SIR EMERY AND LADY GASCOYNE AT HOME.
SIR EMERY GASCOYNE, Baronet, sat in his own easy-chair in front of his own fireplace at Hillborough, Surrey. It was evening, and Sir Emery rested after his day’s labors. He had been out driving from two in the afternoon, and it was cold winter weather for holding the reins, for Sir Emery always drove himself. He had ample reason. His fingers were numbed and cramped with driving. He found it difficult, indeed, to enter in a book a few notes he was endeavoring to make of his afternoon’s engagements. “’Ere, Faith, girl,” the British baronet called to his daughter in the adjoining room, “I can’t ‘old pen. Come along and enter them drives to-day, will you? I’m most clemmed with cold, it’s that keen and bitter up o’ Kent’s ‘ill this weather.”
“Just wait a minute, father, dear,” Faith answered cheerily, from the kitchen behind. “I’m coming directly. We’re hotting up some soup for your supper, here, mother and I. It’s lovely soup, darling, and it’ll thaw you out just beautifully as soon as you drink it.”
The voice was a voice like her brother’s own — soft and sweet, with a delicate intonation that made each syllable clear and distinct as the notes of a bell. Sir Emery listened to it with a fatherly smile, for he loved her well. “God bless that girl!” he said to himself, laying down the pen he could scarcely wield. “It’s a comfort to ‘ear ‘er. She do make a man glad with that pretty, small voice of ‘ers.”
Sir Emery’s room was neither large nor handsomely furnished. It was entered direct from the street by a buff-colored door, and it led by a second similar one into the kitchen behind it. The center of the apartment was occupied by a square table, with flaps at the side, covered with that peculiar sort of deep-brown oil cloth which is known to the initiated as American leather. A sideboard stood against the further wall, decorated with a couple of large spiky shells and a spotted dog in dark red-and-white china. The spotted dog Faith had attempted, more than once, surreptitiously to abolish, but Sir Emery always brought it back again to its place in triumph: it had been his mother’s, he said, and he was sort of attached to it. A couple of cane-bottomed chairs, a small horse-hair couch, and the seat which Sir Emery himself occupied, completed the furniture of the Baronet’s reception-room.
And yet there were not wanting, even in that humble home, some signs of feminine taste and æsthetic culture. The spotted dog was an eyesore that Faith could never quite get rid of; but the cheap porcelain vases, with the red and blue bouquets painted crudely on their sides, and the pink paper flowers stuck into their yawning mouths, she had sternly and successfully repressed some months ago. In their place two simple little monochromatic jars of Linthorpe pottery were installed on the mantelpiece, and some sprigs of green and late-lingering chrysanthemums usurped the former throne of the pink-paper monstrosities. The curtains were plain, but of a pretty cretonne; the covering of Sir. Emery’s chair itself was neat and cheerful; and the antimacassar on the couch, worked in simple crewels, had at least the negative merit of unobtrusiveness and harmony. Altogether one could easily see at a glance it was a working man’s cottage of the superior sort, kept neat and sweet by loving and tasteful hands, which did all in their power to relieve and diversify its necessary monotony.
For the British baronet was not known as Sir Emery at all to his friends and neighbors, but simply and solely as Gascoyne the Flyman. Most of them had heard, indeed, in a vague and general way, that if everybody had his rights, as poor folk ought to have, Martha Gascoyne would have been My Lady and the flyman himself would have ridden in a carriage through the handsomest park in the county of Pembroke. But, as to calling him anything but plain Gascoyne — him the driver they had known so well from his childhood, when he played in the street with them all as children — why, it should have no more occurred to those simple souls than it occurs to any of us to address the ordinary familiar descendant of Welsh or Irish princes as “Your Highness” or “Your Majesty.”
Sir Emery knocked the ashes out of his black clay pipe, and waited patiently for the advent of his soup. As soon as it arrived he ate it heartily, at the same time dictating to Faith the various items of his day’s engagements (for at Hillborough long credit businesses were the order of the day): “Cab from the station, Mrs. Morton, one-and-six; put it two shillin’; she’ll never pay till Christmas twelvemonth! To Kent’s ‘ill an’ back, Cap’en Lloyd, ‘arf a suverin’; no, ‘arf a suverin’s not a penny too much, missus; and then to the Birches, Mrs. Boyd-Galloway; that lot’s worth ‘alf-a-crown, Faith. If ever we see the color of ‘er money, ‘arf-a-crown’s not a farden too ‘igh for it.”
Faith entered the items dutifully as she was bid, and laid down the ledger with a sigh as soon as they were finished. “I can’t bear to think, father,” she said, “you have to go out driving cold nights like these, and at your age, too, when you ought to be sitting home here comfortably by the fire.”
“I can’t abear to think it myself, neither,” Mrs. Gascoyne echoed — for why keep up, now we’re in the bosom of the family, the useless farce of describing her as my lady? It was only in the respected works of Debrett and Burke that she figured under that unfamiliar and noble designation. To all the neighbors in Plowden’s Court she was nothing more than plain Mrs. Gascoyne, who, if everybody had their rights, would no doubt have been a real live lady.
The baronet stirred the fire with meditative pokes.
“It’s a wonderful pity,” he murmured philosophically, “that nothing couldn’t never be done in the way of makin’ money out of that there baronite-cy. It’s a wonderful pity that after all them years we should be livin’ on ’ere, missus, the same as usual, a-drivin’ a cab day an’ night for a livelihood, when we’re acshally an’ in point of law an’ fac’ baronites of the United Kingdom. It beats me ‘ow it is we can’t make money out of it.”
“I always think,” Mrs. Gascoyne responded, taking out her knitting, “that you don’t understan’ ‘ow to do it, Emery.”
“Mother, dear!” Faith said low, in a warning voice, for she knew only too well whither this prelude inevitably tended.
The baronet of the United Kingdom slowly filled his pipe once more, as he finished the soup and poured himself out a glassful of beer from the jug at his elbow. “It can’t be done,” he answered confidently. “There aint no doubt about that, it can’t be done. It stands to reason it can’t. If it could be done, Mr. Solomons ‘ud ‘a done it, you warrant you, long ago.”
“This aint ‘ow you’d ought to be livin’ at your age, though, Emery,” Mrs. Gascoyne went on, sticking to her point. “If we only knowed ‘ow, we’d ought to be making money out of it some ‘ow.”
“Mr. Solomons is a rare clever man,” the baronet replied, puffing vigorously away at the freshly lighted pipe. “Wot I say is this, missus, if it could ‘a been done, Mr. Solomons ‘ud ‘a done it.”
Faith made a bid for a gentle diversion.
“I met Mr. Solomons this evening,” she said, “as I was coming home from school, and he told me to tell you he’d look in on business to-morrow morning, before you went down to meet the 10.40.”
“You’re tired, Faith,” her father said, eying her kindly.
Faith smoothed back the hair from her high white forehead — so like her brother’s.
“Only a little bit, father,” she answered with rather a wearied smile. “It’s the Infants that are so tiring. They wear one out. They don’t mean to be worries, poor little souls, of course; but they do distract one a bit sometimes.”
“I wish you was well quit of them Infants,” Mrs. Gascoyne remarked, “and cord’d ‘and them over to the pupil-teachers. The big girls don’t give no trouble at all, in the manner of speaking, by the side of the little ones. It’s when you’ve took the Infants, I always take notice, you comes ‘ome most worn and tired-like.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Faith answered, taking her mother’s hand in hers and soothing it gently. “It’ll be over soon for this term — the holidays begin on Wednesday. And when I think of father, driving out in the cold on Kent’s Hill this weather, I’m ashamed of myself to think I ever complain a word about the Infants.”
“They’re rarely trying, them Infants, I’ll be bound,” her father continued, philosophically slow. “I mind what it was myself, when you was all little ones, you an’ Paul an’ the rest, afore we buried ‘Ope and Charity, playin’ around among the ‘osses’ feet, an’ kickin’ up that row that a man couldn’t ‘ardly ‘ear to take a order. Charity was a rare one to make a noise, she was; she was the biggest o’ the three, when you was all born; for ‘the greatest o’ these,’ says the parson, ’is Charity.’ And wot it must be to ‘ave twenty or thirty of ’em, all to once, a-cryin’ and a-chatterin’, why, it beats everything.”
“‘Ope an’ Charity was two blessed little creatures,” Mrs. Gascoyne interposed with a tear in her eye. “They never got in nobody’s way, I’m sure, Emery. ‘Ope ‘ud be eighteen year old come May, if she’d ‘a lived. An’ Charity was always ‘ead of the class in ‘rithmetic. Miss Taylor, she says to me more’n once, ‘Wot a wonderful ‘ead that there child o’ yours have got, to be sure, Mrs. Gascoyne, for figgers and such like.’”
“‘E’s a rare clever man, Mr. Solomons,” the father repeated, relapsing, after the wont of his kind, into the dominant subject: “an’ if any man could do it, you take my word for it, missus, Mr. Solomons ‘ud ‘a done it.”
“It seems sort o’ throwed away as things stand now,” Mrs. Gascoyne went on, in spite of a quick deprecatory glance from her daughter’s eyes. “It aint no good at all, as far as I can see, except for a customer to chaff you about sometimes.”
The baronet blew the smoke slowly through his ringed lips. “I might a’ kep’ a public, an’ made money out of it that way,” he said, “but you was always agin a public, mother; an’ I don’t blame you for it. A public’s a poor sort o’ way for a man to employ a historical name, as Mr. Solomons puts it. But if I ‘adn’t ‘a’ been married now, afore the title came to us, I might ‘a’ made something of it like that myself you see, missus — meanin’ to say, in the way of a hairess.”
Poor Faith saw that the bolt had fallen — that well-known bolt which descended with periodical regularity from the clear sky of her father’s unruffled good humor — and she gave up the attempt any longer to delay the rising tempest.
“I’m sure, Emery,” her mother broke in, with a stifled sob, “you needn’t always be a-castin’ that in my teeth — that I stood in your way agin makin’ your fortune. It aint no fault o’ mine, nor my people’s neither, that you was took with me and arst me to marry you. Arnt Emily was always agin my ‘avin’ you. An’ there was many as said at the time, you know yourself well enough, I’d throw’d myself away, an’ I might ‘a’ done better far to take another one. Why, there was Alfred Dyke, him as owned the mill at Chase’s Corner—”
The baronet of the United Kingdom checked her threatened outburst of early reminiscences kindly. “It aint for myself, I’m thinkin’, mother,” he said, with a nod or two of his chin; “it aint for myself, not anyways, but for the children. Wot a thing it ‘ud ‘a’ been for Faith and Paul, now, if I’d ‘a’ ‘appened to be a bachelor, don’t you see, at the time wen this thing fell in, and ‘ad married a hairess, as would ‘ave brought ’em up like ladies and gentlemen — ladies an’ gentlemen the same as they’d ought to be!”
Faith couldn’t forbear a gentle smile. “But, father dear,” she said, smoothing his hand with hers, “don’t you see yourself it wouldn’t have been Paul and me at all in that case? It’d be somebody else we none of us know or care anything about, wouldn’t it?”
“But it do seem a pity,” her father went on musingly, “that the value of the baronite-cy, for commercial purposes,” he paused a while, and then repeated once more that high-sounding phrase, “for commercial purposes,” rolling it on his palate like one who loved it, “should ‘a’ been clean throwed away, as Mr. Solomons says, all through the fack that I ‘appened to be married afore I came into it.” Mrs. Gascoyne’s handkerchief went up to her eyes with dramatic rapidity; and Faith, holding up one finger to her father, stroked her mother’s hair with her other hand with filial tenderness. “I wish,” she said half angrily, “Mr. Solomons had never put these ideas into your head, father. I’m sure you’d never have thought of it at all, for yourself. You’d never have dreamt of making money out of anything on earth so sacred as that is.”
“I don’t say, Faith,” her father went on, eyeing his beer with the light of the paraffin lamp shining through it; “I don’t say as ever I’d married for money, or made capital like, as Mr. Solomons says, out o’ the title an’ that. I don’t say as I’ve the manners or the eddication to do it. I’m satisfied with your mother, as ‘as always been a true an’ faithful wife to me, in sickness an’ in ‘ealth, an’ no woman better.”
“If you weren’t,” Faith interposed, “you’d be the ungratefullest man in all Hillborough.”
“If I wasn’t,” her father repeated dutifully, following his cue, “I’d be the ongratefullest man in all Hillborough. I know all that, an’ I aint a-denyin’ of it. But wot I says is just this: I says to Solomons this very last Sunday, ‘Mr. Solomons,’ says I, ‘if I’d a’bin a bachelor w’en this title fell in, there’s many a tidy woman as ‘ad her thousand pound or two put away in the bank, ‘ud ‘a’ bin glad to call ‘erself Lady Gascoyne on the strength of it.”
“Emery,” his wife sobbed, holding her face in her hands, “I call it most onmanly of you. Many’s the time I’ve done a good cry, all along of your talking in that onmanly manner.”
The father of the family turned round to her soothingly. “Mind you, mother,” he went on, in a demonstrative voice, “I don’t say as I’d ever ‘ave wanted ‘er for all ‘er thousands. I aint that kind. I’m not one as sets so much store by the money. Wot I do say is, as a matter o’ business, it’s a pity the baronite-cy should be throwed away, an’all for nothing,”
“It won’t be throwed away,” the mother responded, drying her eyes hysterically, “not after our time. Paul ‘ave ‘ad a good education, an’ Paul’ll marry a woman as is fit for ’im.”
“There aint no doubt at all about that,” the British baronet answered in a mollified tone. “As Mr. Solomons says, our Paul ‘ave a splendid future before him.”
“Oxford ‘ave made a gentleman of ’im,” Mrs. Gascoyne continued, gloating over the words.
“It ‘ave,” the father replied, gazing deep into the fire. “There aint no doubt of it. We’ve all got reason to be main grateful to Mr. Solomons for that much.”
“I never feel quite so sure about that, somehow,” Faith ventured to say. “I often wonder whether Paul wouldn’t have been happier, and whether we wouldn’t all have been happier, if Mr. Solomons had never meddled at all in our private business.”
“I do wonder at you, Faith?” her mother exclaimed, aghast. “You to talk like that, when we ought all to be so beholden like to Mr. Solomons!”
“Look what ‘e’ve done for Paul!” the father cried eagerly. “If it wasn’t for ’im, Paul might be tendin’ the ‘osses still, the same as I do.”
“But we’ve got to pay him for it,” Faith answered stoutly. “Sooner or later we’ve got to pay him. And see what notes of hand he’s made you sign for it!”
“Ay, but Paul’ll settle all that,” the father replied with absolute confidence, “and afore long, too, I warrant you, little one! Why, if it ‘adn’t bin for Mr. Solomons, we’d never so much as ‘a’ thought o’ sendin’ ’im to college an’ makin’ a gentleman of ’im. An’ now, Mr. Solomons says ‘e’s a’most through with ’is collegin’, an’ ready to make ’is start in life. If ’e does as Mr. Solomons means ’im to do, ‘e’ll pay it all off, principal an’ interest, as easy as winkin’. We’ve all got reason to be main grateful to Mr. Solomons. ‘E’s a clever-one, ’e is, if ever there was one. An’ ’e says it as knows, says ’e to me, ‘Gascoyne,’ says ’e, ‘your boy Paul, if ’e plays ’is cards well,’ says ’e, ‘as ‘e’d ought to play ’em, ‘ave a splendid future,’ says ’e, ‘before ’im.’”
“But he won’t play them as Mr. Solomons wants him, I’m sure,” Faith answered, unabashed. “He’ll play them his own way, He can’t do any other.”
“‘E’ll pay it all off,” the baronet repeated, ruminating the words with infinite pleasure, “‘e’ll pay it all off, when ’e once gets ’is start, principal an’ interest, as easy as winkin’.” The happiness he derived from the mere sound of those opulent expressions, “principal and interest,” as he rolled them on his palate, seemed more than to repay him for any little passing discomfort the sense of indebtedness to his supposed benefactor might otherwise have cost him. It makes a man feel almost like a capitalist himself when he can talk glibly about principal and interest.