The Village by the River Part 14

"Yes, sir; I've often thought on it since. I shouldn't have spoke so free if I'd known who I was talking to."

"Why not?" said Paul, smiling pleasantly. "You sent me to the proper person to find me a lodging, at any rate; and you certainly spoke no harm of any one. I thought you told me you worked at the Court.

"So I did, sir; but I'm leaving there on Sat.u.r.day."

"Of your own free will?"

"Not exactly; I got notice because I came home drunk one night."

"Is that your habit, may I ask? It's a bad one."

"No, sir, it's not," said Tom, lifting fearless eyes. "It was the first time."

"Let it be the last, then. What kind of work can you do?"

"I've been in the garden; but I know something about horses."

"Well, I'm going to take the management of the home farm that lies near the Court, into my own hands, and I think I can find you work amongst the horses. I'll see the bailiff about it, and you can call on Sat.u.r.day night, when we will settle the question of wages."

Tom's heart gave a joyful throb! A place on the farm close to the Court would give him opportunities of many a stolen interview with Rose; and if he showed himself willing and ready to do the thing that came to his hand, he might rise to the position of bailiff before very long, and find himself able to give his Rose as pretty a home as she could wish for.

"I won't forget your kindness, nor how you're ready to take me without a character. I'll serve you honest and true," he said.

"It is only one more example of the capriciousness of rich people,"

said Paul, as he told the tale to Sally later in the day. "Here was this poor fellow dismissed without a character for what I honestly believe was a first offence. I'm glad to give him a helping hand."

But Paul was judging hastily; Tom Burney had received notice from the gardener, who had not thought it worth while to consult Mrs. Webster about the matter.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN OUTSTRETCHED HAND.

It was many weeks before Paul and May Webster met after the night of the fire. The Court was crammed with company, and although Paul and his sister were invited to dinner more than once, such invitations were politely declined.

"It's quite impossible, Sally," Paul had said, in answer to the rather wistful look in her dark eyes. "To dine there quietly by ourselves, is one thing; to go and meet a heap of smart people, who are my special abomination, is another; and I should not have thought you would have wished it either."

"It would be so much experience; I could be in it but not of it. But I expect I should not be smart enough, either in my dress or my talk; so we must decline, I suppose. What shall I say?"

"Anything you like within the limits of truth."

"Paul won't come, and I can't because I have not a proper frock," said Sally, merrily. "I am sorry, and he is not."

"Don't talk nonsense, Sally," said Paul, with an answering laugh. "Any woman can write a decent note of refusal if she chooses."

So the decent note was written and despatched, to be followed by another, rather differently worded, when the second invitation came about a week later, after which they were asked no more. Sally watched the smart carriages drive to and from the station, with their varying loads of visitors, with a pa.s.sing pang of regret. It was like gazing into a shop-window when you are possessed of no money to buy the tempting wares displayed there.

Paul scarcely gave his gay neighbours a thought; his head was full of plans for the improvement of the place, and it fretted him a little that on every hand he found himself unable to carry out his wishes for the want of the necessary means.

He was not altogether popular: the poor people rather resented the extreme simplicity of his manner of living when they discovered that it was not accompanied by the open-handed liberality which Allison had half led them to expect; the tenant-farmers opposed any change that would touch their pockets; and people of his own cla.s.s, few and far between in that thinly populated neighbourhood, called once, but found little to interest them in a man of such avowedly eccentric views on things social and religious, and tacitly let the acquaintance drop.

The one exception to this was May Webster, who, half-piqued, half-amused, at the barrier which Paul had chosen to erect between them, determined to break it down. She was coming out of the rectory one afternoon when she met him at the gate.

He lifted his hat, and would have opened the gate to let her pa.s.s, but she held it fast looking at him over the top.

"How are you? It is long since we met; never, I think, since the night of the meeting with its exciting close. I've not thanked you properly, by the way, for the rapid extinction of the flames."

"Oh, any one could have done it; only I happened to be the one nearest you," said Paul, carelessly. "It needs no special thanks."

"Which is a civil way of saying that you could not let me burn, but that you would rather some one else had put me out," said May, mockingly. "Even so, I'm grateful; I've been calling on your friend Kitty, who informed me with great triumph that daddy was out, but 'Mr.

Paul' was coming to tea with her. Questioned further, she informed me that he often came when she was by herself, and he said he liked it."

"So I do," Paul said.

"So tea fetches you if dinner does not; or perhaps it is not the meal, but the company. Frankly speaking, why do you accord your friendship to Kitty and not to mother and me? We may be neighbours for years and years; we may just as well be friends."

"I'm not a man of many friends," Paul answered, fairly brought to bay.

"As for Kitty, she carried me by storm; she is the only child who has taken to me of her own free will."

"How very odd," said May, thoughtfully.

"Oh yes; I admit the oddity."

"But, if you are going to live here, are you content to be isolated from your fellows--to have no friends?" continued May, wonderingly.

"To have many acquaintances seems to me a dreary waste of life; and the word friendship, in the mouth of a man, implies many things."

"Notably what?" asked May, a little scornfully.

"Similarity of tastes and thought."

"And, I suppose, no one down here is clever enough for you?"

"I hope I'm not such an intolerable prig as to have implied that. But, frankly, I expect that you and I, for instance, would not take the same view on any subject; and, very likely, the things that interest me would bore you to extinction."

"It would bore me pretty considerably if you persisted in urging that the whole world should be reduced to one level of ugly uniformity, which is what you are credited with believing."

"A free interpretation of a hope, on my part, to lessen the cruel gulf between the very rich and the very poor," replied Paul, quietly. "I confess, the frightful extravagance of the wealthier cla.s.ses makes me sick at heart; for one section of society nothing but amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure, and the lavish spending of money; and for the larger half the weary effort to make both ends meet--and for many quiet, hopeless starvation."

"You are talking something like the rector; only he enlists my sympathy more by speaking less severely--and he is more just too. He does not talk as if it were wicked to be better off than your neighbour; he only makes you feel the responsibility of it."

Paul gave rather a hard little laugh.

"To speak plainly, he dresses it up a little--gives it the clerical dash of sentiment. Besides, what is the good of stirring one here and there to give out of his abundance something of which he will never feel the loss, with the comfortable sense left behind that he or she has done something very big indeed. What one would strive for, rather, is to stir up the nation to its duties, to rouse Government to redress some of these glaring social grievances."

"Oh, pray keep yourself in hand! level your intellect down to mine!"