“I thought I'd come early,” Jack explained, as he stood before the
wood-fire in a man-of-the-world attitude: “I knew that when the crowd
began there'd be no chance for me.”
“I'm delighted you came early,” said Ruth. “Won't you sit down?”
Jack sat down. He plunged at once into the subject which was on his
mind.
“It's all nonsense, this talk about a Republic,” he began. “We'd have
been much better off if we'd stuck to England. Oh, we mightn't have been
so rich,” he made a large gesture, “but we'd have been nicer.”
“Jack, these sentiments on the New Year for a child of Liberty, a son of
the Revolution!” Ruth reproved.
“It's not my fault, Miss Adgate, if I'm a son of the Revolution, and I
don't believe in Liberty. I wish my double great-grandfather hadn't come
over here and married my double great-grandmother.” Master Jack stuck
his hands doggedly in his pockets and glowered at the fire.
“Oh, cheer up,” laughed his young hostess. “Accept the inevitable, Jack,
make the best of it! But what can have happened to-day to make you think
ill of Liberty and the Revolution?”
“It's very well for you to sit there, Miss Adgate, sit and poke fun at
me in your soft voice and your beautiful gown,” Jack said, flushing.
“But you know as I do, that this--this country--is rotten--it's going to
the dogs, nothing'll save it!”
“My dear Jack,” accused Ruth, “you've been reading the newspapers!”
Miss Adgate never would, for her part, so much as look at an American
newspaper; she got all her news by way of England, in the _Morning
Post_.
“The demoralisation's in the air, Miss Adgate, the newspapers only tell
what's happening. But our nation has the impertinence to go on, like
a rooster on a wall, flapping its wings in the world's face and
screeching, 'Admire me! Don't I behave pretty?' No,” continued Jack
impressively, with a look of uncanny wisdom in his blue eyes, “No--I'm
going to skip this country as soon as I can get out of it. Here in quiet
old Oldbridge, we're not so bad, though we do like to play a game among
ourselves; proud of being old and aristocratic and so forth, and we
expect if we're good we'll get to Heaven; some of us, though, don't
remember Charity's the only way to get to Heaven! But the whole
country's talking Choctaw,--with a hare lip--and only a few of us, like
your uncle and old Mrs. Leffingwell and Mr. Massington, know what a good
Anglo-Saxon Ancestry implies. The rest of us cackle like the aforesaid
barnyard fowl.
“Miss Adgate,” went on Jack, briskly, “no wonder! See how we mix affably
with the riff-raff who haven't a language. People who are told by the
blooming Constitution of this land that they're as good as you and me
and make uncouth noises according. This I'm-as-good-as-you idea is all
rot. They're not as good as you and they're not as good as me. I am
better than the Butcher's boy, who hasn't brains enough to know his own
foolish business and forgets to bring my meat. I am better than Ezekiel,
who won't black my boots. Damn him,” said the boy wildly, “why shouldn't
he black my boots? Let him do his honest work, like a man; become a
useful member of society if he wants to get to be my equal! Not spend
his days shirking and complaining through his nose.”
“Dear, _dear_ Jackie!--Have a glass of lemonade, have a cake! America's
not so bad if you can rise above it,” soothed Miss Adgate with, perhaps,
a grain of malice. She rang for refreshments.
“She's the sweetest, prettiest, dearest thing in Oldbridge,” the boy
thought as he followed Ruth's movements with adoring eyes.
“Miss Adgate, am I accountable for what my double great-grandfather
did?” Jack asked suddenly. “I think he played me a low trick. He was
one of these Cavalier people who stuck to Charles the Second. The King,
after he'd come to the throne, offered him the Chancellorship of the
Duchy of Lancaster. But the idiot refused it! He'd tasted blood, he
said. He knew Court life, found it dull!--He wanted one of adventure,
something like the dance he'd been leading with Charles. 'Give me
land, Sire, in Virginia,' he said. 'I'll go out there and extend your
Majesty's importance.'
“Miss Adgate, _he should have stuck to Merry England_. And pray, what
did his great-grandson do? Married a Northerner, became wife-ridden,
dropped his title, sold his lands, went to New England, settled right
here in Oldbridge, his wife's town; and equipped a regiment and fought.
I'm glad to say he got killed, at Lexington. But not without leaving
posterity, of which you see before you the last indignant remnant.”
“And you, you find you're reverted to the state of mind of the Cavalier
before he forsook England,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “Jack, you've a
homesick hankering to go back there?”
“Yes, Miss Adgate,” cried the boy. “And, I'll tell you a still greater
secret----”
Jack paused.
“_C'est une journée de confidences_,” thought Ruth, “well?” she
encouraged.
“Miss Adgate, we're not aristocratic,” Jack declared in a low voice.
“We've just become low-down Provincials. But when I'm a man I
mean to go and claim our lands and titles and our position in Devon. I'm
the rightful heir! My father kept the Enderfield Tree in an old desk
in the drawing-room. It's there, at this moment, in a tin tube, on
parchment. I've often brought it out when my mother's at church and had
a good look at it.”
“Try a chocolate,” interposed Ruth soothingly; but the image of the
Enderfield tree in a tube made her laugh as she offered the lacquered
box, inlaid with mother of pearl, which she kept filled for these
occasions.
“You're a Catholic, Miss Adgate,” presently observed the youthful
aristocrat when he had permitted Ruth's sweets to be thrust upon him.
“Yes,” said Ruth urbanely. And--“I wonder whether Jack is preparing to
rend the Faith,” she thought.
“Well,” Jack announced with deliberation,
“I mean to be a Catholic when I'm done with all this.” He swept the
present away with his hand.
“Ah?” said Ruth, surprised. “Why?”
“Oh, it's the only Faith for a Gentleman,” the boy answered. “For a
gentleman and a scholar,” he emendated. “You see we're all compounded
too much of human nature and we're all too much given to thinking. Yet
our thinking leads nowhere,--in the end the flesh and the devil do what
they like with us. We may sit with our heads between our hands, we may
try to reconcile our human nature with idealism until we're ready for
the madhouse, and we'll get to the madhouse, but we won't have solved
the problem. Now a man wants to be decent, and the Catholic Faith (I
got Mary to tell me a lot about it, and I've read about it in some of my
father's books), while it makes allowances for human nature and treats
it in the most sympathetic way, does know how to keep it within bounds.
Why, it's a regular school of Saints! And it honestly recognises that
we're mortal; inheritors of original sin as the spark flies upward. Yet
if we go and confess our sins and try to feel sorry for 'em, we receive
the grace of the Sacrament of Penance and Absolution,--and we can then
receive the Blessed Sacrament. And when we receive the Blessed Sacrament
our souls are developed and fed from God Himself and enabled to dominate
our bodies.”
“I see you've been well instructed,” said Ruth, astonished at this boy's
clear exposition.
“I got Mary to tell me a lot about the Catholic Faith, and I've read
Bellarmine and Saint Augustine and a lot of my father's books,” repeated
the boy, a little wearily. “But what I like best,” he said brightening
again, “is that the Church is down on divorce.”
“What hasn't this singular boy reflected upon,” thought Ruth.
“In a few years I'm going to take the money my father left me, marry,
and go abroad and be a writer, Miss Adgate,” declared Jack.
“Ah,--that might not be a bad idea. Have you selected the young lady?”
Ruth enquired.
“I've been looking about, among the girls here,” Jack answered, “but I
don't find any I can fall in love with,” he added plaintively. “They're
all rather silly and superficial. I should like to find someone like
you,” he declared with abrupt enthusiasm. “Someone who's pretty, someone
who's a soft sweet voice, thinks about things,--likes to read, that sort
of thing. Yes,” he said, gazing at her, “if you were younger or I older,
I should like you to marry me, I should ask you to marry me.”
“But no divorce,” Ruth threatened merrily.
“No divorce? No--of course not!” said Jack in sober disgust. “When once
we're married it's for better for worse. I shall say that from the
first. Don't we always have to live with people we quarrel with at
first? Look at my mother and Mary. She was for flouncing that girl from
the house the first week, and Mary gave notice, day after she got in.
Then they shook down and my mother thinks Mary's a treasure and Mary'd
cut her hand off for my mother. She would for me, told me so. Gives me
all the cream and pie I want, never tells when I come in late from the
Post Office. No, the sooner you find out you're tied to the person you
love by a hard knot for life,--the sooner you realise that marriage is a
Sacrament, the sooner--if you've got an ounce of sense and the Catholic
Faith to help you--you learn to shake down and be happy. Besides, my
wife shall be in love with me and she'll do exactly as I like,” declared
Master Jack Enderfield.