The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
mad!--Money? why, you never have money; you waste it if you do."
"Not money, Pole? Oh! and why? Becas ye keep me low o' purpose, till I cringe like a slut o' the scullery, and cry out for halfpence. But, oh! that seventy-five pounds in notes!"
Mr. Pole shook his head, as one who deals with a gross delusion: "I remember nothing about it."
"Not about--?" Mrs. Chump dropped her chin. "Ye don't remember the givin' of me just that sum of seventy-five, in eight notes, Pole?"
"Eh? I daresay I have given you the amount, one time or other. Now, let's be quiet about it."
"Yesterday mornin', Pole! And the night I go to bed I count my money, and, says I, I'll not lock ut up, for I'll onnly be unlockin' again to-morrow; and doin' a thing and undoin' ut's a sign of a brain that's addled--like yours, Pole, if ye say ye didn't go to give me the notes."
Mr. Pole frowned at her sagaciously. "Must change your diet, Martha!"
"My dite? And what's my dite to do with my money?"
"Who went into Mrs. Chump's bedchamber this morning?" asked Mr. Pole generally.
A pretty little housemaid replied, with an indignant flush, that she was the person. Mrs. Chump acknowledged to being awake when the shutters were opened, and agreed that it was not possible her pockets could have been rifled then.
"So, you see, Martha, you're talking nonsense," said Mr. Pole. "Do you know the numbers of those notes?"
"The numbers at the sides, ye mean, Pole?"
"Ay, the numbers at the sides, if you like; the 21593, and so on?"
"The 21593! Oh! I can't remember such a lot as that, if ever I leave off repeatin' it."
"There! you see, you're not fit to have money in your possession, Martha. Everybody who has bank-notes looks at the numbers. You have a trick of fancying all sorts of sums in your pocket; and when you don't find them there, of course they're lost! Now, let's have some breakfast."
Arabella told the maids to go out. Mr. Pole turned to the breakfast-table, rubbing his hands. Seeing herself and her case abandoned, Mrs. Chump gave a deplorable shout. "Ye're crool! and young women that look on at a fellow-woman's mis'ry. Oh! how can ye do ut! But soft hearts can be the hardest. And all my seventy-five gone, gone! and no law out of annybody. And no frightenin' of 'em off from doin' the like another time! Oh, I will, I will have my money!"
"Tush! Come to breakfast, Martha," said Mr. Pole. "You shall have money, if you want it; you have only to ask. Now, will you promise to be quiet? and I'll give you this money--the amount you've been dreaming about last night. I'll fetch it. Now, let us have no scenes. Dry your eyes."
Mr. Pole went to his private room, and returned just as Mrs. Chump had got upon a succession of quieter sobs with each one of which she addressed a pathetic roll of her eyes to the utterly unsympathetic ladies respectively.
"There, Martha; there's exactly the sum for you--free gift. Say thank you, and eat a good breakfast to show your gratitude. Mind, you take this money on condition that you let the servants know you made a mistake."
Mrs. Chump sighed heavily, crumpling the notes, that the crisp sweet sound might solace her for the hard condition.
"And don't dream any more--not about money, I mean," said Mr: Pole.
"Oh! if I dream like that I'll be living double." Mrs. Chump put her hand to the notes, and called him kind, and pitied him for being the loser. The sight of a fresh sum in her possession intoxicated her. It was but feebly that she regretted the loss to her Samuel Bolton Pole. "Your memory's worth more than that!" she said as she filled her purse with the notes. "Anyhow, now I can treat somebody," and she threw a wink of promise at Adela. Adela's eyes took refuge with her papa, who leaned over to her, and said: "You won't mind waiting till you see me again? She's taken all I had." Adela nodded blankly, and the next moment, with an angry glance toward Mrs. Chump, "Papa," said she, "if you wish to see servants in the house on your return, you must yourself speak to them, and tell them that we, their master and mistresses, do not regard them as thieves." Out of this there came a quarrel as furious as the ladies would permit it to be. For Mrs. Chump, though willing to condone the offence for the sum she had received, stuck infamy upon the whole list of them. "The Celtic nature," murmured Cornelia. And the ladies maintained that their servants should be respected, at any cost. "You, ma'am," said Arabella, with a clear look peculiar to her when vindictive--"you may have a stain on your character, and you are not ruined by it. But these poor creatures..."
"Ye dare to compar' me--!"
"Contrast you, ma'am."
"It's just as imp'dent."
"I say, our servants, ma'am..."
"Oh! to the deuce with your 'ma'am;' I hate the word. It's like fittin' a cap on me. Ye want to make one a turbaned dow'ger, ye malicious young woman!"
"Those are personages that are, I believe, accepted in society!"
So the contest raged, Mrs. Chump being run clean through the soul twenty times, without touching the consciousness of that sensitive essence. Mr. Pole appeared to take the part of his daughters, and by-and-by Mrs. Chump, having failed to arouse Mrs. Lupin's involuntary laugh (which always consoled her in such cases), huffed out of the room. Then Mr. Pole, in an abruptly serious way, bashfully entreated the ladies to be civil to Martha, who had the best heart in the world. It sounded as if he were going to say more. After a pause, he added emphatically, "Do!" and went. He was many days absent: nor did he speak to Adela of the money she had asked for when he returned. Adela had not the courage to allude to it.
CHAPTER XVII
Emilia sat in her old place under the dwarf pine. Mr. Powys had brought her back to Brookfield, where she heard that Wilfrid had been seen; and now her heart was in contest with an inexplicable puzzle: "He was here, and did not come to me!" Since that night when they had walked home from Ipley Green, she had not suffered a moment of longing. Her senses had lain as under a charm, with heart at anchor and a mind free to work. No one could have guessed that any human spell was on the girl. "Wherever he is, he thinks of me. I find him everywhere. He is safe, for I pray for him and have my arms about him. He will come." So she waited, as some grey lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight. If she let her thoughts run on to the hour of their meeting, she had to shut her eyes and press at her heart; but as yet she was not out of tune for daily life, and she could imagine how that hour was to be strewn with new songs and hushed surprises. And 'thus' he would look: and 'thus.' "My hero!" breathed Emilia, shuddering a little. But now she was perplexed. Now that he had come and gone, she began to hunger bitterly for the sight of his face, and that which had hitherto nourished her grew a sickly phantom of delight. She wondered how she had forced herself to be patient, and what it was that she had found pleasure in.
None of the ladies were at home when Emilia returned. She went out to the woods, and sat, shadowed by the long bent branch; watching mechanically the slow rounding and yellowing of the beam of sunlight over the thick floor of moss, up against the fir-stems. The chaffinch and the linnet flitted off the grey orchard twigs, singing from new stations; and the bee seemed to come questioning the silence of the woods and droning disappointed away. The first excess of any sad feeling is half voluntary. Emilia could not help smiling, when she lifted her head out of a musing fit, to find that she had composed part of a minuet for the languid dancing motes in the shaft of golden light at her feet. "Can I remember it?" she thought, and forgot the incident with the effort.
Down at her right hand, bordering a water, stood a sallow, a dead tree, channelled inside with the brown trail of a goat-moth. Looking in this direction, she saw Cornelia advancing to the tree. When the lady had reached it, she drew a little book from her bosom, kissed it, and dropped it in the hollow. This done, she passed among the firs. Emilia had perceived that she was agitated: and with that strange instinct of hearts