Chapter 17 | A Life's Eclipse

Four days elapsed, and Mrs Ellis noticed a change in her child. Mary had been more than usually attentive to her father, and James Ellis had noticed and looked pleased.

“’Tis going off, mother,” he said one evening. “Of course it hit very hard at the time, poor little lass, for she felt very fond of him, I suppose; but I always said to myself that time would heal the sore place, and, bless her, it is doing it. You’ve noticed how much brighter she seems?”

“Yes, I’ve noticed,” said Mrs Ellis, nodding her head as she prepared the supper. “She was actually singing gently to herself this morning over her work, just as she used to, and you don’t know, James dear, what a lot of good it did me.”

“Oh, yes, I do—oh, yes, I do,” said the bailiff, nodding his head. “Of course it would, mother.”

“Yes, dear, it did, for it has been cruel work for me to see her going about the house in that heart-breaking way.”

“Humph! Of course, and for me too.”

“No, James, you’re at home so little. You have your meals and sit with me of an evening, and at such times there’s something going on to make the poor dear busy. But as soon as you’re out of sight it has been dreadful again. I’ve seen a deal more of her poor heart-breaking than you have, and there have been times when—”

“Heart-breaking! Stuff and nonsense!” cried James Ellis petulantly.

“Ah, you don’t know,” said his wife, shaking her head at him sadly.

“Don’t know what, you silly woman? There, that sounds like heart-breaking, doesn’t it?”

For at that moment, plainly heard, came the sound of Mary’s voice singing the old English song, “Robin Adair”; and as the notes reached his ear, James Ellis smiled, held his head on one side, swayed it to the melody, and began softly to hum over the plaintive tune.

“Rob—in—er—her—dair,” sang James Ellis. “Well done, little lassie! Talk about a voice, mother, why it’s as sweet as a bird’s.”

“Yes, dear, but I wish she wouldn’t sing such sad things—it puts me in mind of the robins in the autumn time.”

“I wish you wouldn’t be so melancholy, mother. You’re enough to put a whole regiment of soldiers out of spirits, let alone a poor girl. Here, hold your tongue now. Here she comes.”

Footsteps were heard upon the stairs, and the foot was more springy than it had been of late, as Mary entered the room.

“Ready for supper, father dear?” said Mary, going behind his chair, placing her arms about his neck, and drawing his head back so that she could lay her cheek against his forehead.

“Ready, my pet? Of course I am;” and “Rob—in—er—her—dair,” he sang. “That’s the way. I’m glad to hear you tune up a bit. It’s like the birds in spring corn: and mother wants it, for of all the melancholy old women that ever lived, she’s about the worst.”

Click!

“Hallo! Who’s that at the gate? Just look, dear.”

Mary went to the window, but there was no need, for she knew the step; and as her mother glanced at her, she saw the girl’s face harden as she said—

“Mr Barnett, father.”

“Humph! What does he want to-night?” muttered Ellis. “Let him in, my dear; and, Mary, my girl, don’t run away out of the room.”

Mary was silent, and a tapping came at the door, evidently administered by the head of a stick.

“Evening, Miss Mary,” said the visitor briskly. “Nice growing weather. Father at home?”

“Yes, I’m at home. Want me, Daniel Barnett?”

“Well, yes, Mr Ellis, sir, there’s a little bit o’ business I want to see you about. I ought to have asked you this morning and down at the gardens, but somehow I’ve always got such a lot of things on my mind there that a lot of ’em slip out again.”

“Come in then, come in then,” said Ellis.

“Not if it’s disturbing you, sir,” protested the visitor. “Say the word, and I’ll go and come up another evening. I don’t mind a walk, Miss Mary,” he added, in a confidential way.

“Business, business, Daniel Barnett! And there’s nothing like getting it over,” said Ellis, as, after a good deal of preliminary shoe-rubbing, Barnett stepped to the door of the sitting-room, and then stopped short in a very apologetic way.

“Why, you’re just going to supper. I’d best come up to-morrow night.”

James Ellis felt in the best of humours, and he smiled.

“Well,” he said, “if you come to-morrow evening, I suppose I shall have some supper then. Sit down, man, and out with it.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr Ellis, and with many apologies to you, Mrs Ellis, ma’am, and to you too, Miss Mary.”

“Why, hallo! Daniel Barnett. Been to the bookseller’s lately?”

“Eh? No, sir, I haven’t been to the town for a fortnight past,” said Barnett wonderingly.

“Oh,” said the bailiff, with a knowing look at his wife and daughter; “I thought perhaps you’d bought and been studying up Etiquette for Gentlemen.”

“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, flushing.

“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 fashion—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 circumstances 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.”

He looked across at Mary, whose face was stony, and her eyes fixed upon him so strangely that he felt abashed, and turned to Mrs Ellis.

“Sad business, ma’am, from the beginning,” he said; “but, as the saying is, we don’t know, and perhaps it’s all for the best.”

Mrs Ellis sighed, the supper was at an end; and to the great relief of all, Barnett rose, and in a tone of voice which suggested that every one had been pressing him very hard to stay longer, he cried—

“Well, really, I must go now.”

Mrs Ellis said meekly, “Must you, Mr Barnett?” and held out her hand promptly.

He shook hands with her quite affectionately, and then turned to Mary, who let him take her hand more than gave it, and he sighed as he said “Good-night.”

“You’ll think about the gravel, Mr Ellis?” he said to his host. “I want that garden to look better than any one in the county.”

“Yes, you shall have it, Barnett, first time I can spare the horses at the farm. And I’ll go down to the gate with you.” They walked not only to the gate, but a couple of hundred yards towards the gardens before either spoke, and then just as Barnett was congratulating himself upon how well he had got on at the cottage that night, Ellis turned to him sharply.

“I told Mrs Mostyn about John Grange having gone away so suddenly.”

“Did you, sir? What did she say?”

“That she didn’t want to hear his name mentioned again, for she had been disappointed in the man.”

“Poor chap!” said Barnett sadly.

“Yes, poor chap!” said Ellis hastily. “For Heaven’s sake don’t ever hint at such a thing at home, Daniel, but I’ve a horrible thought of something being wrong about that poor fellow. You don’t think that, quite out of heart and in despair like, he has gone and done anything rash, do you?”

“Well, Mr Ellis, I didn’t like to hint at such a thing to any one, but as you do think like that, and as old Tummus and his wife seem to be quite suspicious like, it did set me thinking, and I’ve felt sometimes that he must have walked two miles the other night to the river, and then gone in.”

“By accident?” said Ellis quietly, “in his blindness.”

“Ah!” said Barnett solemnly, “that’s more than I can tell.”

“Or must tell,” said Ellis excitedly. “It mustn’t even be breathed, Dan Barnett. If my Mary even heard it whispered, she’d go melancholy mad.”