Janice Meredith Part 12

"She'll do nothing of the kind. If ye want a husband for the la.s.s, let her take Phil."

"A bankrupt."

"Tus.h.!.+ There are acres enough to pay the old squire's debts three times over. She'd bring Phil enough ready money to clear it all, and 't is rich mellow land that will double in value, give it time."

"I tell thee her head 's full of this bond-servant. The two were in the kitchen just now, talking about paradise, and I know not what other foolishness."

"That" said Mr. Meredith, with a grin of enjoyment, "sounds like true Presbyterian doctrine. The Westminster a.s.sembly seem to have left paradise out of the creation."

"Such flippancy is shameful in one of thy years, Mr.

Meredith," said his wife, sternly, "and canst have but one ending."

"That is all any of us can have, Patty," replied the squire, genially.

Mrs. Meredith went to the door, but before leaving the room, she said, still with a stern, set face, though with a break in her voice, "Is 't not enough that my four babies are enduring everlasting torment, but my husband and daughter must go the same way?"

"There, there, Matilda!" cried the husband. "'T was said in jest only and was nothing more than lip music. Come back--" the speech ended there as a door at a distance banged. "Now she'll have a cry all by herself," groaned the squire. "'T is a strange thing she took it so bravely when the road was rough, yet now, when 't is easy pulling, she lets it fret and gall her."

Then Mr. Meredith looked into his fire, and saw another young girl, a little more serious than Janice, perhaps, but still gay-hearted and loved by many. He saw her making a stolen match with himself; pa.s.sed in review the long years of alienation from her family, the struggle with poverty, and, saddest of all, the row of little gravestones which told of the burial of the best of her youth. He saw the day finally when, a worn, saddened woman, she at last was in the possession of wealth, to find in it no pleasure, yet to turn eagerly, and apparently with comfort, to the teachings of that strange combination of fire and logic, Jonathan Edwards. He recalled the two sermons during Edwards's brief term as president of Na.s.sau Hall, which moved him so little, yet which had convinced Mrs. Meredith that her dead babies had been doomed to eternal punishment and had made her the stern, unyielding woman she was. The squire was too hearty an animal, and lived too much in the open air, to be given to introspective thought, but he shook his head. "A strange warp and woof we weave of the skein,"

he sighed, "that sorrow for the dead should harden us to the living." Mr. Meredith rose, went upstairs, and rapped at a door. Getting no reply, after a repet.i.tion of the knock, he went in.

A glance revealed what at first sight looked like a crumpled heap of clothes upon the bed, but after more careful scrutiny the ma.s.s was found to have a head, very much buried between two pillows, and the due quant.i.ty of arms and legs. Walking to the bed, the squire put his hand on the bundle.

"There, la.s.s," he said, "'t is nought to make such a pother about."

"Oh, dadda," moaned Janice, "I am the most unhappy girl that ever lived."

It is needless to say after this remark that Miss Meredith's knowledge of the world was not of the largest, and the squire, with no very great range of experience, smiled a little as he said--

"Then 't will not make you more miserable to wed the parson?"

"Dadda!" exclaimed the girl, rolling over quickly, to get a sight of his countenance. When she found him smiling, the anxious look on the still red and tear-stained face melted away, and she laughed merrily. "Think of the life I'd give the good man! How I would wherrit him! He 'd have to give up his church to have time enough to preach to me."

Apparently the deep woe alluded to the moment before was forgotten.

"I've no manner of doubt he'd enjoy the task," declared the father, with evident pride. "Ah, Jan, many a man would enter the ministry, if he might be ordained parson of ye."

"The only parson I want is a father confessor," said Janice, sitting up and giving him a kiss.

"Then what 's this maggot your mother has got in her head about ye and Charles and paradise?" laughed her father.

"Indeed, dadda," protested the girl, eagerly, "mommy was most unjust. I was to stir some syrup, and Charles came into the kitchen and would talk to me, and as I could n't leave the pot, I had to listen, and then--well

"I thought as much!" cried the squire, heartily, when Janice paused. "Where the syrup is, there'll find ye the flies. But we'll have no horse-fly buzzing about ye. My fine gentleman shall be taught where he belongs, if it takes the whip to do it."

"No, dadda," exclaimed Janice. "He spoke but to warn me of danger to you. He says there 's preparation to tar and feather you unless you--you do something."

"Foo!" sniffed the squire. "Let them snarl. I'll show them I'm not a man to be driven by tag, long tail, and bobby."

"But Charles--" began the girl.

"Ay, Charles," interrupted Mr. Meredith. "I've no doubt he's one of 'em. 'T is always the latest importations take the hottest part against the gentry."

"Nay, dadda, I think he--"

"Mark me, that's what takes the tyke to the village so often."

"He said 't was to drill he went."

"To drill?" questioned the squire. "What meant he by that?"

"I asked him, and he said 't was quadrille. Dost think he meant dancing or cards?"

"'T is in keeping that he should be a dancing master or a card-sharper," a.s.serted Mr. Meredith. "No wonder 't is a disordered land when 't is used as a catchall for every man not wanted in England. We'll soon put a finish to his night-walking."

"I don't think he's a villain, dadda, and he certainly meant kindly in warning us."

"To make favour by tale-bearing, no doubt."

"I'm sure he'd not a thought of it," declared Janice, with an unconscious eagerness which made the squire knit his brows.

"Ye speak warmly, child," he said. "I trust your mother be not justified in her suspicion."

The girl, who meanwhile had sprung off the bed, drew herself up proudly. "Mommy is altogether wrong," she replied.

"I'd never descend so low."

"I said as much," responded the squire, gleefully.

"A likely idea, indeed!" exclaimed Janice. "As if I'd have aught to do with a groom! No, I never could shame the family by that."

"Wilt give me your word to that, Jan?" asked the squire.

"Yes," cried the girl, and then roguishly added, "Why, dadda, I'd as soon, yes, sooner, marry old Belza, who at least is a prince in his own country, than see a Byllynge marry a bond-servant."

X A COLONIAL CHRISTMAS

For some weeks following the pledge of Janice, the life at Greenwood became as healthily monotonous as of yore. Both Mr. and Mrs. Meredith spoke so sharply to both Sukey and Charles of his loitering about the kitchen that his visits, save at meal times, entirely ceased.

The squire went further and ordered him to put an end to his trips to the village, but the man took this command in sullen silence, and was often absent.

One circ.u.mstance, however, very materially lessened the possible encounters between the bond-servant and the maiden.

This was no less than the setting in of the winter snows, which put a termination to all the girl's outdoor life, excepting the attendance at the double church services on Sundays, which Mrs. Meredith never permitted to be neglected. From the window Janice sometimes saw the groom playing in the drifts with Clarion, but that was almost the extent of her knowledge of his doings. It is to be confessed that she eagerly longed to join them or, at least, to have a like sport with the dog.

Eighteenth-century etiquette, however, neither countenanced such conduct in the quality, nor, in fact, clothed them for it.

A point worth noting at this time was connected with one window of the parlour. Each afternoon as night shut down, it was Peg's duty to close all the blinds, for colonial windows not being of the tightest, every additional barricade to Boreas was welcome, and this the servant did with exemplary care. But every evening after tea, Janice always walked to a particular window and, opening the shutter, looked out for a moment, as if to see what the night promised, before she took her seat at her tambour frame or sewing. Sometimes one of her parents called attention to the fact that she had not quite closed the shutters again, and she always remedied the oversight at once.

Otherwise she never looked at the window during the whole evening, glance where she might. Presumably she still remembered the fright her putative ghost had occasioned her, and chose not to run the chance of another sight of him.

Almost invariably, however, in the morning she blew on the frost upon the window of her own room and having rubbed clear a spot, looked below, much as if she suspected ghosts could leave tracks in the snow. In her behalf it is only fair to say that the girls of that generation were so shut in as far as regarded society or knowledge of men that they let their imaginations question and wander in a manner difficult now to conceive. At certain ages the two s.e.xes are very much interested in each other, and if this interest is not satisfied objectively, it will be subjectively.

Snow, if a jailer, was likewise a defence, and apparently cooled for a time the heat of the little community against the squire. Even the Rev. Mr. McClave's flame of love and love of flame were modified by the depth of the drifts he must struggle through, in order to discourse on eternal torment while gazing at earthly paradise. Janice became convinced that the powers of darkness no longer had singled her out as their particular prey, and in the peaceful isolation of the winter her woes, when she thought of them, underwent a change of grammatical tense which suggested that they had become things of the past.