Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 2

"And you?" said Mr. Halliburton. The question might have been thought an impertinent one by many, but he spoke it only in his deep interest, and Jane Tait was of too ingenuous a disposition not to answer it as openly.

"I am not to be a governess. I am to stay at home with mamma and help her. There is plenty to do. Margaret cannot bear domestic duties, or sewing either. Dancing excepted, I have not learnt a single accomplishment--unless you call French an accomplishment."

"I am sure you have been well educated!" involuntarily spoke Mr.

Halliburton.

"Yes; in all things solid," replied Jane. "Papa has taken care of that.

He still directs my reading. I know a good bit--of--Latin"--she added, bringing out the concluding words with hesitation, as one who repents his sentence--"though I do not like to confess it to you."

"Why do you not?"

"Because I think girls who know Latin are laughed at. I did not regularly learn it, but I used to be in the room when papa or Mr. Acton was teaching Francis and Robert, and I picked it up unconsciously. Mr.

Acton often took Francis; he had more time on his hands than papa.

Francis is to be a clergyman."

"Miss Jane," said a servant, entering the room, "Mrs. Tait is awake, and wishes to see you."

Jane left Mr. Halliburton with a word of apology, and almost immediately after Mr. Tait came in. He was a little taken to when he saw the stranger. His imagination had run, if not upon an "old guy" in spectacles, certainly upon some steady, sober, middle-aged mathematical master. Would it be well to admit this young, good-looking man to his house.

If Jane Tait had been candid in her revelations to Mr. Halliburton, that gentleman, in his turn, was not less candid to her father. He, Edgar Halliburton, was the only child of a country clergyman, the Rev. William Halliburton, who had died when Edgar was sixteen, leaving nothing behind him. Edgar--he had previously lost his mother--found a home with his late mother's brother, a gentleman named Cooper, who resided in Birmingham. Mr. Cooper was a man in extensive wholesale business, and wished Edgar to go into his counting-house. Edgar declined. His father had lived long enough to form his tastes: his greatest wish had been to see him enter the Church; and the wish had become Edgar's own. Mr.

Cooper thought there was nothing in the world like business: and looked upon that most sacred of all callings, G.o.d's ministry, only in the light of a profession. He had carved out his own career, step by step, attaining wealth and importance, and wished his nephew to do the same.

"Which is best, lad?" he coa.r.s.ely asked: "To rule as a merchant prince, or starve and toil as a curate? I'm not quite a merchant prince yet, but you may be." "It was my father's wish," pleaded Edgar in answer, "and it is my own. I cannot give it up, sir." The dispute ran high--not in words, but in obstinacy. Edgar would not yield, and at length Mr. Cooper discarded him. He turned him out of doors: told him that, if he must become a parson, he might get some one else to pay his expenses at Oxford, for he never would. Edgar Halliburton proceeded to London, and obtained employment as an usher in a school, teaching cla.s.sics and mathematics. From that he became a private teacher, and had so earned his living up to the present time: but he had never succeeded in getting to college. And Mr. Tait, before they had talked together five minutes, was charmed with his visitor, and invited him to take tea with him, which Jane came down to make.

"Has your uncle never softened towards you?" Mr. Tait inquired.

"Never. I have addressed several letters to him, but they have been returned to me."

"He has no family, you say. You ought--in justice, you ought to inherit some of his wealth. Has he other relatives?"

"He has one standing to him in the same relations.h.i.+p as I--my Cousin Julia. It is not likely that I shall ever inherit a s.h.i.+lling of it, sir.

I do not expect it."

"Right," said Mr. Tait, nodding his head approvingly. "There's no work so thriftless as that of waiting for legacies. Wearying, too. I was a poor curate, Mr. Halliburton, for twenty years--indeed, so far as being poor goes, I am not much else now--but let that pa.s.s. I had a relative who possessed money, and who had neither kith nor kin nearer to her than I was. For the best part of those twenty years I was giving covert hopes to that money; and when she died, and NOTHING was left to me, I found out how foolish and wasteful my hopes had been. I tell my children to trust to their own honest exertions, but never to trust to other people's money. Allow me to urge the same upon you."

Mr. Halliburton's lips and eyes alike smiled, as he looked gratefully at the rector, a man so much older than himself. "I never think of it," he earnestly said. "It appears, for me, to be as thoroughly lost as though it did not exist. I should not have mentioned it, sir, but that I consider it right you should know all particulars respecting me; if, as I hope, you will admit me to your home."

"I think we should get on very well together," frankly acknowledged Mr.

Tait, forgetting the prudent ideas which had crossed his mind.

"I am sure we should, sir," warmly replied Edgar Halliburton. And the bargain was made.

CHAPTER II.

THE SHADOW BECOMES SUBSTANCE.

And yet it had perhaps been well that those prudent ideas had been allowed to obtain weight. Mr. Halliburton took up his abode with the Taits; and, the more they saw of him, the more they liked him. In which liking Jane must be included.

It was a possible shadow of the future, the effects the step would bring forth, which had whispered determent to Mr. Tait: a very brief shadow, which had crossed his mind imperfectly, and flitted away again. Where two young and attractive beings are thrown into daily companions.h.i.+p, the result too frequently is that a mutual regard arises, stronger than any other regard can ever be in this world. This result arrived here.

A twelvemonth pa.s.sed over from the time of Mr. Halliburton's entrance--how swiftly for him and for Jane Tait they alone could tell.

Not a word had been spoken to her by Mr. Halliburton that he might not have spoken to her mother or her sister Margaret; not a look on Jane's part had been given by which he could infer that he was more to her than the rest of the world. And yet both were inwardly conscious of the feelings of the other; and when the twelvemonth had gone by it had seemed to them but a span, for the love they bore each other.

One evening in December Jane stood in the dining-room waiting to make tea just as she had so waited that former evening. For any outward signs, you might have thought that not a single hour had elapsed since their first introduction--that it was the same evening as of old. It was sloppy outside, it was bright within. The candles stood on the table unlighted, the fire blazed, the tea-tray was placed, and only Jane was there. Mrs. Tait was upstairs with one of her frequent sick-headaches, Margaret was with her, and the others had not come in.

Jane stood in a reverie--her elbow resting on the mantel-piece, and the blaze from the fire flickering on her gentle face. She was fond of these few minutes of idleness on a winter's evening, between the twilight hour and lighting the candles.

The clock in the kitchen struck five. It did not arouse her: she heard it in a mechanical sort of manner, without taking note of it. Scarcely had the sound of the last stroke died away when there was a knock at the front door.

That aroused her--for she knew it. She knew the footsteps that came in when it was answered, and a rich damask arose to her cheeks, and the pulses of her heart went on a little quicker than they had been going before.

She took her elbow from the mantel-piece, and sat down quietly on a chair. No need to look who entered. Some one, taller by far than any in that house, came up to the fire, and bent to warm his hands over the blaze.

"It is a cold night, Jane. We shall have a severe frost."

"Yes," she answered; "the water in the barrel is already freezing over."

"How is your mamma now?"

"Better, thank you. Margaret has gone up to help her to dress. She is coming down to tea."

Mr. Halliburton remained silent a minute, and then turned to Jane, his face glowing with satisfaction. "I have had a piece of preferment offered me to-day."

"Have you?" she eagerly said. "What is it?"

"Dr. Percy proposes that, from January, I shall take the Greek cla.s.ses as well as the mathematics, and he doubles my salary. Of course I shall have to give closer attendance, but I can readily do that. My time is not fully employed."

"I am very glad," said Jane.

"So am I," he answered. "Taking all my sources of income together, I shall now be earning two hundred and eighty-three pounds a year."

Jane laughed. "Have you been reckoning it up?"

"Ay; I had a motive in doing so."

His tone was peculiar, and it caused her to look at him, but her eyelids drooped under his gaze. He drew nearer, and laid his hand gently on her shoulder, bending down before her to speak.

"Jane, you have not mistaken me. I feel that you have read what has been in my heart, what have been my intentions, as surely as though I had spoken. It is not a great income, but it is sufficient, if you can think it so. May I speak to Mr. Tait?"

What Jane would have contrived to answer she never knew, but at that moment her mother's step was heard approaching. All she did was to glance shyly up at Mr. Halliburton, and he bent his head lower and kissed her. Then he walked rapidly to the door and opened it for Mrs.

Tait--a pale, refined, delicate-looking lady, wrapped in a shawl. These violent headaches, from which she so frequently suffered, did not affect her permanent health, but on the days she suffered she would be utterly prostrated. Mr. Halliburton gave her his arm, and led her to a seat by the fire, his voice low and tender, his manner sympathizing. "I am already better," she said to him, "and shall be much better after tea.

Sometimes I am tempted to envy those who do not know what a sick-headache is."

"They may know other maladies as painful, dear Mrs. Tait."