A Rich Man's Relatives Volume III Part 8

Then there was a silence of some duration, though both were too busy with their own thoughts to notice it; till at length Joe remembered that the purpose of their expedition was fulfilled, and asked his companion if she did not think they had better return. Betsey was ready to think whatever her Joe thought, leaning up with an undesirable closeness that warm day, and softly fanning their joint countenances with a fond and lingering motion of her fan. In time she heaved a sigh, deep and full of overflowing enjoyment, and then she spoke.

"Do you know, Joe dear, you have given me a great surprise to-day?"

Joe's tight-strained feelings had run themselves down now. He felt--"tired in his inside," I fear, would have been his inelegant expression, and longed for a gla.s.s of beer. He felt incapable of conversation, and even a little grumpy, perhaps. Such strange and inconsistent creatures are the men.

Betsey's over-wroughtness was quite of another kind. Her nervous excitement, once fairly past the turn of the tide, was inclined, as Hamlet would have had his solid flesh incline, to "melt and dissolve itself into a dew"--of verbiage and watery talk. It was of a soliloquizing tendency, too, which, though p.r.o.ne to questionings, pa.s.sed on from one to the next, indifferent to non-reply.

"This has been all a great surprise; I never thought that you really cared for me. Was it not strange?" and she looked up in his face grown stolid, and beginning to show unmistakable signs of crossness, and fanned him fondly, smiling into dimples, like the rapturous maidens in "Patience," when they enthral their poet with garlands.

"I thought it would have been the pretty Miss Savergne, you were so attentive to----"

"She would not marry a poor man, and a poor man, could not afford to marry _her_," and then Joe stopped. He would have liked to kick himself for an unmannerly brute; for alas! the soft impeachment was all too true. He coughed and spluttered. Fortunately, Betsey was too full of her own pleasant reflections to heed anything, but he felt he must get away and calm down, or something worse might escape him which would not pa.s.s unnoticed, so he pulled up by the road-side just on the outskirts of the village.

"Would you mind if I set you down here, Betsey? It is getting late.

The calves should have been watered an hour ago, and Baptiste and Laurent are both away."

"To be sure, Joe! A farmer's wife must take an interest in the calves, and I mean to do my duty," and she sprang gaily out, and stood looking after the man and outfit as they trotted off, with a sense of proprietors.h.i.+p which was new and very pleasant.

The rector and his wife delayed their dinner half-an-hour, and then sat down, wondering what had become of Betsey. They had nearly finished when she whirled in, a tumultuous arrangement of white muslin and enthusiasm.

"Oh, auntie! Oh, Uncle Dionysius!" She involved first one and then the other in her manifold frills and puffings by way of embrace.

"Congratulate me!--do!--Just think!"

"Sit down, Betsey, and calm yourself," remonstrated the rector, "and then, perhaps, it may be possible to think. Meanwhile you take our breath away. Have you had your dinner?"

"Well, no. But I don't care--or rather, I dare say I _will_ take just a morsel. What have you been having? Chickens? Well, I will take just a bone, and a good plateful of salad, and the rest of that melon.

That's all I want. Such news! Only guess! But you would never think.

Fact is, the squire--Squire Webb--has--what do you think?"

"Why!" cried Aunt Judy, "I saw you go for a drive with him?--Oh!--Indeed."

CHAPTER X.

AT GORHAM.

Mrs. Martha Herkimer, with her husband, travelling at their leisure in "Noo Hamps.h.i.+re," the country of her girlhood, was a happy woman. He was constantly with her, had few letters to write, and no men to talk business with. He seemed to have laid business aside, would read his newspaper beside her of a morning, and drive with her in the afternoon, to admire the scenery--"objects of interest," the American says, meaning everything the residents plume themselves upon, from the Falls of Niagara, should they possess them, to the new school-house at the Five-mile Cross Roads.

It felt like a renewal of the honeymoon, or those delightful "latter rains," spoken of in scripture, when the thirsty earth, long parched and chapped with drought, drinks in once more the life-restoring moisture, and clothes itself anew with gra.s.s and verdure. He told her one day that his house had suspended payment and he was bankrupt, but as they were travelling with every comfort, and there seemed no lack of money, she accepted it as one of the inscrutable phenomena of the commercial world, which she had long given up attempting to understand. Her Ralph, she told herself, could have done nothing wrong. He was fonder of money, and harder and keener about acquiring it, she feared, than was perhaps, perfectly right. Her father had been a preacher of the old Puritan school, ministering to villagers in a sequestered valley, and warning them against worldliness and the race for wealth, the world of wealth being an unknown country there about.

If Ralph had lost some of his gatherings now, it might be for his greater good perhaps in other ways. She saw many around her who had failed, and yet lived comfortably and respected afterwards, and she would not be sorry if such were to be the fate of her own good man. It would wean him from the hurry and worry of business, and let him stay more at home than theretofore, to his own good, very probably, and a.s.suredly to her greater happiness.

They travelled about, by road and rail, from one summer hotel to another--there are many of them in the White Mountains--climbing mountains, sailing on ponds, and honeymooning it delightfully all day long, and now they were arriving at Gorham by the evening train, meaning to ascend Mount Was.h.i.+ngton, already distinguished by his snow-tipped summit, on the morrow. It was a purple evening, with the eastward slopes of the valley reddening in the afterglow, while cool blue shadows stole out of hollows to the westward, forerunners of the twilight. The people on the platform stood in bright relief as the train drew up at the station, and Martha's eye took them all in as she alighted.

"What?" she cried, "General Considine! _you_ here?" She felt a b.u.mp between her shoulders from the wallet of Ralph close behind her, as though he stumbled. "Ralph!" and she turned round, but Ralph was gone--gone back for something left behind no doubt. "General," and she ran up to him and took his hand, while Considine looked disturbed, and said nothing.

"What have you been about, general? n.o.body has seen you, n.o.body knew you were away; and one of your friends--you know who--is far from pleased, I can tell you. But say!--your arm in a sling? Oh, general, you have not been fighting, at _your_ time of day, I do hope. When I was a girl we always said a Southern man must have been fighting if he was tied up any way. What have you been doing? A hunting accident?"

"Madam," Considine began, clearing his throat, and looking tall and sternly in the good woman's face, who was regarding him with such friendly eyes. He coughed again, his face softened, and showed signs of discomposure. How could he speak as he felt to this good soul about her own husband, and tell her he was a murderer? He would have liked to get away from her without saying anything; but she had mentioned "a friend," the friend to whom he was at that moment hastening back to apologize for, or at least to explain, his absence. He would like to know beforehand what the friend was saying, and for that, self-control and reticence, combined if necessary with invention, were needed. He coughed again. Martha's last words, "hunting accident," still hanging on his ear, came to his tongue-tip of itself.

"Yes. Hunting accident--gun accident, that is. Thought I was killed.

Insensible. A gang of tramps found me, and robbed me--they wore my own clothes before my eyes, the rascals--and saved my life. And now that they have cashed the cheque they made me give them in payment of the treatment, they have discharged me cured. But what do the Miss Stanleys say?"

"Matildy was mighty huffy at first. 'You should have called to explain, or sent a note to apologize,' she said. But when you went on doing neither, she grew down hearted like,--took it to heart serious, I do believe, though she has never owned up as much to anybody. But, if once she makes sure you are in the land of the livin', see if you don't catch it, that's all. I guess I shouldn't like to be you, when you call to explain, unless you can make the narrative real thrillin'.

But how was it, general? You must come up to the hotel with us and see Ralph--I don't see where that man's run to--and tell us all about them tramps. Do, now, general, like a dear."

"Impossible, Mrs. Herkimer. I go to Montreal by this very train.

Good-bye."

CHAPTER XI.

PLANTING HYACINTHS.

Desdemona listening to the Moor is a parallel not now used for the first time. The "cultured" reader has met it before. But where to find a better? Matilda sat and listened with open-eyed attention while Considine told his story.

She had received him with some slight display of coolness, when he first appeared, but without question and comment. If the men cared no more than to forget their little plan of a lunch in the woods, of what consequence could it possibly be to them? They would know better than trouble him with their little female festivities again, that was all; and if he had been indifferent or rude, at least they knew better than make themselves absurd by showing offence. It was "good morning, Mr.

Considine," when he appeared. "So sorry Penelope has gone out.

However, she is only down at the farm, talking to Bruneau. She will be back presently." Considine had to say everything for himself, without the a.s.sistance which even pretending to call him to account would have given; while all the time he recognized how deeply he must have offended by the severity with which he was chilled and sat upon, as Miss Matilda went on most industriously with her embroidery.

"I failed to turn up at your pic-nic, Miss Matilda."

"Oh! It was no consequence. I dare say you would have found it dull if you had come. As it was, the day was so sultry we felt sure it would thunder, and did not go."

"But I really wished to go, Miss Matilda. I was most desirous---"

Matilda lifted her face to smile a sweet incredulous smile on the visitor, and then went on with her work.

"But it is so, Miss Matilda. I beg you will believe me. And do you suppose I would not have sent you word if it had been possible?"

"We were surprised at that, now I remember. But it was not a party. It was nothing. Pray do not mention it!"

"But I must, Miss Matilda. It was most important to me!"

Miss Matilda laid her work in her lap and looked up.

"I went to bed, Miss Matilda, intending to join your expedition. I got up next morning, still intending it, at six o'clock. You were not to start till eleven. I bathe every morning in the river. I went out in a boat, as usual--one of Podevin's boats. I plunged in and swam--just as I always do--when a rascal--I will not name him--took aim at me from the sh.o.r.e, and shot me in the shoulder. You see my arm is in a sling."

"Oh!" cried Matilda, half rising and dropping the work; "I did not notice your poor arm, Mr. Considine. Indeed I did not. Shot you in the arm? Did it hurt much? Shot--You? Pray tell me about it. Who was the person?"

"A person we both know. But you must not mention his name. Not that he deserves any consideration from honest folks, but for his wife's sake, who is a good woman, and would be horrified if she knew. It was Ralph Herkimer."

"Ralph Herkimer! But why?"