Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine. Mrs. Gordon Smythies
too. That would stop his hacking and hammering until I was at least out of hearing."
"But, Bob," interposed Lottie, awed by her brother's lordly threats, "you're mistaken. That man on the ladder by the west wall is not hammering or hacking anything; he's only trying to clean the big lobby window outside the housekeeper's room, which, I heard Aunt Jo say one day, hasn't been cleaned since the year poor mamma died, when I was a wee baby. It's so hard to reach, and doesn't open; and—and, Bob, you can hardly blame Mr. Armstrong for weeding those beds, for there were more dandelions and nettles in them last year than stocks or mignonette."
"You mark my words," continues Robert, with lowering impressiveness, heedless of his sister's explanation; "should any of us Lefroys stand in this meadow, say, this time five years, we shall not recognize the face of our old home. All its beloved landmarks will be swept away; the flickering foliage of the grove will have disappeared to make way for stunted shrubs, starveling pines, and prim Portuguese laurels: the ivied walls, the mossy stonework, the straggling wealth of creeper, will have been carted away to display the gaudy rawness of modern landscape-gardening; the little river gurgling through the tangled fern and scented thorn-bushes will be treated like the canal of a people's park; the whole place will reek of vitriol, of chemical manures and commercial improvements. So say good-by to Nutsgrove while you may, for you will never see it again—never again!"
"Oh, Robert, Robert, do you think it will be as bad as that?" cries Addie, turning her soft gray eyes to his wrathful face in wistful appeal.
"Of course I do! What chance has it of escaping moneyed Vandalism? If even a gentleman had bought it, no matter how poor—But what quarter can one expect from the hands of an illiterate vitriol-monger, a low-bred upstart, like that Armstrong?"
"Do you know, I think you are exaggerating his defects a little, Bob?" says Addie, languidly. "He's a plain kind of man certainly, both in manner and appearance; but—but he would not give me the idea of being exactly ill-bred. He does not talk very loud or drop his 'h's,' for instance."
"No, that's just it. I'd respect him far more if he did; it's the painful veneer, the vague, nameless vulgarity of the man that repels me so, that gives me the idea of his being perpetually on the watch in case an 'h' might slip from him unawares. If he were an honest horny-handed son of toil, not ashamed of his shop or his origin, not ashamed to talk of his 'orse and 'is 'ouse like Higgins and Joe Smith, I should not dislike him so much; but he's not that style of man—he belongs to the breed of the pompous upstart, the sort of man stocked with long caddish words that no gentleman uses, the man to call a house a domicile, a horse a quadruped, a trench an excavation, and so on. Talk of the—There goes the beggar, quadruped and all! I dare say he fancies himself a type of the genuine country squire. Ugh! Down, Hal—down, Goggles; he'd spot you in a moment! I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of thinking we'd look at him."
They descend from the gate and stand together, the five abreast, taking their farewell look, with swelling hearts, at the home where they have spent their happy careless youth in sheltered union. They are not a demonstrative family, the Lefroys—not given to moments of "gushing" or caressing; they quarrel frequently among themselves, coming of a hot-blooded race; yet, they are deeply attached to one another, having shared all the joys and sorrows of each others' lives, having no interests, no sympathies outside their immediate circle; and the thought of coming separation weighs heavily on their young hearts, as heavily as the pall of death.
"Well, we'd best make tracks," says Robert, turning away, his hands shading his eyes, "we'll not forget the 29th of May—your birthday, Hal, old chap. Last year, you remember we had tea in the grove, and old Sarah baked us a stunning cake; this year we have made our last pilgrimage together. Next year I wonder where we shall be? Scattered as far and as wide as the graves of a household, I fear."
At this point Addie, the most hot tempered but the most tender-hearted member of the family, breaks down, and flinging her arms round her brother's neck, sobs out piteously—
"O, Bob, Bob, my own darling boy, I—I can't bear it—I can't bear to have you go away over that cruel cold sea! I shall never sleep at night thinking of you. Don't go away, don't go away; let's all stick together and—and—go—die—somewhere—together! Oh, Bob, Bob, my darling, my darling!"
There is another general break-down; they all cling one to another, Hal and Lottie howling dismally, Robert's haughty eyes swimming too in tears, until the sound of voices in a neighboring field forces them to compose themselves, and they walk slowly across the upland meadow, at the furthest corner of which they separate, the boys, at the urgent invitation of their terriers, making for a rat-haunted ditch in the neighborhood, the girls strolling toward Nutsford through the northern end of the grove.
Miss Lefroy stalks on moodily in front, Lottie, still battling with her emotion, clinging to her firm young arm. Pauline walks behind alone, full of bitter thought, her straight brows painfully puckered. On the morrow a new, strange life is to begin for her, one that she knows will be eminently distasteful; her free young spirit is to be "cribbed, cabined, confined," in the narrow path of conventionality at last, and the prospect dismays her. Look as far ahead as she can, she can see no break in the gathering gloom—can see only that at seventeen the summer of her life is over and the long winter about to begin. Hope tells her no flattering tale; she does not know that in herself she holds the key of a triumphant liberty, of a future of sunlight, of glory, of all that is sweet too, and coveted by womanhood. Pauline does not know that she is beautiful, does not feel the shadow of her coming power, or guess that the lithe willowy grace of her straight young form, the glorious black of her eyes, the pure glow of her brunette skin, the chiseled outline of her small features, will purchase for her goods and pleasures of which her careless innocent girlhood has never dreamed. No lover has whispered in her ear "the music of his honey vows," and the cracked, fly-stained mirrors at Nutsgrove have told her nothing; and so she is sad and sorrow-laden, and the burden of dependence and uncongenial companionship looming before her seems to her almost more than she can bear.
In silence they pass out of the green gloom of the grove, where "fair enjeweled May" has touched with balmy breath each tiny bud, each tender leaf,
"Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrowned."
Under a scented hawthorn-hedge, skirting the main road that leads into the High Street of Nutsford, the Misses Lefroy pause for a moment to adjust the sylvan vagaries of their toilet.
Addie pulls a long limp plume of hartstongue and branch of "woodbine faintly streaked with red" from the battered leaf of her straw hat, which she pitches lightly over her straggling locks, then gives her pelerine a hasty unmeaning twitch that carries the center hook from the right to the left shoulder, and feels perfectly satisfied with her appearance. Pauline steps in front of her sister, with a request to stand on a troublesome bramble caught in her skirt. Addie without hesitation puts forth a patched unlovely boot, and the other moves forward with a brisk jerk, leaving not only the incumbrance well behind, but also a flounce of muddy lining hanging below her skirt; and thus the descendants of the Sieur de Beaulieu saunter down the High Street, with heads erect, callous, haughtily indifferent to public opinion, looking as it the whole county belonged to them.
"Look, mother—look at those poor Lefroys!" cried Miss Ethel Challice, the banker's daughter, as she drives past in her elegantly appointed C-spring landau, perfectly gloved, veiled, and shod. "Aren't they awful? Not a pair of gloves among them! And their boots—elastic sides—what my maid wouldn't wear! Patched at the toes, too! You would never say they were ladies, would you?"
"Poor children! They have no mother, you know, darling, and a bad, bad father."
"Oh, yes, I know! But he was such a handsome, attractive man! Don't you remember, mother, at Ascot, three years ago, when he asked us to lunch on his drag, and introduced me to Lord Squanderford, how fascinating we all thought him?"
Mrs. Challice shrugs her portly shoulders.
"Fascinating, but thoroughly unprincipled, my dear. I do pity his poor children. What will become of them, thrown destitute on the world? Well, I have nothing for which to blame myself. I tried to do my best for them; but—whether it was from want of