John Halifax, Gentleman Part 59

He had several children now. The dark old house, and the square town garden, were alive with their voices from morning till night. First, and loudest always, was Guy--born the year after Muriel. He was very like his mother, and her darling. After him came two more, Edwin and Walter. But Muriel still remained as "sister"--the only sister either given or desired.

If I could find a name to describe that child it would be not the one her happy mother gave her at her birth, but one more sacred, more tender. She was better than Joy--she was an embodied Peace.

Her motions were slow and tranquil--her voice soft--every expression of her little face extraordinarily serene. Whether creeping about the house, with a foot-fall silent as snow, or sitting among us, either knitting busily at her father's knee, or listening to his talk and the children's play, everywhere and always Muriel was the same. No one ever saw her angry, restless, or sad. The soft dark calm in which she lived seemed never broken by the troubles of this our troublous world.

She was, as I have said, from her very babyhood a living peace. And such she was to us all, during those ten struggling years, when our household had much to contend with, much to endure. If at night her father came home jaded and worn, sickened to the soul by the hard battle he had to fight daily, hourly, with the outside world, Muriel would come softly and creep into his bosom, and he was comforted. If, busying herself about, doing faithfully her portion too, that the husband when he came in of evenings might find all cheerful and never know how heavy had been the household cares during the day--if, at times, Ursula's voice took too sharp a tone, at sight of Muriel it softened at once. No one could speak any but soft and sweet words when the blind child was by.

Yet, I think either parent would have looked amazed had any one pitied them for having a blind child. The loss--a loss only to them, and not to her, the darling!--became familiar, and ceased to wound; the blessedness was ever new. "Ay, and she shall be blessed," had said my dear father. So she was. From her, or for her, her parents never had to endure a single pain. Even the sicknesses of infancy and childhood, of which the three others had their natural share, always pa.s.sed her by, as if in pity. Nothing ever ailed Muriel.

The spring of 1812 was an era long remembered in our family. Scarlet fever went through the house--safely, but leaving much care behind.

When at last they all came round, and we were able to gather our pale little flock to a garden feast, under the big old pear-tree, it was with the trembling thankfulness of those who have gone through great perils, hardly dared to be recognized as such till they were over.

"Ay, thank G.o.d it is over!" said John, as he put his arm round his wife, and looked in her worn face, where still her own smile lingered--her bright, brave smile, that nothing could ever drive away.

"And now we must try and make a little holiday for you."

"Nonsense! I am as well as possible. Did not Dr. Jessop tell me, this morning, I was looking younger than ever? I--a mother of a family, thirty years old? Pray, Uncle Phineas, do I look my age?"

I could not say she did not--especially now. But she wore it so gracefully, so carelessly, that I saw--ay, and truly her husband saw--a sacred beauty about her jaded cheek, more lovely and lovable than all the bloom of her youth. Happy woman! who was not afraid of growing old.

"Love"--John usually called her "Love"--putting it at the beginning of a sentence, as if it had been her natural Christian name--which, as in all infant households, had been gradually dropped or merged into the universal t.i.tle of "Mother." My name for her was always emphatically "The Mother"--the truest type of motherhood I ever knew.

"Love," her husband began again, after a long look in her face--ah, John, thine was altered too, but himself was the last thing he thought of--"say what you like--I know what we'll do: for the children's sake.

Ah, that's her weak point;--see, Phineas, she is yielding now. We'll go for three months to Longfield."

Now Longfield was the Utopia of our family, old and young. A very simple family we must have been--for this Longfield was only a small farm-house, about six miles off, where once we had been to tea, and where ever since we had longed to live. For, pretty as our domain had grown, it was still in the middle of a town, and the children, like all naturally-reared children, craved after the freedom of the country--after corn-fields, hay-fields, nuttings, blackberryings--delights. .h.i.therto known only at rare intervals, when their father could spare a whole long day, and be at once the sun and the shield of the happy little band.

"Hearken, children! father says we shall go for three whole months to live at Longfield."

The three boys set up a shout of ecstacy.

"I'll swim boats down the stream, and catch and ride every one of the horses. Hurrah!" shouted Guy.

"And I'll see after the ducks and chickens, and watch all the threshing and winnowing," said Edwin, the practical and grave.

"And I'll get a 'ittle 'amb to p'ay wid me," lisped Walter--still "the baby"--or considered such, and petted accordingly.

"But what does my little daughter say?" said the father, turning--as he always turned, at the lightest touch of those soft, blind fingers, creeping along his coat sleeve. "What will Muriel do at Longfield?"

"Muriel will sit all day and hear the birds sing."

"So she shall, my blessing!" He often called her his "blessing," which in truth she was. To see her now leaning her cheek against his--the small soft face, almost a miniature of his own, the hair, a paler shade of the same bright colour, curling in the same elastic rings--they looked less like ordinary father and daughter, than like a man and his good angel; the visible embodiment of the best half of his soul. So she was ever to him, this child of his youth--his first-born and his dearest.

The Longfield plan being once started, father and mother and I began to consult together as to ways and means; what should be given up, and what increased, of our absolute luxuries, in order that the children might this summer--possibly every summer--have the glory of "living in the country." Of these domestic consultations there was never any dread, for they were always held in public. There were no secrets in our house. Father and mother, though sometimes holding different opinions, had but one thought, one aim--the family good. Thus, even in our lowest estate there had been no bitterness in our poverty; we met it, looked it in the face, often even laughed at it. For it bound us all together, hand in hand; it taught us endurance, self-dependence, and, best of all lessons, self-renunciation. I think, one's whole after-life is made easier and more blessed by having known what it was to be very poor when one was young.

Our fortunes were rising now, and any little pleasure did not take near so much contrivance. We found we could manage the Longfield visit--ay, and a horse for John to ride to and fro--without any worse sacrifice than that of leaving Jenny--now Mrs. Jem Watkins, but our cook still--in the house at Norton Bury, and doing with one servant instead of two. Also, though this was not publicly known till afterwards, by the mother's renouncing a long-promised silk dress--the only one since her marriage, in which she had determined to astonish John by choosing the same colour as that identical grey gown he had seen hanging up in the kitchen at Enderley.

"But one would give up anything," she said, "that the children might have such a treat, and that father might have rides backwards and forwards through green lanes all summer. Oh, how I wish we could always live in the country!"

"Do you?" And John looked--much as he had looked at long-tailed grey ponies in his bridegroom days--longing to give her every thing she desired. "Well, perhaps, we may manage it some time."

"When our ship comes in--namely, that money which Richard Brithwood will not pay, and John Halifax will not go to law to make him. Nay, father dear, I am not going to quarrel with any one of your crotchets."

She spoke with a fond pride, as she did always, even when arguing against the too Quixotic carrying out of the said crotchets. "Perhaps, as the reward of forbearance, the money will come some day when we least expect it; then John shall have his heart's desire, and start the cloth-mills at Enderley."

John smiled, half-sadly. Every man has a hobby--this was his, and had been for fifteen years. Not merely the making a fortune, as he still firmly believed it could be made, but the position of useful power, the wide range of influence, the infinite opportunities of doing good.

"No, love; I shall never be 'patriarch of the valley,' as Phineas used to call it. The yew-hedge is too thick for me, eh, Phineas?"

"No!" cried Ursula--we had told her this little incident of our boyhood--"you have got half through it already. Everybody in Norton Bury knows and respects you. I am sure, Phineas, you might have heard a pin fall at the meeting last night when he spoke against hanging the Luddites. And such a shout as rose when he ended--oh, how proud I was!"

"Of the shout, love?"

"Nonsense!--but of the cause of it. Proud to see my husband defending the poor and the oppressed--proud to see him honoured and looked up to, more and more every year, till--"

"Till it may come at last to the prophecy in your birthday verse--'Her husband is known in the gates; he sitteth among the elders of the land.'"

Mrs. Halifax laughed at me for reminding her of this, but allowed that she would not dislike its being fulfilled.

"And it will be too. He is already 'known in the gates'; known far and near. Think how many of our neighbours come to John to settle their differences, instead of going to law! And how many poachers has he not persuaded out of their dishonest--"

"Illegal," corrected John.

"Well, their illegal ways, and made decent, respectable men of them!

Then, see how he is consulted, and his opinion followed, by rich folk as well as poor folk, all about the neighbourhood. I am sure John is as popular, and has as much influence, as many a member of parliament."

John smiled with an amused twitch about his mouth, but he said nothing.

He rarely did say anything about himself--not even in his own household. The glory of his life was its unconsciousness--like our own silent Severn, however broad and grand its current might be, that course seemed the natural channel into which it flowed.

"There's Muriel," said the father, listening.

Often thus the child slipped away, and suddenly we heard all over the house the sweet sounds of "Muriel's voice," as some one had called the old harpsichord. When almost a baby she would feel her way to it, and find out first harmonies, then tunes, with that quickness and delicacy of ear peculiar to the blind.

"How well she plays! I wish I could buy her one of those new instruments they call 'pianofortes;' I was looking into the mechanism of one the other day."

"She would like an organ better. You should have seen her face in the Abbey church this morning."

"Hark! she has stopped playing. Guy, run and bring your sister here,"

said the father, ever yearning after his darling.

Guy came back with a wonderful story of two gentlemen in the parlour, one of whom had patted his head--"Such a grand gentleman, a great deal grander than father!"

That was true, as regarded the bright nankeens, the blue coat with gold b.u.t.tons, and the showiest of cambric kerchiefs swathing him up to the very chin. To this "grand" personage John bowed formally, but his wife flushed up in surprised recognition.

"It is so long since I had the happiness of meeting Miss March, that I conclude Mrs. Halifax has forgotten me?"

"No, Lord Luxmore, allow me to introduce my husband."

And, I fancied, some of Miss March's old hauteur returned to the mother's softened and matronly mien;--pride, but not for herself or in herself, now. For, truly, as the two men stood together--though Lord Luxmore had been handsome in his youth, and was universally said to have as fine manners as the Prince Regent himself--any woman might well have held her head loftily, introducing John Halifax as "my husband."