John Halifax, Gentleman Part 76

"More than I like to think of. But it must be;--nothing venture--nothing have. You and the children are secure anyhow, that's one comfort. But oh, my poor people at Enderley!"

Again Ursula asked if nothing could be done.

"Yes--I did think of one plan--but--"

"John, I know what you thought of."

She laid her hand on his arm, and looked straight up at him--eye to eye. Often, it seemed that from long habit they could read one another's minds in this way, clearly as a book. At last John said:

"Would it be too hard a sacrifice, love?"

"How can you talk so! We could do it easily, by living in a plainer way; by giving up one or two trifles. Only outside things, you know.

Why need we care for outside things?"

"Why, indeed?" he said, in a low, fond tone.

So I easily found out how they meant to settle the difficulty; namely, by setting aside a portion of the annual income which John, in his almost morbid anxiety lest his family should take harm by any possible non-success in his business, had settled upon his wife. Three months of little renunciations--three months of the old narrow way of living, as at Norton Bury--and the poor people at Enderley might have full wages, whether or no there was full work. Then in our quiet valley there would be no want, no murmurings, and, above all, no blaming of the master.

They decided it all--in fewer words than I have taken to write it--it was so easy to decide when both were of one mind.

"Now," said John, rising, as if a load were taken off his breast--"now, do what he will Lord Luxmore cannot do me any harm."

"Husband, don't let us speak of Lord Luxmore."

Again that sigh--quite ghostly in the darkness. They heard it likewise this time.

"Who's there?"

"Only I, Mr. Halifax--don't be angry with me."

It was the softest, mildest voice--the voice of one long used to oppression; and the young man whom Ursula had supposed to be a Catholic appeared from behind the loom.

"I do not know you, sir. How came you to enter my mill?"

"I followed Mrs. Halifax. I have often watched her and your children.

But you don't remember me."

Yes; when he came underneath the light of the one tallow candle, we all recognized the face--more wan than ever--with a sadder and more hopeless look in the large grey eyes.

"I am surprised to see you here, Lord Ravenel."

"Hush! I hate the very sound of the name. I would have renounced it long ago. I would have hid myself away from him and from the world, if he would have let me."

"He--do you mean your father?"

The boy--no, he was a young man now, but scarcely looked more than a boy--a.s.sented silently, as if afraid to utter the name.

"Would not your coming here displease him?" said John, always tenacious of trenching a hair's breadth upon any lawful authority.

"It matters not--he is away. He has left me these six months alone at Luxmore."

"Have you offended him?" asked Ursula, who had cast kindly looks on the thin face, which perhaps reminded her of another--now for ever banished from our sight, and his also.

"He hates me because I am a Catholic, and wish to become a monk."

The youth crossed himself, then started and looked round, in terror of observers. "You will not betray me? You are a good man, Mr. Halifax, and you spoke warmly for us. Tell me--I will keep your secret--are you a Catholic too?"

"No, indeed."

"Ah! I hoped you were. But you are sure you will not betray me?"

Mr. Halifax smiled at such a possibility. Yet, in truth, there was some reason for the young man's fears; since, even in those days, Catholics were hunted down both by law and by public opinion, as virulently as Protestant nonconformists. All who kept out of the pale of the national church were denounced as schismatics, deists, atheists--it was all one.

"But why do you wish to leave the world?"

"I am sick of it. There never was but one in it I cared for, or who cared for me--and now--Sancta Maria, ora pro n.o.bis."

His lips moved in a paroxysm of prayer--helpless, parrot-learnt, Latin prayer; yet, being in earnest, it seemed to do him good. The mother, as if she heard in fancy that pitiful cry, which rose to my memory too--"Poor William!--don't tell William!"--turned and spoke to him kindly, asking him if he would go home with us.

He looked exceedingly surprised. "I--you cannot mean it? After Lord Luxmore has done you all this evil?"

"Is that any reason why I should not do good to his son--that is, if I could? Can I?"

The lad lifted up those soft grey eyes, and then I remembered what his sister had said of Lord Ravenel's enthusiastic admiration of Mr.

Halifax. "Oh, you could--you could."

"But I and mine are heretics, you know!"

"I will pray for you. Only let me come and see you--you and your children."

"Come, and welcome."

"Heartily welcome, Lord--"

"No--not that name, Mrs. Halifax. Call me as they used to call me at St. Omer--Brother Anselmo."

The mother was half inclined to smile; but John never smiled at any one's religious beliefs, howsoever foolish. He held in universal sacredness that one rare thing--sincerity.

So henceforward "Brother Anselmo" was almost domesticated at Rose Cottage. What would the earl have said, had a little bird flown over to London and told him that his only son, the heir-apparent to his t.i.tle and political opinions, was in constant and open a.s.sociation--for clandestine acquaintance was against all our laws and rules--with John Halifax the mill-owner, John Halifax the radical, as he was still called sometimes; imbibing principles, modes of life and of thought, which, to say the least, were decidedly different from those of the house of Luxmore!

Above all, what would that n.o.ble parent have said, had he been aware that this, his only son, for whom, report whispered, he was already planning a splendid marriage--as grand in a financial point of view as that he planned for his only daughter--that Lord Ravenel was spending all the love of his loving nature in the half paternal, half lover-like sentiment which a young man will sometimes lavish on a mere child--upon John Halifax's little blind daughter, Muriel!

He said, "She made him good"--our child of peace. He would sit, gazing on her almost as if she were his guardian angel--his patron saint. And the little maid in her quiet way was very fond of him; delighting in his company when her father was not by. But no one ever was to her like her father.

The chief bond between her and Lord Ravenel--or "Anselmo," as he would have us call him--was music. He taught her to play on the organ, in the empty church close by. There during the long midsummer evenings, they two would sit for hours in the organ-gallery, while I listened down below; hardly believing that such heavenly sounds could come from those small child-fingers; almost ready to fancy she had called down some celestial harmonist to aid her in playing. Since, as we used to say--but by some instinct never said now--Muriel was so fond of "talking with the angels."

Just at this time, her father saw somewhat less of her than usual. He was oppressed with business cares; daily, hourly vexations. Only twice a week the great water-wheel, the delight of our little Edwin as it had once been of his father, might be seen slowly turning; and the water-courses along the meadows, with their mechanically-forced channels, and their pretty sham cataracts, were almost always low or dry. It ceased to be a pleasure to walk in the green hollow, between the two gra.s.sy hills, which heretofore Muriel and I had liked even better than the Flat. Now she missed the noise of the water--the cry of the water-hens--the stirring of the reeds. Above all, she missed her father, who was too busy to come out of his mill to us, and hardly ever had a spare minute, even for his little daughter.