MR. PIPER MAKES AN OFFER.
ONE August morning, just about the time of Cyril’s illness, Bella
Scratchell found her pupils a shade more averse from the delights of
learning, and generally unpleasant in their behaviour, than usual.
The morning was sultry, there was thunder in the air, and some of the
thunder seemed to have got into the young Pipers, who were as dull and
leaden as the sky, and as sulkily silent as the heavy-headed limes on
the lawn, whose branches flopped moodily, with never a rustle of leaf
or a whisper among the boughs.
Then all at once the young Pipers--moved to rebellion by the imposition
of a task which seemed too much for their feeble minds--broke into
murmurs and grumblings, what time the trees began to rustle and shiver,
and talk to one another mysteriously about the fast coming storm,
while the birds set up scared twitterings, and chattered of impending
peril and desolation.
Presently came great drops spattering upon the iron verandah outside
the schoolroom window--harbingers of a flood--and then the rain came
down in a dense sheet of water, and the lightning flashed pale and
sickly illumination over the gray rain-blotted landscape, and the
thunder roared awfully, like some infuriated giant threatening Little
Yafford, from his lurking-place in a cleft of the hills.
The young Pipers gave vent to their terror in shrill screams and
yappings, and cowered in corners, with their heads shrouded in their
pinafores. They were terrified at the storm, but they were glad of
its coming, since it afforded an excellent excuse for avoiding their
lessons.
‘You can’t expect us to say French verbs in a thunderstorm,’
remonstrated Elizabeth Fry, when Bella tried to continue her course
of instruction. ‘The subjunctive’s difficult enough at the best of
times,--a lot of ridiculous words ending in _isse_--but it’s a little
too bad with the lightning glaring in one’s face.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder if ma had asked for this storm on purpose to
frighten _you_,’ said Brougham, addressing himself vindictively to his
governess. ‘She’s in heaven, you know, and can see how badly you treat
us.’
Bella abandoned the lessons as hopeless. She could not go home in this
flood of rain. She stood at the window, watching the storm, while her
pupils, released from the thraldom of study, and grown hardened to the
tempest, rioted about the room, knocked over the chairs, pelted each
other with lesson books, and concluded every argument with fisticuffs.
She did not attempt to check this youthful exuberance--first, because
she knew any such endeavour would be worse than useless; and secondly,
because the supervision of her pupils’ moral conduct was not in the
bond. She was engaged and paid to teach them a smattering of various
languages, history, grammar, geography, and to superintend their
musical studies in the absence of the professor. Nothing more.
At one o’clock the rain had ceased and the storm had abated, though the
sky still looked heavy. One o’clock was Bella’s hour for leaving her
pupils; half-past one was their hour for dinner. The half-hour between
one o’clock and dinner-time was a period of peculiar strife and riot,
the evil tempers of the youthful Pipers being exacerbated by hunger.
There was always a warm conflict between them and the young woman told
off for their service, who wanted them to have ‘their ’ands washed and
their ’air brushed for dinner,’ and who was threatened with Mr. Piper’s
condign displeasure if she sent them into the dining-room unkempt and
uncleaned.
In Mrs. Piper’s lifetime Bella had generally aided in this struggle,
but she was now in the habit of going away directly the lessons were
over.
On this particular occasion she found Mr. Piper smoking his cigar in
the hall, as she had found him very often lately. Hitherto she had
contrived to slip by him with a friendly good morning, or at most a
brief interchange of remarks about the weather, and a grateful little
speech in acknowledgment of his last offering from the farm or the
kitchen-garden. To-day she could not escape so easily.
‘You ain’t agoin’ yet, Beller,’ said Mr. Piper, laying his stumpy
fingers on her arm. ‘Look at that there sky! It’ll rain ’eavens ’ard
presently.’
‘Then I had better get home before it begins,’ suggested Bella.
‘No, you don’t. I’m not going to be avoided in this way. Widowers ain’t
poison, that a young woman need shun them as if her life was in danger.
I want to have a serious talk with you, Beller. I’ve been wanting such
a talk for a long time, but you’ve managed to give me the slip. This
day I’m determined to say my say. You ain’t going out under that sky,
and you are going to hear what I’ve got to tell you. That’s how it’s
going to be.’
‘You have such strength of will, Mr. Piper,’ said Bella, with her
pretty laugh. ‘How could a poor little thing like me oppose you?’
‘You ain’t a poor little thing,’ retorted Mr. Piper. ‘You’re a pretty
little thing, and you ain’t poor. No young woman with your attractions
can be poor. There’s always some one in the background ready to lay his
’art and ’and at her feet.’
Bella shuddered. Mr. Piper’s conversation was growing significant.
She would have given a great deal to get away. She thought of Cyril
Culverhouse, of one who in her mind was the image of dignity and
refinement. What would his love have been like, could she have won it?
In what sweet words, borrowed unconsciously from divinest poet, would
he have whispered his passion? And here was Mr. Piper breathing hard,
and looking odiously warm and puffy, evidently bent upon making her an
offer.
‘And, if he should ask me, all of them at home would want me to accept
him,’ thought Bella, despairingly. ‘I should be worried to death.’
‘Come into the drawing-room,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘The children won’t
interrupt us there. I want to be serious.’
He led her into that rarely used apartment, which had a vault-like
aspect now that Mrs. Piper no longer received her morning visitors in
it. She had been wont to regale her guests in a stately manner with
sherry and fancy biscuits, brought in upon a monster salver of the
Prince Regent’s period, in Garrard’s worst style, with massive gadroon
edges and a great flourish of engraving, as weighty as a coal-scuttle.
The room had smelt of sherry and biscuits in Mrs. Piper’s time. Now it
only smelt of mildew.
There was a centre ottoman under the chandelier, a birthday present
from Mr. Piper to his wife, and one of the first of its kind that had
been seen in Little Yafford. Upon this the manufacturer seated himself,
with his shoulder at an uncomfortable angle with Bella’s shoulder,
after the manner of such ottomans.
‘Bella, I’ve been in love with you ever so long,’ exclaimed Mr. Piper,
plunging desperately into the middle of things.
‘Good gracious, Mr. Piper, how can you say anything so horrible?’ cried
Bella. ‘Your poor dear wife has been dead hardly six months.’
‘I was not in love with you during my sainted wife’s lifetime,’ said
Mr. Piper. ‘My principles are too firmly fixed for that. I am not a
Mahomedan. But I had an eye for the Beautiful, even in Mrs. Piper’s
lifetime, and I knew that you came up to the mark in that line. Mrs.
Piper’s death left a vide here.’ Mr. Piper touched his waistcoat, to
indicate that the vacuum was in his heart. ‘A vide which I feel you can
fill. You can be a refined and ladylike mother to my children, a clever
mistress of my house, and a comfort and happiness to me. It is in you
to be all that, Bella, I know it and feel it; and I will go so far as
to say that it is a fine opportunity for you--an opportunity which any
young woman in your position would be proud to grasp.’
‘I could never marry where I did not love,’ faltered Bella, foreseeing
no end to the trouble at home that would come out of this.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr. Piper, looking warmer and puffier than ever,
‘but what’s to prevent your loving me?’
‘I respect you,’ murmured Bella, feeling obliged to say something civil.
‘Well, that’s halfway,’ answered the widower, with a satisfied air.
‘You begin with respect, you’ll get on to love before you know
where you are. I’m proud to say I’ve always made myself respected
everywhere. I’ve kept my sack upright. Twenty shillings in the pound
has been my guiding star. Go on respecting me, Bella. You’ll wake up
some morning and find that respect has blossomed into love.’
Here Mr. Piper put his arm round Bella’s waist. She found that it would
not do to temporize.
‘Dear Mr. Piper,’ she said, putting on that pretty beseeching manner
which stood in such good stead with her on most occasions, ‘you are all
that is kind and generous, but indeed it can never be.’
‘What can never be?’
‘I can never be your wife. I will not speak of the disparity in our
ages, because----’
‘Because that’s rubbish,’ interrupted the impatient Piper. ‘You’d
better be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave. I know what
the young men of the present day are. Between you and I and the post
they’re an uncommon bad lot. You’d better think twice before you refuse
such an offer as mine, Beller. It isn’t every pretty girl that gets
such a chance once in her life. Don’t you expect to get it twice. Just
you think who it is you’re refusing. I could buy up everybody for ten
miles round Little Yafford. I’m not a man to boast of the money I’ve
made. Everybody knows what I am at Great Yafford--and further afield.
My name on the back of a bill is as good as the Bank of England. Look
at this place. I could buy it to-morrow, if I liked--and if you say
“buy it, Piper,” I’ll buy it, and place you as ’igh as any of the old
county famblies. Sir Philip Dulcimer don’t care for the place. It’s me
that has made it what it is. Look at the furniture and ornaments I’ve
bought, to please poor Mrs. Piper--this very ottermon we’re sitting
on, five-and-thirty pound, the newest thing out. You’d better think
twice--and a good many times twice--before you turn up your nose at
such an offer as mine. I’ll allow you three hundred a year for dress
and fallals. Yes--settle it upon you in black and white--and that’s
a deal more than ever I did for poor Moggie. She had to ask me for a
ten-pound note when she wanted it.’
Bella gave a faint shiver. Three hundred a year for pocket-money!
What fabulous wealth it seemed! But three hundred a year with Mr.
Piper--to have that warm puffiness, that blustering vulgarity, always
in attendance upon her--to be called Beller all her life--to see across
the domestic hearth that odious figure of low-born merit and commercial
prosperity! No, it would be too dreadful. She could not bear it. She
was fond of money--nay, she loved it with the ravenous love that
often comes of a poverty-stricken youth. If she had never known Cyril
Culverhouse--never set her affections on that high type of manhood--she
might, perhaps, have brought herself to tolerate Mr. Piper, for the
sake of Little Yafford Park and unlimited drapery. But now--oh! it was
impossible.
She looked round the drawing-room. It was spacious and lofty, but
eminently commonplace in all its details. She began to think,
idly--while the widower sank into a stertorous reverie, with his hands
plunged deep into his shepherd’s plaid pockets--how she would make
Mr. Piper refurnish the room if she were his wife. All those clumsy
rosewood chairs and tables should be turned out, to give place to light
gilded furniture, of the Louis Seize period, upholstered with sky-blue
satin. The revival of old Dutch taste had not yet set in. People had
not begun to go mad about Queen Anne cabinets and blue and white
ginger-jars. Bella’s imagination did not soar above gilded chairs and
blue satin curtains.
‘Come,’ said Mr. Piper, shaking himself out of his abstraction, like a
dog coming out of the water, ‘come, Beller, what’s your ultamatum? Yes
or no?’
‘No,’ said Bella, firmly. ‘I am sorry to seem ungrateful for your
flattering regard, but I can only answer no.’
And then she glanced round the drawing-room again, and thought how
pretty it would look, all gay with blue and gold, and what a grand
thing it would be to sit there, elegantly dressed, framed in flowers,
like an old portrait by Boucher, receiving the best people in Little
Yafford, and patronizing Miss Coyle.
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Mr. Piper, in his matter-of-fact tone, ‘and
I think you’re a fool. Excuse me for mentioning it, but that’s my
opinion, and I’m a man that always speaks my mind.’
‘Perhaps, under the circumstances, it might be better for me not to
come here any more,’ suggested Bella, rising to depart.
‘Well, I don’t know. It might be rather aggravating to my feelings for
me to see you, perhaps--but never mind me. I’m nobody.’
‘I am sure I had better not come,’ said Bella. ‘You will easily find
some one to replace me.’
‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ exclaimed Mr. Piper, testily. ‘Governesses are as
plentiful as blackberries. Old and ugly, most of em--the cleverer
they are the uglier. And bony. I find that learning generally runs
into bone. If ever I see a man whose elbow and knee joints stand out
extra sharp, and whose hair hasn’t been made acquainted with a pair of
scissors for a twelvemonth, I make up my mind that he’s a professor.’
‘Good-bye,’ faltered Bella, holding out her hand. ‘I hope you don’t
feel angry with me?’
‘I don’t feel pleased with you,’ answered Mr. Piper, ‘and I’m too
candid to pretend it. Good-bye.’
They shook hands, and Bella went home, feeling very uncomfortable. She
had refused the richest man in the neighbourhood, and she had lost her
situation. How would the intelligence of these two facts be received by
her anxious mother and her stony-hearted father? Bella knew that she
would have to endure the reproaches and upbraidings of both.