A Life's Eclipse Part 13

"No, no, sir! Ha, ha, ha! That's a good one, Mr Ellis. Oh, no, sir, I'm only a rough one, and what I know of etiquetty came up natural like--like--"

"Mushrooms?"

"That's a good one too!" cried Barnett, with forced gaiety. "He's having his little joke at me, Miss Mary."

"There, never mind them," said the bailiff, "let's have the business and get it over. What is it?"

"Of course, sir. It won't take long."

"Shall we go in the kitchen, James?" said Mrs Ellis.

"Eh, ma'am?" cried the young man eagerly. "Oh, no, pray don't let me drive you away, it's only garden business."

"They're not going," said Ellis, half jocularly. "Now then, what is it, my lad?"

"Well, it's about the gravel paths, Mr Ellis," said the young man, leaning forward, after wiping his damp forehead, and speaking confidentially. "I'm getting a bit anxious about them."

"Glad to hear it, my lad. I was always proud o' my paths in the old days."

"And so am I, sir. If the gravel paths in a garden's kept right there isn't so very much the matter."

"Humph! Well, I don't go so far as that, Daniel Barnett, but paths go a long way. So you're ashamed of their being so weedy, eh?"

"Weedy, sir," said the young man, flus.h.i.+ng.

"Why those paths--Oh, I see! Ha ha! He's chaffing me again, Miss Mary."

Mary did not even smile, and the visitor looked uncomfortable, his own face growing serious again directly.

"It's a long time since they've been regravelled, Mr Ellis, sir, and as I could spare a bit of time, I thought, if you were not much pressed up at the farm, you might let me have a hundred loads of gravel carted from the pit."

"Take a lot of time and very hard work for the horses," said the bailiff, pursing up his lips.

"Yes, sir, I calculated all that, but it would be a wonderful improvement to my paths, and they'd pay for doing."

"I don't want to spare the carts, Daniel Barnett; but I agree with you it would be a great improvement, and I want Mrs Mostyn to feel that you are doing justice to the place, so I suppose I must say yes."

"Thank you, sir, thank you," cried Barnett, for he could feel the strength of the encouragement, and knew how much it meant. "There," he continued, rising very slowly and glancing at mother and daughter as he spoke, "I'll start two men picking up the big path, and I s'pose you'll be sending down the gravel almost any time."

"They shall begin soon and get it over."

"Thank you, sir; then I'll say good-night now. Good-night, Mrs Ellis.

Good-night, Miss Mary."

"What, won't you stop and have a bit of supper with us, Daniel?" said the bailiff.

Wouldn't he! And "Daniel" too! He dropped down into his chair muttering something about its being very kind, and that he thought he wouldn't mind a morsel, but he looked in vain for a welcoming smile from Mary, who, without a word, slowly left the room, and returned as silently as she went, but with fresh knives and forks, and a couple more plates.

"But she didn't put 'em next to hers," thought Daniel Barnett, most unreasonably, for there was the whole opposite side of the table at liberty, and she laid a place for him there.

It was of course what he had been looking for. He had come expecting to be asked to stay, and as soon as they were all seated he told himself that it was all right, and he stared hard at the gentle face across the table and started various topics of conversation, directed at Mary, her father good-humouredly helping him with a word now and then, while Mrs Ellis looked on and attended to the wants of her guest.

"Yes, she's coming round at last," thought Daniel Barnett; for, whenever she was addressed, Mary replied in a quiet, gentle way, and once entered into the conversation with some word of animation, making the bailiff look across the table at his wife, and give her a nod, as much as to say--

"Now then, who's broken-hearted now?"

But Mrs Ellis only tightened her lips and said to herself--

"Yes, it's all very well; but fathers don't understand their girls like mothers do. Women know how to read women and men don't, and never will--that's my humble opinion about that--and I wish Daniel Barnett would go--"

Daniel Barnett was a clever fellow, but like many sharp men he could be too much so sometimes. Metaphorically, he was one of those men who disdained the use of stirrups for mounting a horse, and liked to vault into the saddle, which he could do with ease and grace, but sometimes he would, in his efforts to show off, over-leap himself--vaulting ambition fas.h.i.+on--and come down heavily on the other side.

He performed that feat on the present occasion at supper, for, in his blundering way, now that circ.u.mstances had occurred which made him feel pretty safe, he thought it would be good form to show Mary what a fine, magnanimous side there was in his character, and how, far from looking upon John Grange as a possible rival, he treated him as a poor, unfortunate being, for whom he could feel nothing but pity.

"Rather strange business, wasn't it, about poor Grange, Mr Ellis, eh?"

Mary started. Mrs Ellis thrust her hand beneath the table-cloth to give her daughter's dress a twitch, and Ellis frowned and uttered a kind of grunt, which might have meant anything.

Any one else would have known by the silence that he had touched dangerous ground. Daniel Barnett felt that it was an opportunity for him to speak.

"I am very sorry for the poor fellow," he said; "it seems so sad, but it is no more than I expected."

Mary turned white and cold.

"You don't know where he has gone, Mr Ellis?"

"No," said the bailiff shortly.

"No; I thought you said so. Poor chap! I did everything I could to make matters easy for him, and selected little jobs that I thought he could do; but, of course, he would not take to them happily. He felt it hard to have to take his orders from me, and very naturally, for he expected to be head-gardener, and would have been, eh, Mr Ellis?"

"Yes," grunted the bailiff.

"To be sure he would. I'm not such a donkey as to suppose I should have got the place if he had been all right. I'm a good gardener, though I say it as shouldn't say it, Miss Mary; but there were lots of little dodges about flowers where he could beat me hollow. Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed, "I wouldn't say that before the men, but I don't mind here."

"Is Mr Grange bad again?" asked Mrs Ellis, unable to restrain her curiosity.

"Bad, ma'am? Well, of course he's bad; but no worse than usual. You know, I suppose, that he's gone away?"

"I? No."

"Oh, yes, quite mysterious like; never said good-bye to a soul."

"But me," thought Mary, with a sensation as of something clutching her heart, as she recalled that night at her bedroom window.

"Yes, poor fellow, he's gone," said Ellis, who felt that it was time to speak.

"Of course I know why," said Barnett, "it was too much for him. He was fretting his heart out, poor chap, and he no doubt thought it was the best he could do--get right away you know, where he wasn't known, and where everything he saw--I mean everything he touched--didn't remind him of the old place. It's all very sad, and it used to make me feel uncomfortable, and keep away for fear of making him think of my superseding him; but there, we're all like plants and flowers, Miss Mary, and suffer from our blights and east winds."