The World's Greatest Books - Volume 2 Part 51

"My calling is, as you will hear at Norton Bury, that of a tanner. I am apprentice to Abel Fletcher, Phineas's father."

"Mr. Fletcher!" She looked up at him, with a mingled look of kindliness and pain.

"Ay, Phineas is a little less beneath your notice than I am. He is rich, and has been well educated; I have had to educate myself. I came to Norton Bury six years ago--a beggar-boy. No, not quite so bad as that, for I never begged. I either worked or starved."

The earnestness, the pa.s.sion of his tone made Miss March lift her eyes, but they fell again.

"Yes, Phineas found me starving in an alley. We stood in the rain opposite the mayor's house. A little girl--you know her, Miss March-- came to the door and threw out to me a bit of bread."

Now indeed she started. "You! Was that you?"

John paused, and his whole manner changed into softness as he resumed.

"I never forgot that little girl. Many a time when I was inclined to do wrong, she kept me right--the remembrance of her sweet face and her kindness."

That face was pressed against the sofa where she sat. Miss March was all but weeping.

"I am glad to have met her again," he went on, "and glad to have been able to do her some small good in return for the infinite good she once did me. I shall bid her farewell now, at once, and altogether."

A quick, involuntary turn of the hidden face seemed to ask him "Why?"

"Because," John said, "the world says we are not equals; and it would be neither for Miss March's honour nor mine did I try to force upon it the truth--which I may prove openly one day--that we _are_ equals."

Miss March looked up at him--it were hard to say with what expression, of pleasure, of pride, or simple astonishment; perhaps a mingling of all; then her eyelids fell. Her left arm was hanging over the sofa, the scar being visible enough. John took the hand, and pressed his lips to the place where the wound had been.

"Poor little hand--blessed little hand!" he murmured. "May G.o.d bless it evermore!"

_III.--The Rise of John Halifax_

After John Halifax had returned to Norton Bury he was seized with fever, and for a time his recovery seemed doubtful. In his delirium he called aloud for Ursula, and dreamed that she had come to sit with him, asking him to live for her sake. Phineas, in his anxiety for his friend, brought Ursula to him, and the dream came true, for she did ask him to live for her sake.

Not long after his recovery John Halifax became Mr. Fletcher's partner.

Going to London on behalf of the business, he met there the great statesman, Mr. Pitt, who was impressed with the natural abilities of the young man. John's reputation for honesty and sound commonsense had now grown so great at Norton Bury that when he returned there he found himself one of the most respected men in the town.

Although still far from being rich, he was no longer a poor worker, and as Ursula was willing to share his life, they boldly determined to be married, in spite of her guardian, who a.s.serted that John would never touch a penny of Ursula's fortune. They contrived, however, to be happy without it, for he refused to go to law to recover his wife's money, and was determined he would work honestly to support her.

With the death of old Mr. Fletcher, however, came misfortune, for it was found that the tannery was no longer a paying property, and there were only the mills to go on with. At this time Ursula's relative, Lord Luxmore, who was anxious to see the Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation Bill pa.s.sed, thought he could use John Halifax for his purpose by offering to get him returned to parliament for the "rotten borough" of Kingswell, the member for which was then elected by only fifteen voters. Twelve of these were tenants of Lord Luxmore, and the other three of Phineas. But although John would have supported the Bill, he was too honest to let himself be elected for a "rotten borough." So he declined, and Luxmore next tried to win him over by offering the lease of some important cloth-mills he owned; but these he would not take on credit, and he had no money to pay for them.

At this juncture, Ursula told Luxmore about the behaviour of his kinsman Brithwood, with the result that his lordship went to Brithwood and made him turn over the money to her. When John now purchased the lease of the mills, his lordship thought that he had secured him firmly, and that Halifax would use his great and growing influence with the people of the district to further Luxmore's political schemes.

While all this was going on, young Lord Ravenel, the son and heir of Luxmore, had been a constant visitor at the Halifax home, and delighted in the company of John's daughter. Halifax had now three children: two boys, named Guy and Edmund, and Muriel, who, alas! had been born blind.

Perhaps on account of her infirmity she had been the pet of her parents; but she was of a gentle nature, and was beautiful to look upon, even with her sightless eyes.

The time for the election of the member for Kingswell had come round, and as Luxmore had failed to induce John Halifax to stand, he put up a pliable nominee. But he was greatly mistaken in supposing that John would use his influence to make the handful of voters, most of whom were employed in his mills, vote for Luxmore's man. Instead of that, Halifax advised them to be honest, and vote as they thought right; with the result that Luxmore promptly evicted them from their homes. But John found new homes for them.

As his riches increased, he bought a stately country mansion, named Beechwood, not far from Rose Cottage, ever dear in memory to him.

Another son, Walter, was born there, and everything seemed to smile on him in his beautiful country home. Luxmore now sought to injure him by diverting the water from his cloth-mills, and leaving his great wheels idle. Halifax could have taken him to law; but, instead of that, he set up a strange, new-fangled thing, called a steam-engine; and his mills did better than ever.

Finding it useless to fight against the resourceful Halifax, Luxmore went abroad, and left his son, Lord Ravenel, alone at Luxmore Hall. The young man, despite his father's unfriendly conduct, was still a frequent visitor at Beechwood, and when poor Muriel died, his grief at her loss was only less than that of her parents.

The years pa.s.sed by, and happiness still reigned at Beechwood; but Ravenel had deserted them, until one day John Halifax met him, greatly changed from the gentle youth of the past, at Norton Bury. John invited him to ride over with him to Enderley.

"Enderly? How strange the word sounds! Yet I should like to see the place again," said Ravenel, who decided to accompany John Halifax and Phineas Fletcher in their drive back to Beechwood. He inquired kindly for all the family, and was told that Guy and Walter were as tall as himself, while the daughter----

"Your daughter?" said his lordship, with a start. "Oh, yes; I recollect--Baby Maud! Is she at all like--like----"

"No," said John Halifax. Neither said more than this; but it seemed as if their hearts warmed to one another, knitted by the same tender remembrance.

_IV.--The Journey's End_

Lord Ravenel had returned to reside again at Luxmore Hall, and his visits to Beechwood became as regular as they had been in the old days at the Halifax home, when Muriel was alive. It was the society of Maud in which his lordship now delighted, though he never forgot the serene and happy days he had spent with her blind sister.

Before long, Lord Ravenel sought to be regarded as suitor for the hand of Maud, who would thus have become the future Countess of Luxmore. He said that he would wait two years for her, if her father wished it; but John Halifax would make him no promise, and urged him rather to endeavour first to become a more worthy man, so that he might redeem the evil reputation which the conduct of his own father had brought upon the name of Luxmore.

"Do you recognise what you were born to be?" said Halifax to him. "Not only a n.o.bleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man--man made in the image of G.o.d. Would to heaven that any poor word of mine could make you feel all that you are--and all that you might be!"

"You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been--now it is too late."

"There is no such word as 'too late' in the wide world--nay, not in the universe."

Lord Ravenel for a time sat silent; then he rose to go, and thanked Mrs.

Halifax for all her kindness in a voice choked with emotion.

"For your husband, I owe him more than kindness, as perhaps I may prove some day; if not, try to believe the best of me you can. Good-bye!"

It was not many weeks after this that the old Earl of Luxmore died in France, and it then became known that his son, who now succeeded to the t.i.tle, had voluntarily given up his claims on the estate in order to pay the heavy debts of his worthless father.

The home at Beechwood had lost another inmate--for Edmund was now married--when Guy, first going to Paris, had later sailed for America.

Years pa.s.sed by, and he became a successful merchant in Boston, and then one day he wrote home to say he was coming back to the Old Country, and was bringing with him his partner.

The ship in which Guy and his friend sailed from America was wrecked, and Ursula, in her grief at the supposed loss of her eldest son, seemed to be wearing away, when one day a strange gentleman stood in the doorway--tall, brown, and bearded--and asked to see Miss Halifax. Maud just glanced at him, then rose, and said somewhat coldly, "Will you be seated?"

"Maud, don't you know me? Where is my mother?"

The return of the son whom she had given up for dead brought joy again to the heart of Ursula, and her health seemed to revive, but it was clear that her days were now uncertain. Scarcely less than the delight in Guy's return was the discovery that his partner was none other than the new Earl of Luxmore, who, as plain Mr. William Ravenel, had by his life in America proved John Halifax was right when he said it was not too late for him to model his life on lines of true manliness. He had, indeed, become all that John had desired of him--a man and a gentleman--so that Maud was, after all, to be the Countess of Luxmore.

But the days of John Halifax himself were now drawing to a close, and he was not without premonitions of his end; for in his talks with Phineas Fletcher, who had remained his faithful companion all these years, he spoke as one would speak of a new abode, an impending journey. Death came to him very gently one day at sunset, just after he had smiled to Phineas, when his old friend, looking towards Lord Luxmore and his future bride, who were with a group of the young people, had said, "I think sometimes, John, that William and Maud will be the happiest of all the children."

He smiled at this, and a little later seemed to be asleep; but when Maud came up and spoke to him, he was dead. While he was sleeping thus, the Master had called him. His sudden end was so great a shock to the frail life of Ursula, that when they buried John Halifax in the pretty Enderley churchyard they laid to rest with him his wife of three-and- thirty years, who had been a widow but for a few hours.