year. And as for the hidden sweetness of the drawing-room or
the comforts of the kitchen or the fascinations of the bar, Mr. Simon P.
Rattray knew nothing whatever about them. He was a total abstainer you
see, and the blue ribbon appeared in his buttonhole on certain important
ceremonial days and even on Sundays, and he was known to be interested
in the fortunes of a cold, dismal little place built of plaster and
presided over by a male Methodist just outside the village limits, known
as a “Temperance Hotel.” It will be easily gathered that the advent
of the Mr. Foxleys did not affect the fortunes of such a person as
Mr. Simon P. Rattray, nor was their subsequent career as residents
in Ipswich affected in any way by his existence, prejudices or
peculiarities. But to the remaining portions of the village, their
arrival proved full of interest The landlady took them to her heart at
once. They were _gentlemen_, she said, and that was enough for her. Her
son, a heavy lout, unlike his mother, accepted them as he did everything
and everybody by remaining outwardly profoundly unconscious of their
existence; the hostler adored them, especially Mr. Joseph; when the
latter was there, which he was every Saturday till Monday, he would
stroll over the stable with Squires--that was the hostler's name--joking
incessantly, and treating the latter to an occasional cigar. Urbane
Mr. Joseph would joke with anybody, Mr. George was more severe and had
according to the landlady, the most perfect and distinguished manners.
“What they call _hawtoor_ in the Family Herald,” she told Milly, “only
I never see it gone too far with.” Milly of course was in love with them
both.
In time, the entire village succumbed to the charms of the Mr. Foxleys.
The parson called, accompanied by his eldest daughter who was the
organist of the choir and chief promoter of the Sunday-school. They
found the objects of their social consideration seated outside the
kitchen in the little paved yard that had rapidly grown dear. When the
brothers appeared upstairs in the drawing-room into which rose-scented
and chintz-hung apartment the reverend Mr. and Miss had been shown in
appreciation of their station, Mr. Joseph had tuned his laughing eye to
a decorum as new as it was unnatural. It was a hot day in August and Mr.
George was so excessively languid and long and speechless that but for
his brother conversation would have been an impossibility. But he and
the parson soon discovered mutual friends at home, a cousin in the
Engineers, and a friendly coach at the University.
“Charles James Foxley? Oh! I knew him well, very well” said the Rev. Mr.
Higgs, referring to the latter. “It is a somewhat--ah--unusual name.
The only other time I remember meeting with the name was once--let me
see--it was a meet, I think, at Foxley Manor, in Derbyshire it was, and
a very beautiful place.”
“In Nottinghamshire,” said Mr. Joseph smiling. “Yes, that is--or
was--our home. My father still resides there.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. ----. “Is it possible! And you have come out here?
Really, it is most interesting, most fortunate that you should
have chosen our little village, should have pitched your tent so to
speak--ah! quite so.”
“My brother likes the country,” said Mr. Joseph.
“Ah! yes, quite so. And there is much to see in this new country, in
Canada, much to see. You will remain some time?”
“We will remain as long as it suits my brother,” said Mr. Joseph. “At
present, we can hardly tell.”
“Quite so, quite so. I hope--I am sure my daughter concurs in the hope,
that we shall see you in church as often as you can come and also--ah!
at the Rectory. Such society as we can give you here you may be assured
we will endeavor to give with all our--ah! heart to the best of our
ability.”
“Thanks very much” returned Mr. Joseph. “I am sure my brother and I will
be exceedingly glad to go and see you at the Rectory. About church I
will say that we never go very regularly anywhere, but when it isn't too
hot, too hot, you know, or too cold, or anything of that sort, I am sure
we'll try to turn up there as well.”
The rector, smiled indulgently. No call to be hard on the Mr. Foxleys,
of Foxley Manor. Miss Maria left the Inn smitten for the fiftieth time.
“I knew I should marry an Englishman,” she exclaimed ecstatically up the
road with her father.
“The dark one, oh! the dark one!”
“They are somewhat peculiar young men I fancy, Maria. Of course Mrs.
Cox is a very careful and a very good woman and--ah! her place is a very
respectable and comfortable one, and the order of travellers one meets,
that is, one would meet if one went there, is quite proper indeed,
but still, I thought, mind I do not say anything, I do not express any
opinion Maria, I simply say, I _thought_, that they would have smoked
for instance in the dinning-room or the bar, or on the verandah
instead of in that very conspicuous manner just outside the kitchen
door.” But this was the first and last stricture that the rector made
as to the conduct of the Mr. Foxleys, for by appearing in church two
Sundays after his call and spending an evening on the vine-covered
verandah of the pretty Rectory, they were speedily entered in the very
best books kept by that worthy if slightly common-place gentleman and
his gushing daughter.
The next persons of distinction in the village were the Miss Dexters,
who lived with their father, at one time a prominent medical man, in
the little cottage graced by the presence of the mighty oak which had so
charmed the strangers when they first beheld it. Their father was
old, very old indeed, and slightly shaken in his mind. He was also an
Englishman and the daughters, not daring to enter upon life in town
with their small income and a helpless old man on their hands into the
bargain had retired to the country some ten years before the advent
of the Mr. Foxleys. Charlotte the elder was now forty and Ellen over
thirty-five. Neither of them had ever been beautiful and now they
were, more or less pinched and worn in their aspect, but they were
gentlewomen, neat and sweet spoken, and capable of offering small
evening entertainments of cribbage and hot weak tea with bread and
butter with a gracious and well bred air that marked them off as people
who had seen “better times.” God help such all over the world and thank
Him too for the colonies, where such people can retreat without being
said to hide, and live down their misfortunes or their follies or their
weaknesses, and be of some use to others after a while! It would be hard
to say why the Mr. Foxleys went as often as they did, especially Mr.
Joseph--to the Miss Dexters for tea. Perhaps the oak had much to do with
it.
It had something I am sure, for indeed, it was the most beautiful tree
for miles around and it was worth a good deal to sit under its cool
shade in the Summer afternoons or to look up into its dark vault in the
slowly dusking twilights. I can't defend Mr. Joseph further than this.
For between cribbage and choir practice, Sunday rambles in the woods and
rows on the river, the lending of books and the singing of songs, the
handing of bread and butter and the drinking of tea, Mr. Joseph had
caused both the Miss Dexters to fall hopelessly and indeed fatally in
love with him. When the Xmas holidays came, Joseph, who had a clerkship
in town, spent his vacation naturally at the Inn with his brother, and
then ensued a period of very mixed delight for the Miss Dexters.
For the callous Joseph made as violent love to the unresisting Miss
Higgs over the Xmas tree and carols as she herself would have chosen to
make to Mr. George had she been given the chance.
As for Mr. George, he was just as languid and silent as ever. He hardly
ever went into the town at all, but preferred to remain on quietly at
the inn, fishing, shooting and taking long walks in the summer days when
it was fine, and when it rained, lounging in Mrs. Cox's kitchen. Here he
always had his meals, for the kind friend he had found in his landlady
gratified every whim, and any fancy he chose to profess, and cooked
for him, washed for him and waited on him with unceasing and in fact
ever-increasing devotion. Mr. Foxley's shirts and Mr. Foxley's socks,
Mr. Foxley's white coats and Mr. Foxley's jane boots, his dog, his gun,
and his effects generally were all sacred, all in irreproachable order,
all objects of the greatest value and interest to Mrs. Cox and her
niece. You see there were no children in this comfortable _ménage_
and really, when the baking and the washing and the preserving and
the churning were all done with early in the day or in the week there
remained a good deal of time on Mrs. Cox's hands, which in her earnest
womanly heart she felt she must fill up in some way. So it came that
all this time and energy and devotion were after a while centred on Mr.
George Foxley, late of Foxley Manor, Notts. As for Mr. Joseph, the good
woman oftener told him to “go along!” than anything else, for though
she liked him, his love of mischief and several practical jokes he had
played her which she termed “his ways,” had rendered her cautious and a
little distrustful of him. Such an existence proved very charming to
all parties concerned, excepting perhaps the Miss Dexters, and their
companion in misery, at the rectory. For the worst of it was, Xmas
passed and Easter came, and another spring dawned for the pretty little
village of Ipswich and found the Mr. Foxleys still there. They never
spoke of going away and nobody hinted it to them. The impression,
natural in the extreme, that they were a couple of wealthy young
Englishmen going about for pleasure, who just happening to come to
Ipswich and being taken with it had stayed a little longer than they
intended, was fast giving way to another. For it was a well-known fact
that the Mr. Foxleys did not spend too much money either on themselves
or on other people. They paid their way and that was all one could say
about them. Squires was not included in this arrangement, however, but
was forced to remain content with cigars, cast-off studs and a present
at Christmas-time of a collie pup. I grieve to think of those poor Miss
Dexters--foolish souls--going without butter on their bread and sugar
in their tea that they might have both to offer Mr. Joseph when he might
come in airily for a cup, and making their already too thin gowns last
another winter, that they might spend a little money on a smoking cap
for the same gentleman and a pair of knitted wristlets for his brother.
All these tokens of friendship and attachment the brothers accepted
in the most charming and unconcerned way and never troubled themselves
about returning the compliment as we say. It was quite true that they
had not much money, but a little management of what they did possess
would have left a small sum over each year, which might have been
expended on say a pair of fur-lined gloves for Charlotte or a canary
for Ellen, who was fond of pets and used to keep Bess with her for days,
feeding the unconscious animal for its master's sake better than she
was fed herself. And all this time Mr. Joseph never proposed and never
hinted at his prospects or affairs in any way whatever!
The second summer of his stay saw old Mr. Dexter die. After his death
Ellen drooped visibly. General disgust at life, insufficient food and
sleep, and a hopeless passion for Mr. Joseph sapped a naturally weak
constitution, and her sister soon realized another bitter shock when she
helped Ellen to her bed one sultry September night from which she never
rose again. The windows of the little cottage were open, and the unhappy
girl could see the giant oak outside their door. How often she had sat
there with her cruel friend, her hand on his shoulder, and her eyes
fixed on his sharp, clear-cut features and laughing eyes! He had seemed
so gentle, so earnest, so winning--had talked so cleverly, so hopefully,
so gleefully. He had been the sunshine of her life, and alas!--of
Charlotte's too! Each knew the other's secret, but by intuitive sympathy
they had never alluded to it. They referred to him only as “Mr. Joseph,”
and on her death-bed Ellen sent her “kindest wishes to Mr. Joseph.” She
lingered till near the Christmas season, and then one day a small packet
per English mail arrived. They occasionally heard from friends in
the Old Country, and this special parcel contained a couple of silk
handkerchiefs and a sprig of holly. Charlotte took them up to her in the
evening, spreading them out on the bed. Ellen sat up, eagerly pressing
the holly to her lips. Alas! what were the recollections it brought that
the poor, weak frame and the poor, tired spirit could not brook them?
Perhaps--not perhaps--O most certainly, most truly of home and of
England; of the mother so long vanished, dimly remembered, almost
forgotten; of winding green lanes and of ivied walls, of little solemn
churchyards--in none of which she would never lie; of peeps of blue sea
from the middle of a wood; of a primrose at the foot of a tree; of the
crowded coach and the sounding horn; and lastly of the recreant one whom
she could not even call her lover, but who had made her love him so that
her very life was eaten away by sickness of fear, of apprehension, of
despair!
With the holly pressed to her lips, Ellen Dexter passed out of this
world into another.
Did Mr. Joseph Foxley care? Who knows? I should know if anybody ever
did, but I do not hold Mr. Joseph so very much to blame after all. For
a man is often innocent of love-making at the very moment a woman is
fancying herself violently in love with him, and fancying, moreover,
that he is in love with her. Can anything be more fatal, more
pernicious, more terrible? And yet I believe there is nothing more
common. There are some men who press more tenderly than the requirements
of ordinary social intercourse call for or allow, the hand of every
woman they meet They are not necessarily flirts. Perhaps they never go
farther than that clinging hand-pressure. It is a relic of the customs
of the days of chivalry--a little more and this man will kiss the
hand. Let the lady be beautiful, gracious, the hour dusk, or close on
midnight, the room a pretty one, and the environment pleasing, he will
bend over the hand, and if he does not kiss it he will retain it just
long enough to make her wish he had kissed it. If she is a woman of the
world she will laugh as she returns the pressure, making it purposely as
thrilling as she can--then she will forget it completely the next moment
as she dispenses five o'clock tea or late coffee and cake to her husband
or brother. But if she be not a woman of the world, then God help her
on her tear-wet pillow, or before her slowly-dying fire as she thinks
of that hand-pressure. It is enough to last her all her life, she
thinks--and yet, should it not come again? But--_should_ it come again!
And the pillow is wet with fresh tears, or the brow is prematurely
wrinkled watching the decaying embers, while the man--let us do him
justice--is as blindly unconscious--unconscious! Why, at that very
moment he is making love--what _he_ calls making love--to the woman of
his choice, his wife, his mistress, or his _fiancée_! These are the
men who do the most mischief in the world. Your brute, your beast, your
groveller in ditches, is not nearly so dangerous. Women recoil from him.
They understand him. But the man who presses their hand awakes them,
rouses their susceptibility, causes the tender trouble to steal over
them that so often ends in grief, or despair, or death! And this is
because neither sex is as yet properly trained in the vital duty of
responsibility, by which I mean that faculty of self-repression which
will cause a woman to try and understand what a man means when he
presses her hand, and cause the man to try and understand what a woman
feels when he does so. As for poor Ellen Dexter, it is dear that she was
not a woman of the world; but her sister Charlotte and Miss Maria at
the Rectory, if not precisely women of the world, were yet made of
much sterner stuff than she had been, and consequently, after much
reflection, decided that they were not going to be made fools of, in
village parlance. Miss Maria had, of course, long ago given up Mr.
George Foxley altogether.
“He is not human,” she said to her father, “and I don't believe he _is_
one of the Foxleys of Foxley Manor at all.”
“There can be no doubt about that, my dear,” answered the actor.
“Difficulties I should say--ah--difficulties have brought these young
men out here, but we must do our duty by them, we must do our duty.
Their father is a fine old gentleman, and well off, and a stanch Tory,
my dear. Patience, my dear Maria. The photographs are quite correct and
the seals bear quite the proper crest--ah--quite so.”
So Miss Maria transferred her affections to Mr. Joseph. The second
Christmas passed away, and a third spring dawned for Ipswich. The Inn
was just as comfortable as ever and so were apparently the two Mr.
Foxleys but for one fact and that was, Mr. George's health was not as
good as it had been. Always delicate, he had gradually failed, growing
more and more languid, more and more whimsical in spite of his
comfortable abode and the diligent care of his landlady. Poor Milly! How
she worked for him too, between hours, after hours, before hours! When
the attacks of pleurisy, painful in the extreme, from which he suffered,
came on either in the night or during the day, Milly was always near
with her strong young arms, not quite so pink as they used to be, and
her quick young eyes, a shade more subtle than they used to be, ready to
apprehend and quiet the pain before it came. How Miss Maria at the
Rectory and Charlotte Dexter in her lonely cottage would have envied her
had they known, but though there were gossips in plenty in the village,
nothing that occurred in the rose-scented drawing-room ever went out
into that tattling little Ipswichian world.
“Are your young gentlemen with you yet, Mrs. Cox? And one of 'em not
over strong? Deary me! that makes it hard for you and the young gal But
you be standing it remarkable well. And gentlemen born you say! They
do say that the other one wi' the specked skin be making fools of Miss
Maria up at the Rectory and old Miss Dexter at the cottage. Well! well!
Poor Miss Ellen was gone afore we knew it like, poor soul, that was so
kind!”
Much of this cunning volubility sprung upon Mrs. Cox in pumping fashion
failed to extort from her anything but good-humoured smiles and laughs.
If I have not taken the trouble to describe this beloved Mrs. Cox to you
before this, it is because I fear you will say the picture is Unreal, no
such landlady, no such woman could exist out of England But why not? My
story, remember, deals with people and things as they were twenty years
ago. Twenty years ago there were such Inns, though few at number, to be
found in Western Canada--ay--and as English as any that a certain Mrs.
Lupin presided over in fascinating fiction, and much more English than
many Inns of the present day in England. Twenty years ago there was
such a landlady, rosy and plump and cheerful, wearing a flowered gown,
a black silk apron and a cap with a purple pansy in it and broad and
comfortable lappets, who, when her work was done, would sit in her
small private room opposite the bar also hung with red curtains,
making patchwork quilts or playing a demure rubber with the Scotch
store-keeper, or Irish stage driver, or an occasional gentleman from
town. Such was Mrs. Cox, widow of Captain Cox, able seaman, but bad lot,
who died when they had been five years in Canada, leaving her with her
one child. The public business had attracted her after her loss and she
accordingly went into it on the advice of her numerous friends. People
who despise her calling need not listen to me if I allude to--for I have
not time to recount--all her kindness, her cheerfulness, her powers of
dispensing comfort, and warmth, and happiness, and promoting the direct
and indirect welfare of everyone who came in her path. By what strange
coincidence the brothers Foxley had been led to her glowing fireside
and her motherly arms brimming over with zeal and kindness for the whole
human race, does not matter. It is sufficient that they found her
and found with her a sense of comparative peace and security which
compensated for the one big slice of trouble Fortune had treated them to
before their departure from England. For them did the wall flowers bloom
and the mignonette at the window, for them did the oleander blossom
and the old clock strike, for them did the jessamine climb and the one
hawthorn tree yield its annual soft white drift of snow, and yet who
shall say that they were altogether unworthy, even, if with that picture
of poor Ellen Dexter in my mind, I have to say that they did not deserve
it?