CYNTHIA GOES INTO SERVICE.
‘You are not too tired to walk three miles farther?’ Joshua asked
kindly, when Cynthia and he had gone a little way along the sunny
road.
‘O, no; I have rested, and my feet don’t ache as they did before I
bathed them.’
‘You were very tired when you sat down to rest on that common.’
‘Very tired. I felt as if I should like to have lain down by the
roadside, and never get up any more. I thought that perhaps I should
go on walking all day, and at night, when I was quite worn out, I
should find a haystack, like the one where I slept last night, and
I should lie down among the sweet-smelling hay, and never wake any
more. I would rather have slept for ever than waked to go back to
Harriet and the Black Captain.’
‘You shall never go back to them. If your father and mother are not
amongst them, they can have no claim on you. Remember that always.
I shall place you with some good and kind people; and if ever those
strollers find you, and try to take you away, you must refuse to go
with them. You are mistress of your own life; they have no right to
take you.’
‘Ah, but you don’t know how strong the Captain is,’ said the girl
despondingly.
Joshua saw that she was not yet capable of learning that lesson of
self-reliance which he wished to teach. She was not much more than a
child in years, and had but a child’s knowledge of life.
‘Have no fear of the Captain or any one else,’ he said, ‘so long as
you learn to read your Bible, and do your duty by the light that will
give you. This Black Captain is a gipsy, I suppose?’
‘He is very dark, with a skin like copper, and black eyes--O, such
cruel eyes!--and he wears gold rings in his ears.’
‘Forget that you ever saw him,’ said Joshua. ‘I doubt if he will ever
trouble your life again.’
He was thinking what a transformation domestic life would make in
this wild flower he had found by the wayside. That flaxen hair, now
falling in picturesque disorder over the girl’s neck and shoulders,
would he neatly bound up under a thick muslin mob-cap. A pity to hide
anything so pretty; but then ‘it is good for a woman’s head to be
covered;’ and a flower in a well-kept garden cannot bloom in Nature’s
profuse beauty like the starry traveller’s joy in the hedges. A neat
cotton gown, muslin neckerchief, and large white apron would replace
those disorderly rags, which now hung loosely on the slender figure.
Her old companions would hardly recognise the runaway in this decent
attire, should chance bring them to Penmoyle, which lay off the
beaten tracks, and was about the sleepiest place imaginable.
Joshua began the walk at his usual pace of four miles an hour, but
soon discovered that his companion was flagging, and altered his step
to suit hers. They were an hour and a half walking those three miles,
and the minister questioned Cynthia still more closely upon her past
life--that comfortless wandering childhood, which held no sunny
memories of childish pleasures; that unprotected girlhood, among
dark scenes and dark minds. He found her a poor benighted creature,
ignorant of all those things which, in his mind, were most needful
or most hallowed; but he found no evil in her. She had lived among
sinners, yet seemed to have remained sinless. No unclean or degrading
thought shaped itself upon those lovely lips. It seemed to Joshua
that in her beauty and youth there was a spiritual purity, which,
even in contact with unholy things, had escaped all contamination.
Their way lay along a parched high-road, sometimes up hill, sometimes
down hill. They were within half a mile of Penmoyle, when they turned
into a narrow lane, between tall ragged hedges full of dog-roses and
honeysuckle.
‘Is this the way to the place where I’m to stop?’ asked Cynthia, very
tired.
‘Yes; we are very near the village now.’
‘Do you live there?’
‘No. My home is in Devonshire, a long way off.’
‘I’m sorry for that. I would rather have been your servant than any
one else’s, because you are so good to me.’
The soft blue eyes looked up at him full of trust; sweeter eyes, it
seemed to him, than had ever been lifted to his face before.
* * * * *
Perhaps that Cornish village of Penmoyle was as sleepy a place as one
could easily discover upon this varied earth. There was no reason
for its existence save that the fields must be tilled, and flocks
and herds tended, and that the human beasts of burden who perform
those agricultural duties must live somewhere. Yet slumberous,
sequestered as it was, Penmoyle had a completeness and beauty with
which Providence has not endowed all Cornish villages. It was an
ancient settlement, and had its old priory church and its patron
saint, and there were yet traces of the priory that had first given
the spot name and dignity. It was the centre of a fertile oasis amid
the wild hills, and the meadows round about were full of fatness. On
one side of the village street was the post-office; on the other an
old rambling inn, with a good deal of empty stabling. Opposite the
inn stood a clump of horse-chestnuts--noble old trees which made a
shadow and a darkness beneath them, where the tramp and wanderer lay
down to rest in sultry August noontides, and forgot all weariness and
care under those spreading boughs, and where the village children
played at sundown. To the right of this chestnut-grove stood the
village dame-school--not a free institution, but a self-supporting
academy, which exacted fourpence a week from its scholars--a white
wooden cottage with neat latticed casements and green palings; a
lattice porch, myrtle-shaded; a green door and brass knocker, exactly
like the door of a doll’s-house; a wicker birdcage in the right
parlour-window, and a brazen one in the window on the left; a row of
geraniums and mignonette in vermilion pots on every window-sill.
It was three o’clock, and a Saturday afternoon, when Joshua Haggard
and his companion entered the village. School was over for the
week, and the voices of the children pealed shrilly from beneath
the chestnut leafage. Joshua went straight to that myrtle-shadowed
porch and knocked with the shining brass knocker; the girl standing a
little way behind him, wondering at his audacity in approaching such
a splendid abode.
The door was opened by a spinster of middle age, tall and thin,
with dark hair neatly arranged in little bunches of stiffly-curling
ringlets on each side of her small square forehead. She wore a
flowered-challis gown, which Cynthia considered absolutely beautiful;
and her neat waist was zoned by a broad ribbon band, flowered to
match the challis, tightly clasped by a large gilt buckle. Her square
muslin collar was trimmed with pillow-lace, and her brooch was a
jewel to wonder at. Round her brow she wore a circlet of narrow black
velvet, and the ends of her long gold earrings touched her shoulders.
Her eyes were black and bright like jet beads; her nose sharp and of
noticeable length; her complexion russet and ruddy, like a winter
apple.
At sight of Joshua she gave a shrill scream, expressive at once of
wonder and delight.
‘My!’ she exclaimed, ‘did I ever? Who would have thought? Debbie
dear, come here.’
This summons to somebody unseen was shrieked in a still higher key;
and from the little parlour to the right emerged a second figure
in a challis gown, so like the first in person and in all outward
adornments that Cynthia stared from one to the other, transfixed by
astonishment.
They were not twin sisters, these middle-aged maidens; but sisters
who live together and have their garments cut off the same piece are
apt to become the image of each other. The Miss Weblings had spent
five-and-forty years of life in constant companionship. They thought
alike; ate and drank the same things, and by the same measure;
dressed alike, walked alike, spoke alike, and uttered the same
ejaculations with the simultaneousness of a single machine.
Deborah threw up her hands and eyebrows on beholding Mr. Haggard,
exactly as Priscilla had done a minute earlier.
‘My!’ she cried. ‘To think, now! Did you ever?’
Then followed a perfect gush of rejoicing from both spinsters, who
took the minister between them and drew him into the best parlour.
Both parlours were the pink of neatness, and ornate after their
manner, but the parlour in which the brazen canary cage hung was
the best _par excellence_. It was the room for Sunday-afternoon
occupation and stately tea-drinkings, the room in which to lay the
dessert on Christmas-day.
‘The cowslip wine, Priscilla,’ cried the elder sister.
‘And the seedy-cake, love,’ added the younger.
Cynthia stood in the porch all this time, mutely wondering.
‘And what blessed Providence has brought you this way, dear sir?’
asked Deborah, while Priscilla unlocked a closet in the wainscot
which was half as large as the room, and produced therefrom a
decanter of dark-brown wine, and a seed-cake in a green dessert-plate.
Mr. Haggard explained his mission in the west briefly, while
Priscilla filled a glass of wine and cut a wedge of cake.
‘And you came this way on foot on purpose to see old friends,’ said
Deborah. ‘How good of you! You don’t know how we have missed your
blessed teaching, and thought and talked of you since you were last
to Penmoyle. Do you find the place improved?’ she asked, with an air
of latent pride.
‘It looks as pretty and as peaceful as ever,’ replied Joshua.
‘O, but didn’t you take notice? They’ve built a new house on the
left-hand side as you come from the Truro road. It makes quite an
addition to the place. And Mrs. Simmons at the shop has enlarged her
window, and has painted herself up a bit outside; and the church vane
has been gilded. We were quite busy last spring, I assure you.’
‘And your school? I hope that has been going on prosperously?’
‘We’ve been very well off for pupils, but I’m afraid children get
slower and duller every year. It seems harder work to teach ’em. If
we hadn’t the comfort of knowing that we’ve got a nice little bit of
property laid by, it would be too wearing. But when one knows one’s
old age is provided for, one can bear a good deal. You’ve come to
make a bit of a stay, I hope, Mr. Haggard?’
‘No, indeed; I’m sorry to say I’m not free to do that. I must get
across to Truro in time for the night coach, for I must be at
Combhaven for service to-morrow. There’s no one to minister to my
flock when I’m away.’
On this followed lamentations from both sisters. They had hoped that
he would stay; that he would preach in their tabernacle, which was
a little bit of a building with a sloping roof, next door to the
shop--a building that had begun life as a stable.
‘I want to see all old friends at Penmoyle,’ said Joshua, this
village having been one of his favourite abiding places in the days
of his Cornish wanderings; ‘but I came to you first, Miss Webling,
because I’ve a favour to ask of you. There’s a girl outside--’
‘Yes, I saw her,’ cried Priscilla eagerly, ‘a tramp. And she’s there
still, I declare,’ looking sideways at the porch. ‘Was there ever
such impudence?’
‘I brought her,’ said Joshua.
‘You! I thought she had been begging of you. She looks an awful
character.’
‘I do not believe there is any harm in her,’ said the minister; ‘and
then remember who said that He was sent to the lost sheep of Israel.
It is the duty of His ministers to seek and to save those that are
lost. I found that stray lamb by the wayside.’
‘Ah, dear Mr. Haggard, I’m afraid she has imposed upon your goodness.’
‘I don’t think so. I have questioned her closely, and she seems to
me innocent and good, little more than a child in years, and in sore
need of help and protection. Now it struck me, my kind friends, that
you would be the very people to help her.’
‘We! O Mr. Haggard, when you know that we never could abide a grain
of dust about our place! A creature like that, with ragged yellow
hair, and not a thing upon her that isn’t in tatters! What could we
do for her?’
‘Take her in and make her clean and clothe her comfortably, and teach
her to read her Bible and earn her living honestly. That’s what I
want you to do, Miss Webling.’
‘But consider, Mr. Haggard, the children. A creature with hair like
that! What an example for them!’
‘Twist her hair up into a knob like your own, or cut it off if you
like, only make a Christian of her. You used to feel an interest in
missionary work, Miss Priscilla.’
‘Yes, dear Mr. Haggard, but I never held with mixing things that
ought to be kept separate. Converting the heathen is a good and
gracious work, but you don’t want to mix up heathens with ready-made
Christians. Of course there’s very little Deborah and I wouldn’t do
to oblige you; still at the same time--’
‘Put me out of the question, Miss Priscilla, and think of the higher
motive. “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.” That poor child is
waiting all this time, and I know she is faint and tired. Take her in
and do what you can for her, and I’ll tell you her story afterwards.’
Priscilla looked at Deborah and Deborah at Priscilla, and then
both maidens looked askance out of the window, descrying Cynthia’s
drooping figure through the lattice of the porch.
‘She looks tired,’ said Deborah, ‘and she doesn’t look as if there
was much harm in her, as tramps go. She doesn’t look violent.’
‘It would go against us to refuse you anything, Mr. Haggard,’ said
Priscilla. ‘But when we have dressed her comfortably and given her a
good meal, what are we to do with her?’
‘We’ll settle that afterwards. Teach her to be your servant, if you
can. She looks bright and teachable. You have no servant, I think?’
‘No. We’ve tried a girl more than once; but girls are more trouble
than they’re worth, and make more dirt than they clean. What would
such a girl as that be, I should like to know?’
‘Perhaps better than the common run of girls. She seems to me to have
more than the common intelligence.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Webling decisively, ‘to oblige you, dear Mr.
Haggard, we’ll call her in and make her decent, and give her
something to eat. That reminds me that I’ve a question to ask you,’
added the spinster, with solemnity. ‘Have you dined?’
‘I did very well as I came along,’ replied Joshua evasively; ‘but I
am ready to admit that a slice of cold pasty would be acceptable.’
‘You shall have it hot in less than half an hour. There’s a couple
of pasties in the oven. We always bake on Saturday, so as to have
something cold for Sunday. They’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.
You can lay the cloth in the other room, Priscilla, while I see to
the young woman.’
‘If I hadn’t known you were a good soul, I shouldn’t have come here
to-day, Miss Webling,’ said Joshua, with a grateful look.
Deborah went back to the neat little passage, and opened the door.
The girl looked up at her with rather an alarmed expression. This
image of feminine respectability had something of a Gorgon-like
aspect to her, although she vastly admired the flowered-challis gown
and the brazen buckle.
‘Come in and be washed, young woman,’ said Deborah, somewhat sternly;
and the address was so alarming that Cynthia shrank away a little,
and would perhaps have refused the invitation, if Joshua had not put
his head out of the adjacent parlour just at this moment.
‘You will do whatever this kind lady tells you, my child,’ said the
minister, with mild authority; and on this Cynthia obeyed as meekly
as a lamb, and followed Miss Webling into the back premises at the
end of the narrow passage. Here they came to a neat brick-floored
kitchen, with a grate and oven-door that shone like a jeweller’s
shop; and beyond that there was a secondary kitchen or scullery, also
brick-floored, with a stone sink and a pump in one corner, a copper
in another, and a couple of washing-tubs in a third. It was into this
chamber of purification that Deborah conducted the wanderer.
She hoisted one of the washing-tubs upon the sink, after turning up
her scanty gown and pinning it round her waist by way of preparation,
and pumped it nearly full of the pure spring water.
‘There,’ she said, showing the girl a little wooden soap-bowl,
‘there are soap and water for you; and now, if you’ve any notion of
cleanliness, take advantage of your opportunity.’
‘I shall be very glad to wash the dust off, thank you, ma’am,’
answered the girl submissively.
Miss Webling cast a glance round her scullery, as if to ascertain
that there was nothing convenient for surreptitious removal; and then
left the stroller to her ablutions, after pointing out the round
towel, a most uncompromising strip of huckaback.
‘When you’ve made yourself thoroughly clean you can come into my
kitchen,’ said Miss Webling, ‘and I’ll see what I can do for you in
the shape of clothes.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I should like a flowery gown like yours,’ replied
the girl innocently.
‘Nonsense, child. This was my Sunday gown for the last three years.
I’ve only just taken to it for workaday afternoons.’
And Miss Webling departed, locking the scullery door upon her
doubtful guest.
Priscilla was in the kitchen, putting some things upon a tray to lay
the cloth, and Mr. Haggard had gone out to look up some of his old
friends pending the preparation of his meal.
‘Come up-stairs with me, Prissy, and let us see if we can find
anything for this girl,’ said Deborah; and the two maidens ascended
a corkscrew staircase to their lavender-scented bedchamber, and
there knelt side by side before a large trunk, in which they kept
their superannuated clothing. Everything had been neatly folded and
carefully put away, and there was a perfume of rose-leaves and spices
among the folds of linen and woollen stuff. The sisters made their
selection very carefully, pondering long over certain garments, and
then putting them back into the box again, as too good to be given
away.
‘If we knew that a good use would be made of them, we should be more
inclined to make a sacrifice,’ said Priscilla; ‘but a creature of
that kind may sell them directly she has left us.’
Finally, after much serious discussion a choice was made: such
curious antiquated under-garments, with a great deal of frilling, the
fabric yellow with age; a gown of printed cotton, and of a pattern
which the modern mind associates with bed-furniture, and which would
be hard to find nowadays hanging in long wet strips from the lofty
ceilings of Hoyle’s Printing Works, or rotating upon endless webs, or
being boiled into a pulpy state in giant coppers.
Miss Webling went back to the kitchen with the bundle of clothes,
unlocked the door of the scullery, and told her prisoner to come
forth. The spinster’s love of the beautiful had not been developed
by culture, yet even she was moved to admiration at the vision which
appeared at her call.
The girl’s fair face was glowing and rosy from the bath, her eyes
shone clear and bright, her lips were the colour of opening rosebuds,
her sunny hair hung over her shoulders in rippling showers, her neck
and arms were pure as ivory against the dark bodice of her ragged
petticoat. She had not put on the tattered blue-and-white cotton gown
which had served as her outer garment.
‘Gracious!’ exclaimed Miss Webling, ‘you look all the better for
a little soap and water. Come here, Prissy, and let’s make her as
decent as we can.’
Priscilla came, armed with a very hard brush and a bone comb. Deborah
laid a newspaper upon the bright red bricks, and bade the girl sit
down on a little three-legged stool with her feet on the paper,
lest those dusty shoes of hers should sully the bricks, which had
been reddened that morning. Then Priscilla came with her brush and
operated upon the stroller’s hair, taking up the soft flaxen tresses
in a gingerly manner.
Finding that soft hair very clean she began a vigorous brushing,
and then twisted the long tresses in one compact rope, and wound
them round in a hard ball at the back of the small head. This new
arrangement curiously altered the character of the girl’s face, and
gave something of a puritan look to the fair oval countenance. All
that was wild and picturesque in that girlish head had been scared
away by Miss Priscilla’s comb and brush.
‘Now,’ said Deborah approvingly, ‘you begin to look decent.’
‘It feels so strange to have a knob at the back of my head,’ said
Cynthia, shaking the tight lump of hair.
‘Ah, I’m afraid you’ve come from a place where most Christian-like
things are strange,’ sighed Priscilla.
Then came the process of dressing. All the garments were too loose
and too long for the slender figure, and had to be tied up and
buttoned over and generally adapted as they were put on. When the
gown came, that striped brown-and-yellow cotton, Cynthia gave a
little shudder at its hideousness. But it was whole, and her own was
in tatters. She was obliged to feel grateful for the exchange. The
huge leg-of-mutton sleeves almost swallowed her up, and one of Miss
Webling’s frilled collars hung over her shoulders like a small cape.
‘You look clean and respectable,’ said Deborah decisively, ‘and
that’s a good deal to have done for you.’
Mr. Haggard had returned by this time. The table was laid in the
every-day parlour, and the pasties had been taken out of the oven.
They had a savoury smell, beef and potatoes and onions entering into
their composition, and the crust was brown and crisp. Poor Cynthia
looked at them with longing eyes, as Miss Webling reviewed them on
the dresser, choosing the best baked for the minister’s regalement.
Joshua seemed somewhat disinclined to sit down at the neatly-arranged
table. He looked at his watch, made some calculation about the coach,
walked to the window, looked absently out into the sunny street, and
appeared unconscious that his meal was ready.
‘The pasty will be cold, dear Mr. Haggard,’ said Deborah, perplexed
by this absence of mind.
‘I beg your pardon. Yes, the pasty looks excellent. By the way, that
poor child; she has had nothing but a slice of bread since last
night. She must be hungry. If she might have a bit of this excellent
pasty, now.’
Miss Webling inwardly rebelled at the suggestion. What, this
potato-pasty, which she had made with her own hands, of the choicest
materials, and had baked with greatest care for Sabbath consumption!
She remembered excusingly that Mr. Haggard had always been careless
and unthinking about victuals.
‘I think if Priscilla were to cut her a plate of bread-and-cheese--’
she began.
‘This seems ever so much nicer,’ said the minister. ‘Let her come in
here and have some. I want her to tell you her story, poor child; for
I think she will win your sympathy by her artlessness.’
Miss Webling complied, inwardly reluctant. She opened the
parlour-door, and called,
‘Girl, come here.’
And then she cut a plateful of pasty, and set it on a little table
under the wicker birdcage--a table apart. It was not to be permitted
that a tramp should sit at table with the minister. The minister’s
Master may have sat at meat with curious people; but that was a long
time ago, before manners had reached that extreme point of refinement
to which they had attained at Penmoyle.
Cynthia came shyly, feeling in her brown-and-yellow gown as if she
had been transformed into somebody else.
‘Good gracious!’ cried Joshua, not altogether approvingly; ‘what have
you done to her?’
‘We have done our best to make her tidy,’ replied Deborah, with
dignity; ‘but of course our things are not altogether befitting her
station.’
‘That wouldn’t matter so much if they fitted her,’ said Joshua;
‘however, they are clean and whole, and I daresay she feels
comfortable in them. Now, Cynthia, sit down and eat your dinner; and
then you must tell these kind ladies all you told me on the common
where I found you.’
Cynthia obeyed, and meekly took the place assigned by Miss Priscilla.
The pasty was very nice, and hunger made it absolutely delicious. The
spinsters were shocked to see that Mr. Haggard’s _protégée_ put her
fingers into the plate occasionally.
‘She doesn’t seem to know the use of a prong,’ said Deborah; forks
being graphically described as prongs at Penmoyle.
‘She will learn everything in time,’ answered Joshua kindly. That
grave deep voice of his had never assumed a gentler tone, not even
when he talked of his daughter.
Having eaten her dinner, Cynthia told the sisters her story--not
quite so naïvely as she had told it to Joshua; but with a frankness
which neither Deborah nor Priscilla--though inclined to look with
the eye of suspicion upon a strolling young woman--could mistake.
The history of this waif, fatherless, motherless, friendless, left
outside the Christian fold, was touching enough to move some tender
feeling in the village schoolmistresses.
‘Now I will tell you what I want you to do for her,’ said Joshua.
‘Take her as your servant and your pupil. Pay her no wages for her
work, which will at first perhaps be worth very little. I will pay
you for her schooling, and provide for her clothing. Let her learn
to read her Bible, and to write a plain straightforward letter, and
add up a column of figures. I ask for no more than that. Teach her
to be handy with her needle, and a good servant. She is young enough
and active enough to learn quickly and to be useful. And really,
Miss Webling,’ added the minister, making a final appeal to feminine
pride, ‘ladies of such refinement as yourself and your sister ought
not to be without a domestic servant.’
‘We’ve tried girls before now, Mr. Haggard, and found them nothing
but worry. We’ve a woman come in twice a week to scrub, and
red-brick, and hearthstone, and blacklead, and the rest we manage
ourselves. A lady needn’t be the less a lady because she knows how to
use her hands.’
‘Of course not,’ said the minister; ‘but with advancing years--’
Priscilla bridled and coughed dubiously.
‘We don’t pretend to be young women,’ she exclaimed; ‘but I don’t
think either Debbie or I feel age coming upon us yet awhile.’
Joshua perceived that he had made a mistake.
‘However, to oblige you, Mr. Haggard,’ said Deborah, ‘I think we
might go so far as to give the girl a trial. Of course coming to us
without a character there’s a risk. But she seems biddable; and I’ll
allow that there’s a good deal of cleaning up after the children,
what with dirty boots and suchlike, that I shouldn’t be sorry to
have taken off my hands. As for payment for teaching her to read her
Bible, I don’t think either Priscilla or I would like to take money
for that; though I daresay we shall have to begin from the very
beginning, and everybody knows that’s uphill work. For the matter
of clothes she may be beholden to you, Mr. Haggard; and you won’t
feel the expense of a dress piece now and then, or a dozen yards of
calico, and two or three pair of worsted stockings for winter wear,
as it’s all in your line of business.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Joshua. ‘It’ll come lightly enough upon me. I
thank you with all my heart, Miss Webling, for your generous consent
to oblige me. If Cynthia does not turn out well under your care it
will be her own fault, and I shall feel no further interest in her.’
‘I shall try very hard to please them, for your sake,’ said Cynthia,
looking up at him gratefully. O, what a lovely look it was, and how
sweet is gratitude from eyes of heaven’s own azure!
‘These ladies will teach you to be a Christian, Cynthia,’ said
Joshua, ‘and when I come to Penmoyle again I shall expect to hear you
read a chapter in the Gospel.’
‘When will you come again?’ asked the girl eagerly.
‘Next year, perhaps. I am always glad to come westward to see old
friends.’
‘A year? That’s a long time.’
‘Not long to people who are well employed,’ answered Joshua. ‘You
will have a great deal to learn in the year, Cynthia, so time will
pass quickly with you. You must learn to work with your head and
your hands; learn to love and honour God, and do your duty to your
neighbour.’
‘I wish I was going with you,’ said Cynthia.
‘That’s a foolish wish. I am leaving you with ladies who will be very
kind to you.’
‘She shall have the little room in the roof to sleep in,’ said
Deborah. ‘The roof slopes a good bit, and she must take care not to
hit her head against it; but it’s high enough in the middle for her
to stand upright, and the room’s nice and warm under the thatch.’
‘I don’t care where I sleep,’ said Cynthia. ‘Anything would be better
than the van, it was so close and stifling. I’ll sleep under a
haystack if you like, ma’am.’
‘You must call me Miss,’ said Deborah. ‘I’m not a married lady. And
now, Cynthia--what a queer name, to be sure!--see if you can clear
the table nicely, and carry the dinner-things out without breaking
anything, and then you must take the cloth out to the yard and shake
it for the chickens. We never waste so much as a crumb, Cynthia,
though we keep a liberal table.’
The girl obeyed, pleased to be occupied, and removed the plates and
dishes quickly and carefully. She had been a drudge in the tents of
her wandering tribe, and had learned to be quick with her hands and
feet. Deborah looked on quite approvingly.
‘She’s better than the girls we’ve had, I do declare,’ she said, when
Cynthia had gone out to administer the fragments of the feast to
the poultry, beginning to think that in doing a work of benevolence
she was perhaps securing a positive advantage. This girl seemed
handier than the miners’ or agricultural labourers’ daughters of the
district, all of whom were exorbitant in their demands for wages,
asking as much as a pound or even twenty-five shillings a quarter.
Joshua looked at his watch again. He had a twelve-mile walk between
him and Truro, and the night coach left that town at ten. It was now
five, and the village had that delicious look of repose which such
places put on in the mellow light of afternoon.
‘I think I must be moving,’ said the minister.
‘O Mr. Haggard, not till you’ve had a cup of tea,’ cried Priscilla.
‘It’s past our time already, and the kettle’s on the boil. I’ll have
tea ready in five minutes, and perhaps you’d do us the favour to
expound a chapter while the teapot draws. That’s a privilege we don’t
often enjoy.’
She ran out to the kitchen, where Cynthia was folding the cloth
neatly, showing quite a natural gift that way. Priscilla taught her
how to set the tea-things--blue willow-pattern cups and saucers,
shallow cups with high handles, and very beautiful in the girl’s
eyes. There was a white-and-gold covered bowl for the sugar,
oval, with coloured landscapes on each side. Cynthia had never
seen anything so lovely; and from a place of concealment in her
bedchamber Deborah brought down a glittering silver teapot with a
black handle--a teapot that had belonged to the grandparents of the
Weblings, and was in itself an evidence of respectability, a silver
teapot in families of this class taking the place of a pedigree. This
ancestral treasure was drawn forth from its wash-leather retirement
to do honour to the minister.
Cynthia carried the tea-tray into the parlour, Priscilla following
with the silver pot, lest by any chance the stroller being intrusted
with it should make a sudden rush to the front-door, and levant with
the family plate.
‘Sit down in that chair by the door, Cynthia,’ said Deborah when the
tray had been placed, ‘and try to derive profit from Mr. Haggard’s
teaching.’
Cynthia took the chair indicated, and sat with her great blue eyes
fixed wonderingly on the minister, doubtful whether he was going to
perform conjuring tricks with cards, or to manifest his knowledge of
arithmetic and the days of the week like the learned pony.
The sisters seated themselves primly by the tea-table, with folded
hands and an expectant expression of countenance, as if ready to meet
enlightenment half way with superior intelligence.
Joshua, seated easily, with one arm thrown across the back of his
chair, opened his pocket Bible and began to read.
He chose that thrilling description of the last judgment which he
had quoted to the sisters earlier in the afternoon. ‘And before Him
shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from
another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.’
When he had read to the end of the chapter he preached his brief
sermon on the text; a simple and touching commentary that drew tears
from Deborah, who was the softer-hearted of the sisters, as Priscilla
was the more learned and brilliant. Cynthia listened and wondered.
She was too ignorant to be moved by the text; but when Joshua, after
his own familiar personal fashion, set forth the duty of charity and
compassion, his words came nearer to her heart, and a faint ray of
light stole through the darkness of her mind. She clasped her hands,
and looked gratefully from Joshua to the maiden sisters.
‘And now you can go to the kitchen and sit there, Cynthia, till
you are wanted to take away the tea-tray,’ said Miss Webling, with
condescending graciousness. ‘I’ll set you some needlework on Monday
to employ your time of an afternoon;’ on which Cynthia dropped a
curtsy--she had learned to curtsy gracefully after her little dances
in front of the booth--and retired.
‘There’s one thing I’m uneasy about,’ said Priscilla when she was
gone. ‘With a girl like that, who has dropped down from the skies,
how can we ever feel secure about the silver?’
This family plate consisted of half a dozen attenuated tea-spoons, a
pair of sugar-tongs like scissors, a muffineer, and the teapot.
‘If I am any judge of character, that girl will not rob you,’ said
the minister. ‘But you will soon be able to judge for yourselves. If
she is honest in small things, depend upon it she will be honest in
large. If she tells the truth, be sure she will not steal.’
Mr. Haggard praised the tea, of which he drank three cups, to the
sisters’ infinite gratification. There are few points upon which
housekeepers are more assailable to flattery than on this of
tea-making; and tea and sugar in those days were precious, costing
much more than they do now, and the use of them implying gentility.
‘And now I must really be going, my kind friends,’ said Joshua. ‘I
shall not talk about my gratitude for your kindness to-day, though I
do take it as a favour to myself; for you have done a Christian act,
and will obtain your reward. I should like to say a few words to
Cynthia before I go away.’
‘Shall I call her?’
‘No; I’ll go to the kitchen and see her there.’
He went into the passage, and opened the door at the end of it. The
kitchen faced the west, and was all of a glow with the afternoon
sun. Roses and honeysuckle garlanded the low wide casement, and pots
of yellow musk upon the sill perfumed the warm air. The red-floored
kitchen, the dresser with its array of brightly-coloured crockery
and shining tin and copper, made a Dutch picture; and in the mellow
light of the casement stood Cynthia, looking dreamily out into the
garden--a garden that sloped upwards in a gentle incline to the tall
hedge that divided it from the pasture-land beyond. The hedges were
white with elder-bushes in flower. There was a well in one corner,
a pig-sty in another; and on a small square grass-plot in front of
the kitchen-window a brood of soft yellow chicks were disporting
themselves under the eye of a fussy Dorking hen.
‘I have come to bid you good-bye, Cynthia,’ said Mr. Haggard kindly.
‘You feel happy here, I hope?’
‘Yes; it is so peaceful. I feel that no one will scold me or beat me.
But I wish you were going to stay.’
‘Why, my dear child?’ asked Joshua, touched by the look of affection
that accompanied the words rather than the words themselves. ‘Of what
good could I be to you? I could not teach you to sew and to be a
clever domestic servant as these kind ladies can.’
‘No; but I like you best,’ replied Cynthia naïvely.
‘I shall come to see you next summer, remember, my dear. It will
please me very much if you have learnt to read your Bible by that
time.’
‘Then I’ll learn,’ replied Cynthia decisively.
‘And to be useful and industrious. You must be obedient to your kind
mistresses in all things, mind, for I am sure they will never bid you
do anything that is not right. And you will attend the chapel twice
every Sunday, and on week-day evenings whenever there is a service.’
‘Yes; I will do all you tell me.’
‘God’s blessing and mine be upon you, dear child,’ said Joshua
solemnly, laying his hand upon the girl’s soft hair; ‘and may He
receive you among His chosen children and servants! Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, sir,’ said Cynthia, dropping a low curtsy.
And so they parted; and for many a day and many a month to come
the minister carried the memory of that sunlit kitchen, with its
rose-garlanded window, in his mind like a picture; and the lines of
the picture grew not less vivid with the progress of time.