MR. PIPER FALLS IN LOVE.
ALL through the sultry summer weather Beatrix and her companion. Madame
Leonard, lived their quiet lives at the Water House, with no change
of scene save to the wide airy moor, or to the hospitable Vicarage,
where they usually spent two or three evenings of every week. People
in Little Yafford, except some bitter and envious spirits of the
Coyle type, had left off talking about Mr. Harefield’s death, and had
begun even to feel somewhat ashamed of their former suspicions about
Beatrix. The girl’s calm front and resolute manner, her daily presence
among them, with that proud bearing which was natural to her, gave the
lie even to facts, where facts were against her. If she had left the
village, and sought refuge from malevolent tongues in some foreign
country, Little Yafford would have been confirmed in its suspicions.
She stayed, and the popular voice for some time denounced her as bold
and brazen, hardened in wickedness, because she stayed; but by slow
degrees this idea wore itself out. Her steadiness outwore suspicion, as
water wears rock.
Every month, and sometimes every mail, brought Beatrix an Indian
letter. Her lover sent her a full account of his life, which had now
become full of action and excitement. The second Burmese war had broken
out, and was being carried on with more valour than discretion. A town
was taken triumphantly and with little loss, and then abandoned to the
care of a force too weak to keep or defend it. Retaken by the enemy, it
had to be conquered again, and this time with a severe struggle. Prome
was taken twice; the city of Pegu three times. Detachments were cut
off; officers were murdered.
Sir Kenrick’s regiment was in the thick of the strife. He had won his
captaincy, and hoped, in a struggle that favoured rapid promotion, to
get another step before he came home.
‘I wonder if you will think better of me, Beatrix,’ he wrote, ‘if I
come back a major? There is a middle-aged sound about the title that
you might hardly appreciate; but I assure you it is rather a grand
thing now-a-days for a man to be a major before he is thirty. We are
having a very jolly time of it--plenty of fighting--a state of things
that I have always longed for. I felt myself born too late in being out
of the Sikh war, when I heard our fellows disputing over their claret
about Mooltan and Goojerat. But now I have had my chance, like the
rest, and I hope that we may have peace before Christmas, so that I may
see your dear face by the time the crocuses are golden in the Vicarage
garden.’
Then came a spirited description of the last skirmish. Beatrix followed
the news of the war with attention and anxiety. She sometimes felt that
her heart was wickedly calm in this period of danger and uncertainty.
Any mail might bring the news of her lover’s death, cut down from a
scaling-ladder, or treacherously murdered by the foe. Every letter she
received might be the last that strong young hand would pen. Though
Kenrick wrote so lightly and gaily of the war, the facts were not less
awful. It was an insignificant business in the history of the world,
perhaps, but death was as busy there as at Marathon or Waterloo.
‘If I loved him as I ought to love my betrothed husband, I should not
have a moment’s peace,’ Beatrix thought, full of self-reproach.
Towards the close of the summer, just at the time when Emmanuel Joyce
was stricken with cholera, Beatrix’s health began to languish a little,
and at Mr. Namby’s advice she went to Whitby with Madame Leonard,
intending to remain away some weeks.
It was about this time that Bella Scratchell’s life became full of
perplexity and excitement. A curious, most unlooked-for event had
happened, and had changed the whole colour of the Scratchell existence.
Mr. Scratchell declared that Providence, pleased with the Scratchells’
industry, economy, and patience, had at length taken the family under
its wing, as directly and obviously as the Jews were taken in hand
by the Divine power in the time of Moses. Mr. Scratchell did not
absolutely expect that miracles were to be worked for him, that waters
were to be turned into blood, or flies to swarm in kings’ chambers;
but, short of this, he considered himself a very proper subject for
Divine favour.
Mr. Piper had fallen in love with Bella, and wished to make her the
second Mrs. Piper.
Like most men who mourn a first wife with a somewhat exaggerated
dolefulness, Mr. Piper had speedily discovered a yearning to take to
himself a second. He had not far to look for this second choice. Bella
had always appeared to his taste as the prettiest thing he knew. Her
round plump beauty, the sunny tints of her hair, her peachy cheeks, and
red full lips, her dimples and small round chin, her little white hands
and neatly shaped feet, all were after the fashion which in Mr. Piper’s
eye seemed the perfection of womanly beauty. A strong-minded woman,
beautiful as Venus and grand as Juno, would have had no attraction for
him. Mr. Piper had an awful dread of being hen-pecked. He wanted a wife
whom he could treat kindly, and govern with a rod of iron. That rod of
iron would be nicely swathed in cotton-wool and velvet, of course, but
it would be unbending. Mr. Piper had enjoyed life in his own way for
the last twenty years, and he meant to go on having his own way so
long as his faculties remained to him. Short of being like Dean Swift,
and dying ‘first a’top,’ Mr. Piper meant to have his own way, until he
drew his last breath.
Bella appeared to him by far the most pliable and soft-hearted young
woman of his acquaintance, as well as the prettiest. His children did
not like her, but that was natural. The young Pipers had so strong a
bent towards ignorance that they would have hated any one who tried to
teach them. Mr. Piper was not going to be governed by his children’s
prejudices. The very best thing he could do for them would be to give
them such a step-mother as Bella. The girls were wild, rough, and
tomboyish. Constant intercourse with a well-mannered young woman would
tone them down.
‘She’s every inch the lady,’ Mr. Piper said to himself, ‘and she’ll
make ladies of my gals, if they’ll let her.’
Bella had long been conscious of a lurking gallantry in Mr. Piper’s
manners, which made that worthy little man odious to her. She had
avoided him as much as possible, hurrying out of the dull handsome
house directly the formal hours of study were over. She had absolutely
refused all his invitations to luncheon, despite his reproachful
assertion that she was wanting in compassion for his widowed and lonely
state.
‘You have your daughters for companions, Mr. Piper,’ she replied to
those charges. ‘You can’t want me.’
‘But I do,’ retorted Mr. Piper. ‘My gals are no company for me. They
haven’t mind enough, and they’re not pretty enough. I like to see a
pretty face on the other side of the table, when I sit down to my
victuals.’
Bella shuddered. Could any girl--even one who had known poverty’s sharp
stings from her cradle upwards--consent to marry a man who talked about
victuals? There was no harm in the word; it was neither obscene nor
blasphemous, but it was revolting.
Although reproachful, Mr. Piper was not vindictive. The spring and
summer that followed poor Mrs. Piper’s death were seasons of fatness
and plenty for the Scratchell family. Mr. Piper was always sending Mrs.
Scratchell some offering from his model farm. Cream, butter, poultry,
vegetables, the first fruits of the season, forced into premature
being at much cost of money and labour, came to the Scratchell door
in delicious succession. The young Scratchells grew epicurean, and
turned up their noses at rhubarb pudding with a crust two inches thick.
They wanted early gooseberries, tasting of the wood. Mr. Piper’s
servants--who stopped longer in his service now that the careful
housewife was gone--had a good deal to say about these small gifts. It
was evident which way the wind was setting. Miss Scratchell would soon
be mistress of the Park.
‘There will be a second Mrs. Piper before Christmas, or else my name
ain’t Martha Blair,’ said the cook. ‘And Miss Scratchell will be the
party.’
‘Well,’ sighed the housemaid, without looking up from her
stocking-darning, ‘if he’s bent on marrying he may as well marry her as
any one else. She’s haffable and heven-tempered, I should think.’
‘Should you?’ inquired the cook, ironically. ‘That shows ’ow much
_you_ knows about ’ooman natur. That young woman is deeper than the
deepest well that was ever dug, and if ever she’s missus here she’ll
want to rule everythink with a ’igh ’and. Them mealy-mouthed ones
always do. I’d rather ’ave a spit-fire for a missus than one of them
soft-spoken young women that go smilin’ through the world as if they
was apologizin’ to everybody for bein’ alive. She’ll spend ’is money
and she’ll break ’is ’art, and she’ll use all of us like dogs. That’s
my opinion about Miss Scratchell, if you wish to know it.’
‘Lor’, cook! you’re such a one to jump at conclusions,’ said the
housemaid, with a somewhat contemptuous shrug.
‘Perhaps I am, Mary; but I generally jumps at ’em right.’