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Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley

M >> Mary Cholmondeley >> Red Pottage




Inaudible reply.

"Hinges! ha! ha! ha! Very good, Dick. Likely story that. I see you're
the same as ever. Travellers' tales. But we are not so easily taken in,
are we, Hester?"

Mrs. Gresley certainly had the gift of prophecy as far as the Pratts
were concerned. Mrs. Pratt duly took the expected "fancy" to Rachel, and
pressed her to stay at "The Towers" while she was in the neighborhood,
and make further acquaintance with her "young ladies."

"Ada is very pernickety," she said, smiling towards that individual
conversing with Dick. "She won't make friends with everybody, and she
gives it me" (with maternal pride) "when I ask people to stay whom she
does not take to. She says there's a very poor lot round here, and most
of the young ladies so ill-bred and empty she does not care to make
friends with them. I don't know where she gets all her knowledge from.
I'm sure it's not from her mother. Ada, now you come and talk a little
to Miss West."

Ada rose with the air of one who confers a favor, and Rachel made room
for her on the sofa, while Mrs. Pratt squeezed herself behind the
tea-table with Mrs. Gresley.

The conversation turned on bicycling.

"I bike now and then in the country," said Ada, "but I have not done
much lately. We have only just come down from town, and, _of course_, I
never bike in London."

Rachel had just said that she did.

"Perhaps you are nervous about the traffic," said Rachel.

"Oh! I'm not the least afraid of the traffic, but it's such bad form to
bike in London."

"That, of course, depends on how it's done," said Rachel; "but I am sure
in your ease you need not be afraid."

Ada glared at Rachel, and did not answer.

When the Pratts had taken leave she said to her mother:

"Well, you can have Rachel West if you want to, but if you do I shall go
away. She is only Birmingham, and yet she's just as stuck up as she can
be."

The Pratts were "Liverpool."

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Pratt with natural pride, "it's well known
no one is good enough for you. But I took to Miss West, and an orphan
and all, with all that money, poor thing!"

"She has no style," said Selina, "but she has a nice face; and she's
coming to stay with Sibbie Loftus next week, when she leaves Vi
Newhaven. She may be Birmingham, Ada, but she's just as thick with
county people as we are."

"I did not rightly make out," said Mrs. Pratt, reflectively, "whether
that tall gentleman, Mr. Vernon, was after Miss West or Hessie Gresley."

"Oh, ma! You always think some one's after somebody else," said Ada,
impatiently, whose high breeding obliged her to be rather peremptory
with her simple parent. "Mr. Vernon is a pauper, and so is Hessie. And,
besides, Hessie is not the kind of girl anybody would want to marry."

"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Selina. "But if she had had any
chances I know she would have told me, because I told her all about
Captain Cobbett and Mr. Baxter."




CHAPTER XVIII

Le monde est plein de gens qui ne sont pas plus sages.
--LA FONTAINE.


If, after the departure of the Pratts, Rachel had hoped for a word with
Hester, she was doomed to disappointment. Mr. Gresley took the seat on
the sofa beside Rachel which Ada Pratt had vacated, and after a few
kindly eulogistic remarks on the Bishop of Southminster and the
responsibilities of wealth, he turned the conversation into the
well-worn groove of Warpington.

Rachel proved an attentive listener, and after Mr. Gresley had furnished
her at length with nutritious details respecting parochial work, he went
on:

"I am holding this evening a temperance meeting in the Parish Room. I
wish, Miss West, that I could persuade you to stay for it, and thus
enlist your sympathies in a matter of vital importance."

"They have been enlisted in it for the last ten years," said Rachel, who
was not yet accustomed to the invariable assumption on the part of Mr.
Gresley that no one took an interest in the most obvious good work until
he had introduced and championed it. "But," she added, "I will stay with
pleasure."

Dick, who was becoming somewhat restive under Mrs. Gresley's inquiries
about the Newhavens, became suddenly interested in the temperance
meeting.

"I've seen many a good fellow go to the dogs through drink in the
Colonies, more's the pity," Dick remarked. "I think I'll come too,
James. And if you want a few plain words you call on me."

"I will," said Mr. Gresley, much gratified. "I always make a point of
encouraging the laity--at least, those among them who are thoroughly
grounded in Church teaching--to express themselves. Hear both sides,
that is what I always say. The Bishop constantly enjoins on his clergy
to endeavor to elicit the lay opinion. The chair this evening will be
taken by Mr. Pratt, a layman."

The temperance meeting was to take place at seven o'clock, and possibly
Rachel may have been biassed in favor of that entertainment by the hope
of a quiet half-hour with Hester in her own room. At any rate, she
secured it.

When they were alone Rachel produced Lady Newhaven's note.

"Do come to Westhope," she said. "While you are under this roof it seems
almost impossible to see you, unless we are close to it," and she
touched the sloping ceiling with her hand. "And yet I came to Westhope,
and I am going on to Wilderleigh, partly in order to be near you."

Hester shook her head.

"The book is nearly finished," she said, the low light from the attic
window striking sideways on the small face with its tightly compressed
lips.

A spirit indomitable, immortal, looked for a moment out of Hester's gray
eyes. The spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was becoming weaker
day by day.

"When it is finished," she went on, "I will go anywhere and do anything,
but stay here I must till it is done. Besides, I am not fit for society
at present. I am covered with blue mould. Do you remember how that
horrid Lady Carbury used to laugh at the country squires' daughters for
being provincial? I have gone a peg lower than being provincial--I have
become parochial."

A knock came at the door, and Fraeulein's mild, musical face appeared in
the aperture.

"I fear to disturb you," she said, "but Regie say he cannot go to sleep
till he see you."

Hester introduced Fraeulein to Rachel, and slipped down-stairs to the
night nursery.

Mary and Stella were already asleep in their high-barred cribs. The
blind was down, and Hester could only just see the white figure of Regie
sitting up in his night-gown. She sat down on the edge of the bed and
took him in her arms.

"What is it; my treasure?"

"Auntie Hester, was I naughty about the flying half-penny?"

"No, darling. Why?"

"Because mother always says not to put pennies in my mouth, and I never
did till to-day. And now Mary says I have been very naughty."

"It does not matter what Mary says," said Hester, with a withering
glance towards the sleeping angel in the next crib, who was only Mary by
day. "But you must never do it again, and you will tell mother all about
it to-morrow."

"Yes," said Regie; "but, but--"

"But what?"

"Uncle Dick did say it was a flying half-penny, and you said so, too,
and that other auntie. And I thought it did not matter putting in flying
half-pennies, only common ones."

Hester saw the difficulty in Regie's mind.

"It felt common when it was inside," said Regie, doubtfully, "and yet
you and Uncle Dick _did_ say it was a flying one."

Regie's large eyes were turned upon her with solemn inquiry in them. It
is crises like this that our first ideals are laid low.

Regie had always considered Hester as the very soul of honor, that
mysterious honor which he was beginning to dimly apprehend through her
allegiance to it, and which, in his mind, belonged as exclusively to her
as the little bedroom under the roof.

"Regie," said Hester, tremulously, seeing that she had unwittingly put
a stumbling-block before the little white feet she loved, "when we
played at the doll's tea-party, and you were the butler, I did not mean
you were _really_ a butler, did I? I knew, and you knew, and we all
knew, that you were Regie all the time."

"Ye-es."

"It was a game. And so when Uncle Dick found us playing the tea-party
game he played another game about the flying half-penny."

"Then it was a common half-penny, after all," said Regie, with a deep
sigh.

"Yes, it was a common half-penny, only the game was that it could fly,
like the other game was that the acorn cups were real teacups. So Uncle
Dick and all of us were not saying what was not true. We were all
playing at a game. Do you understand, my little mouse?"

"Yes," said Regie, with another voluminous sigh, and Hester realized,
with thankfulness, that the half-penny and not herself had fallen from
its pedestal. "I see now; but when he said, Hi! Presto! and it flew
away, I thought I saw it flying. Mary said she did. And I suppose the
gate was only a game, too."

Hester felt that the subject would be quite beyond her powers of
explanation if once the gate were introduced into it.

She laid Regie down and covered him.

"And you will go to sleep now. And I will ask Uncle Dick when next he
comes to show us how he did the game with the half-penny."

"Yes," said Regie, dejectedly. "I'd rather know what there is to be
known. Only I _thought_ it was a flying one. Good-night, Auntie Hester."

She stayed beside him a few minutes until his even breathing showed her
he was asleep, and then slipped back to her own room. The front-door
bell was ringing as she came out of the nursery. The temperance
deputation from Liverpool had arrived. Mr. Gresley's voice of welcome
could be heard saying that it was only ten minutes to seven.

Accordingly, a few minutes before that hour, Mr. Gresley and his party
entered the Parish Room. It was crammed. The back benches were filled
with a large contingent of young men, whose half-sheepish, half-sullen
expression showed that their presence was due to pressure. Why the
parishioners had come in such numbers it would be hard to say. Perhaps
even a temperance meeting was a change in the dreary monotony of rural
life at Warpington. Many of the faces bore the imprint of this monotony,
Rachel thought, as she refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to
her by Mrs. Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester.

Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment
later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye
travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her.
Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the
last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it
was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious
church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the
young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large
Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her,
and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their
seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms,"
sat down beside her.

It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the thought
darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, somehow or
other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and would marry the
woman he intended to marry. There was no doubt that she was that woman,
and as he sat tranquilly beside her she wished, with a nervous tremor,
that his choice had fallen on some one else.

The meeting opened with nasal and fervent prayer on the part of a
neighboring Archdeacon. No one could kneel down except the dignitaries
on the platform, but every one pretended to do so. Mr. Pratt, who was in
the chair, then introduced the principal speaker. Mr. Pratt's face, very
narrow at the forehead, became slightly wider at the eyes, widest when
it reached round the corners of the mouth, and finally split into two
long, parti-colored whiskers. He assumed on these occasions a manner of
pontifical solemnity towards his "humble brethren," admirably suited to
one who, after wrestling for many years with a patent oil, is conscious
that he has blossomed out into a "county family."

The Warpington parishioners listened to him unmoved.

The deputation from Liverpool followed, a thin, ascetic-looking man of
many bones and little linen, who spoke with the concentrated fury of a
fanatic against alcohol in all its varieties. Dick, who had so far taken
more interest in Rachel's gloves, which she had dropped, and with which
he was kindly burdening himself, than in the proceedings, drew himself
up and fixed his steel eyes on the speaker.

A restive movement in the audience followed the speech, which was loudly
clapped by Mr. Gresley and the Pratts.

Mr. Gresley then mounted the platform.

Mr. Gresley had an enormous advantage as a platform speaker, and as a
preacher in the twin pulpits of church and home, owing to the conviction
that he had penetrated to the core of any subject under discussion, and
could pronounce judgment upon it in a conclusive manner. He was wont to
approach every subject by the preliminary statement that he had
"threshed it out." This threshing-out had been so thorough that there
was hardly a subject even of the knottiest description which he was
unable to dismiss with a few pregnant words. "Evolution! Ha! ha!
Descended from an ape. I don't believe that for one." While women's
rights received their death-blow from a jocose allusion to the woman
following the plough while the man sat at home and rocked the cradle.

With the same noble simplicity he grappled with the difficult and
complex subject of temperance, by which he meant total abstinence. He
informed his hearers, "in the bigoted tones of a married teetotaler,"
that he had gone to the root of the matter--the roots were apparently on
the surface--and that it was no use calling black white and white black.
He for one did not believe in muddling up black and white, as some
lukewarm people advocated, till they were only a dirty gray. No; either
drink was right or it was wrong. If it was not wrong to get drunk, he
did not know what was wrong. He was not a man of compromise. Alcohol was
a servant of the devil, and to tamper with it was to tamper with the
Evil One himself. Touch not. Taste not. Handle not. He for his part
should never side with the devil.

This lofty utterance having been given time to sink in, Mr. Gresley
looked round at the sea of stolid, sullen faces, and concluded with
saying that the chairman would now call upon his cousin, Mr. Vernon, to
speak to them on the shocking evils he himself had witnessed in
Australia as the results of drink.

Dick was not troubled by shyness. He extricated himself from his seat
with the help of the young men, and slowly ascended the platform. He
looked a size too large for it, and for the other speakers, and his
loose tweed suit and heather stockings were as great a contrast to the
tightly buttoned-up black of the other occupants as were his strong,
keen face and muscular hands to those of the previous speakers.

"That's a man," said a masculine voice behind Rachel. "He worn't reared
on ditch-water, you bet."

"Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen," said Dick. "You've only got to
listen to me for half a minute, and you'll find out without my telling
you that Nature did not cut me out for a speaker. I'm no talker. I'm a
workingman"--an admission which Mr. Pratt would rather have been boiled
in his own oil than have made. "For the last seven years I've done my
twelve hours a day, and I've come to think more of what a man gets
through with his hands than the sentiments which he can wheeze out after
a heavy meal. But Mr. Gresley has asked me to tell you what I know about
drink, as I have seen a good many samples of it in Australia."

Dick then proceeded, with a sublime disregard of grammar, and an
earnestness that increased as he went on, to dilate on the evil effects
of drink as he himself had witnessed them. He described how he had seen
men who could not get spirits make themselves drunk on "Pain-killer";
how he had seen strong, young station hands, who had not tasted spirits
for months, come down from the hills with a hundred pounds in their
pockets, and drink themselves into "doddery" old men in a fortnight in
the nearest township, where they were kept drunk on drugged liquor till
all their hard-earned wages were gone.

The whole room listened in dead silence. No feet shuffled. Mr. Gresley
looked patronizingly at Dick's splendid figure and large, outstretched
hand, with the crooked middle finger, which he had cut off by mistake in
the bush and had stuck on again himself. Then the young Vicar glanced
smiling at the audience, feeling that he had indeed elicited a "lay
opinion" of the best kind.

"Now what are the causes of all these dreadful things?" continued Dick.
"I'm speaking to the men here, not the women. What are the causes of all
this poverty and vice and scamped workmanship, and weak eyes and shaky
hands, on the top of high wages? I tell you they come from two things,
and one is as bad as the other. One is drinking too much, and the other
is drinking bad liquor. Every man who's worth his salt," said Dick,
balancing his long bent finger on the middle of his other palm, "should
know when he has had enough. Some can carry more, some less." Mr.
Gresley started and signed to Dick, but Dick did not notice. "Bad liquor
is at the root of half the drunkenness I know. I don't suppose there are
many publicans here to-night, for this meeting isn't quite in their
line; and if there are, they can't have come expecting compliments. But
if you fellows think you get good liquor at the publics round here, I
tell you you are jolly well mistaken."

"Hear! hear!" shouted several voices.

"I've been in the course of the last week to most of the public-houses
in Southminster and Westhope and Warpington to see what sort of stuff
they sold, and upon my soul, gentlemen, if I settled in Warpington I'd,
I'd"--Dick hesitated for a simile strong enough--"I'd turn teetotaler
until I left it again, rather than swallow the snake poison they serve
out to you."

There was a general laugh, in the midst of which Mr. Gresley, whose
complexion had deepened, sprang to his feet and endeavored to attract
Dick's attention, but Dick saw nothing but his audience. Mr. Gresley
began to speak in his high, "singsong" voice.

"My young friend," he said, "has mistaken the object of this meeting. In
short I must--"

"Not a bit," said Dick--"not a bit; but if the people have had enough of
me I'll take your chair while you have another innings."

In a moment the room was in an uproar.

Shouts of "No, no," "Go on," "Let him speak."

In the tumult Mr. Gresley's voice, instead of being the solo, became but
as one instrument--albeit a trombone--in an orchestra.

"But I thoroughly agree with the gentlemen who spoke before me," said
Dick, when peace was restored. "Total abstinence is a long chalk below
temperance, but it's better than drunkenness any day. And if a man can't
get on without three-finger nips, let him take the pledge. There are one
or two here to-night who would be the better for it. But, to my
thinking, total abstinence is like a water mattress. It is good for a
sick man, and it's good for a man with a weak will, which is another
kind of illness. But temperance is for those who are in health. There is
a text in the Bible about wine making glad the heart of man. That's a
good text, and one to go on. As often as not texts are like bags, and a
man crams all his own rubbish into them, and expects you to take them
together. There are some men, who ought to know better, who actually get
out of that text by saying the Bible means unfermented liquor"--Mr.
Gresley became purple. "Does it? Then how about the other place where we
hear of new wine bursting old bottles. What makes them burst?
Fermentation, of course, as every village idiot knows. No, I take it
when the Bible says wine it means wine. Wine's fermented liquor, and
what's unfermented liquor? Nothing but 'pop.'"

Dick pronounced the last word with profound contempt, which was met with
enthusiastic applause.

"My last word to you, gentlemen," continued Dick, "is, keep in mind two
points: first, look out for an honest publican, if there is such an
article, who will buy only the best liquor from the best sources, and is
not bound by the breweries to sell any stuff they send along. Join
together, and make it hot for a bound publican. Kick him out, even if he
is the Squire's butler." Mr. Pratt's complexion became apoplectic. "And
the second point is, Remember some men have heads and some haven't. It
is no use for a lame man entering for a hurdle-race. A strong man can
take his whack--if it's with his food--and it will do him good, while a
weak man can't hang up his hat alter the first smile."

A storm of applause followed, which was perhaps all the heartier by
reason of the furious face of Mr. Gresley. Dick was clapped continuously
as he descended the platform and slowly left the room, feeling in his
pockets for his tobacco-pouch. A squad of young men creaked out after
him, and others followed by twos and threes, so that the mellifluous
voice of Mr. Pratt was comparatively lost, who, disregarding his
position as chairman, now rose to pour oil--of which, in manner alone,
he had always a large supply--on the troubled waters. Mr. Pratt had felt
a difficulty in interrupting a member of a county family, which with the
eye of faith he plainly perceived Dick to be, and at the same time a
guest of "Newhaven's." The Pratts experienced in the rare moments of
their intercourse with the Newhavens some of that sublime awe, that
subdued rapture, which others experience in cathedrals. Mr. Pratt had
also taken a momentary pleasure in the defeat of Mr. Gresley, who did
not pay him the deference which he considered due to him and his "seat."
Mr. Pratt always expected that the Vicar should, by reason of his small
income, take the position of a sort of upper servant of the Squire; and
he had seen so many instances of this happy state of things that he was
perpetually nettled by Mr. Gresley's "independent" attitude; while Mr.
Gresley was equally irritated by "the impatience of clerical control"
and shepherding which Mr. Pratt, his largest and woolliest sheep, too
frequently evinced.

As the chairman benignly expressed his approval of both views, and toned
down each to meet the other, the attention of the audience wandered to
the occasional laughs and cheers which came from the school play-ground.
And when, a few minutes later, Rachel emerged with the stream, she saw
Dick standing under the solitary lamp-post speaking earnestly to a
little crowd of youths and men. The laughter had ceased. Their
crestfallen appearance spoke for itself.

"Well, good-night, lads," said Dick, cordially, raising his cap to them,
and he rejoined Rachel and Hester at the gate.

When Dick and Rachel had departed on their bicycles, and when the
deputation, after a frugal supper, had retired to rest, and when the
drawing-room door was shut, then, and not till then, did Mr. Gresley
give vent to his feelings.

"And he would not stop," he repeated over and over again almost in
hysterics, when the total-abstinence hose of his wrath had been turned
on Dick until every reservoir of abuse was exhausted. "I signed to him;
I spoke to him. You saw me speak to him, Minna, and he would not stop."

Hester experienced that sudden emotion which may result either in tears
or laughter at the cruel anguish brought upon her brother by the
momentary experience of what he so ruthlessly inflicted.

"He talked me down," said Mr. Gresley, his voice shaking. "He opposed me
in my own school-room. Of course, I blame myself for asking him to
speak. I ought to have inquired into his principles more thoroughly, but
he took me in entirely by saying one thing in this room and the exact
opposite on the platform."

"I thought his views were the same in both places," said Hester, "and,
at the time, I admired you for asking him to speak, considering he is a
vine-grower."

"A what?" almost shrieked Mr. Gresley.

"A vine-grower. Surely you know he has one of the largest vineyards in
South Australia?"

For a moment Mr. Gresley was bereft of speech.

"And you knew this and kept silence," he said at last, while Mrs.
Gresley looked reproachfully, but without surprise, at her
sister-in-law.

"Certainly. What was there to speak about? I thought you knew."

"I never heard it till this instant. That quite accounts for his views.
He wants to push his own wines. Of course, drunkenness is working for
his interests. I understand it all now. He has undone the work of years
by that speech for the sake of booking a few orders. It is contemptible.
I trust, Hester, he is not a particular friend of yours, for I shall
feel it my duty to speak very strongly to him if he comes again."

But Dick did not appear again. He was off and away before the terrors of
the Church could be brought to bear on him.

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