Shining Ferry Part 18

Hester shook her head. "I have no mother. He came as my guest, and that evening--for he never spent more than one night with us--we talked for a long while. He knew, of course, that I was a schoolmistress; and he began to mock at some things in which I believe very deeply. He did it to try me, perhaps. I don't know whether he came meaning to try me, or seeing me alone in the world, and making ready to leave the old home, he suddenly took this notion into his head. At any rate, I did not guess for a moment; and when he spoke scorn of girls' teaching, I answered him--too hotly, I thought at the time; but it seems that he forgave me."

She rose. "I have told you all this, sir, because you say you are in the dark. I am here because Mr. Rosewarne offered me the post. But you seem disposed to deny this; and so in fairness I must consult a friend, if I can find one, or a lawyer perhaps, before showing you the letter."

"Wait a moment, please." Hester's story had held a light as it were, though but a faint one, to an unexplored pa.s.sage in old Rosewarne's life; and to Mr. Sam every unexplored corner in that life was now to be suspected. "You jump to conclusions, Miss Marvin. I merely meant to say that as my father's executor I have to use reasonable caution.

Might I inquire your age? Excuse me, I know that ladies--"

"I am twenty-five," she struck in sharply.

"Married, or unmarried?"

"Unmarried."

"You will excuse me for saying that I am surprised. A young person of your attractiveness--"

"Have you any more questions, sir?"

"Eh?--ah, to be sure! Qualifications?"

Hester briefly enumerated these. He did not appear to be listening, but sat eyeing her abstractedly, while he rattled the point of the paper-knife between his Upper and lower teeth.

"Yes, yes--quite satisfactory. Religious views?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Religious views?"

"If you really think that a necessary question, I was baptised and brought up in the Church of England."

"Not a bigoted Churchwoman, I hope?"

"Not bigoted, I certainly hope," Hester answered demurely.

"I feel sure of it," said Mr. Sam, rising gallantly. "In the matter of so-called apostolic succession, for instance--"

But here there came a tap at the door, and Elizabeth Jane, the housemaid, announced that Parson Endicott had called. "Show him in," ordered Mr. Sam promptly, and at the same time--having suddenly made up his mind--he flung Hester an insufferably confidential glance, which seemed to say, "Never mind _him_; you and I are in the same boat."

Parson Endicott suffered from shortness of sight and a high parsonic manner. He paused on the threshold to wipe his eyegla.s.ses, adjusted them on his nose, and gazing around the room, cleared his throat as if about to address a congregation.

"Good-day, parson." Mr. Sam saluted him amiably, still without rising.

"You've come in the nick of time. I have just been chatting with Miss Marvin here--our new schoolmistress."

Hester divined that, for some reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but to accept it.

"Indeed?--er--yes, to be sure, I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Marvin," said Parson Endicott mellifluously, with a glance which seemed to distinguish Hester kindly from the ordinary furniture of the room. This was his habitual way of showing cordial goodwill to his social inferiors, and the poor man had lived to the age of fifty-six without guessing that they invariably saw through it. Having bestowed this glance of kindness upon Hester, he turned to Mr. Sam with another, which plainly asked how far (as one person of importance conferring with another) he might take it that the creature before them was a satisfactory creature.

"You're in luck's way," said Mr. Sam, answering this look. "She's a Churchwoman."

"My dear Mr. Rosewarne,"--Parson Endicott pressed the finger-tips of both hands together, holding them in front of his stomach--"I am gratified-- deeply gratified; but you must not suppose for one moment--h'm--whatever my faults, I take some credit to myself for broad-mindedness.

A Churchwoman, eh?"--he beamed on Hester--"and in other respects, I hope, satisfactory?"

"Quite." Mr. Sam turned to Hester. "Would you mind running over your qualifications again? To tell the truth, I've forgotten 'em."

Hester, with an acute sense of shame, again rehea.r.s.ed the list.

"Quite so," said Parson Endicott, who had obviously not been listening.

He turned to Mr. Sam with inquiry in his eye. "I think, perhaps--if Miss Marvin--"

"I daresay she won't mind stepping into the next room," said Mr. Sam, turning his back on her, and calmly reseating himself. The parson glanced at Hester with polite inquiry, and, as she bowed, stepped to open the door for her. With head bent to hide the flush on her cheeks, she pa.s.sed out into the great parlour.

Now the great parlour overlooked the garden through three tall windows, of which Susannah had drawn down the blinds half-way and opened the lower sashes, so that the room seemed to Hester deliciously fresh and cool.

It was filled, too, with the fragrance of a jarful of peonies, set accurately in the middle of the long bare table; and she stood for a moment--her sight yet misty with indignant, wounded pride--staring at the reflection of their crimson blooms in the polished mahogany.

These two men were intolerable: and yet they only translated into meaner terms the opinion which everyone in this strange country seemed to have formed of her. She thought of the young sailor, of Nuncey, of Mr. Benny.

All these were simple souls, and patently willing to believe the best of a fellow-creature; yet each in a different way had treated her with suspicion, as though she were here to seek her own interests, and with a selfish disregard of others'. The young sailor had openly and hotly accused her of it. Nuncey and her father, though kind, and even delicately eager to make her welcome, as clearly held some disapproval in reserve--were puzzled somehow to account for her. And she was guiltless.

She had come in response to a plain invitation, thinking only of good work to be done. No; what she found intolerable was not these two men, but the whole situation.

She turned with a start. Something had flown in through the open midmost window, and fallen with a thud on the floor a few yards from her feet.

She stepped across and stooped to examine it. It was the upper half of a tattered and somewhat grimy rag doll.

To account for this apparition we must cross the garden, to the summer-house, where Myra and Clem had hidden themselves away from the heat with a book, and, for the twentieth time perhaps, were lost in the adventures of Jack the Tinker and the Giant Blunderbuss.

As a rule Myra would read a portion of the story, and the pair then fell to acting it over together. In this way Clem had slain, in the course of his young life, many scores of giants, wizards, dragons, and other enemies of mankind, his sister the while keeping watch over his blindness, and calling to him when and where to deliver the deadly stroke.

But to-day the heat disinclined them for these dramatic exertions, and they sat quiet, even on reaching the point at which Jack the Tinker, his friend Tom, the good-natured giant, and Tom's children, young Tom and Jane, fare forth with slings for their famous hunting.

"'They soon knocked down as many kids, hares, and rabbits as they desired.

They caught some colts, placed the children on two of them and the game on the others, and home they went.'"

Myra glanced up at Clem, for this was a pa.s.sage which ever called to him like a trumpet. But to-day Clem spread out both hands, protesting.

"'On their return, whilst waiting for supper, Jack wandered around the castle, and was struck by seeing a window which he had not before observed. Jack was resolved to discover the room to which this window belonged; so he very carefully noticed its position and then threw his hammer in through it, that he might be certain of the spot when he found his tool inside the castle. The next day, after dinner.'"--

"Wait a moment, Clem dear!"

"Oh, but we _must!_" Clem had jumped to his feet.

"It's too dreadfully hot. Very well, then; but wait for the end.

"'The next day, after dinner, when Tom was having his snooze, Jack took Tom's wife Jane with him, and they began a search for the hammer near the spot where Jack supposed the window should be; but they saw no signs of one in any part of the walls. They discovered, however, a strangely fashioned worm-eaten oak hanging-press. They carefully examined this, but found nothing. At last Jack, striking the back of it with his fist, was convinced from the sound that the wall behind it was hollow. He and Jane went steadily to work, and with some exertion they moved the press aside and disclosed a stone door. They opened this, and there was Jack's hammer lying amidst a pile of bones, evidently the relics of some of old Blunderbuss's wives, whom he had imprisoned in the wall and left to perish there!'"

Myra shut the book with a slam, and, groping beneath the seat of the summer-house, found and handed to Clem the torso of an old rag doll, which, because it might be thrown against a window without breaking the gla.s.s, served as their wonted subst.i.tute for the Tinker's hammer.

"O-oh!" cried Myra, clutching at Clem and drawing him back from the sudden apparition in the window; and so for a dozen seconds she and Hester stared at one another.

"Good-morning!"

"Good-morning!" Myra hesitated a moment. "Though I don't know who you are. Oh, but yes I do! You're the new teacher, and it's no use your pretending."

"Am I pretending?" asked Hester.