Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, March 1885. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ was approaching our own door, wondering whether my father had gone, and whether, on my return, I should find him at leisure – for I had several little things to say to him – when I noticed a poor woman lingering about the closed gates. She had a baby sleeping in her arms. It was a spring night, the stars shining in the twilight, and everything soft and dim; and the woman's figure was like a shadow, flitting about, now here, now there, on one side or another of the gate. She stopped when she saw me approaching, and hesitated for a moment, then seemed to take a sudden resolution. I watched her without knowing, with a prevision that she was going to address me, though with no sort of idea as to the subject of her address. She came up to me doubtfully, it seemed, yet certainly, as I felt, and when she was close to me, dropped a sort of hesitating curtsey, and said, “It's Mr. Philip?” in a low voice.

      “What do you want with me?” I said.

      Then she poured forth suddenly, without warning or preparation, her long speech – a flood of words which must have been all ready and waiting at the doors of her lips for utterance. “Oh, sir, I want to speak to you! I can't believe you'll be so hard, for you're young; and I can't believe he'll be so hard if so be as his own son, as I've always heard he had but one, 'll speak up for us. Oh, gentleman, it is easy for the likes of you, that, if you ain't comfortable in one room, can just walk into another; but if one room is all you have, and every bit of furniture you have taken out of it, and nothing but the four walls left – not so much as the cradle for the child, or a chair for your man to sit down upon when he comes from his work, or a saucepan to cook him his supper – ”

      “My good woman,” I said, “who can have taken all that from you? surely nobody can be so cruel?”

      “You say it's cruel!” she cried with a sort of triumph. “Oh, I knowed you would, or any true gentleman that don't hold with screwing poor folks. Just go and say that to him inside there, for the love of God. Tell him to think what he's doing, driving poor creatures to despair. Summer's coming, the Lord be praised, but yet it's bitter cold at night with your counterpane gone; and when you've been working hard all day, and nothing but four bare walls to come home to, and all your poor little sticks of furniture that you've saved up for, and got together one by one, all gone – and you no better than when you started, or rather worse, for then you was young. Oh, sir!” the woman's voice rose into a sort of passionate wail. And then she added, beseechingly, recovering herself – “Oh, speak for us – he'll not refuse his own son – ”

      “To whom am I to speak? who is it that has done this to you?” I said.

      The woman hesitated again, looking keenly in my face – then repeated with a slight faltering, “It's Mr. Philip?” as if that made everything right.

      “Yes; I am Philip Canning,” I said; “but what have I to do with this? and to whom am I to speak?”

      She began to whimper, crying and stopping herself. “Oh, please, sir! it's Mr. Canning as owns all the house property about – it's him that our court and the lane and everything belongs to. And he's taken the bed from under us, and the baby's cradle, although it's said in the Bible as you're not to take poor folks's bed.”

      “My father!” I cried in spite of myself – “then it must be some agent, some one else in his name. You may be sure he knows nothing of it. Of course I shall speak to him at once.”

      “Oh, God bless you, sir,” said the woman. But then she added, in a lower tone – “It's no agent. It's one as never knows trouble. It's him that lives in that grand house.” But this was said under her breath, evidently not for me to hear.

      Morphew's words flashed through my mind as she spoke. What was this? Did it afford an explanation of the much occupied hours, the big books, the strange visitors? I took the poor woman's name, and gave her something to procure a few comforts for the night, and went indoors disturbed and troubled. It was impossible to believe that my father himself would have acted thus; but he was not a man to brook interference, and I did not see how to introduce the subject, what to say. I could but hope that, at the moment of broaching it, words would be put into my mouth, which often happens in moments of necessity, one knows not how, even when one's theme is not so all-important as that for which such help has been promised. As usual, I did not see my father till dinner. I have said that our dinners were very good, luxurious in a simple way, everything excellent in its kind, well cooked, well served, the perfection of comfort without show – which is a combination very dear to the English heart. I said nothing till Morphew, with his solemn attention to everything that was going, had retired – and then it was with some strain of courage that I began.

      “I was stopped outside the gate to-day by a curious sort of petitioner – a poor woman, who seems to be one of your tenants, sir, but whom your agent must have been rather too hard upon.”

      “My agent? who is that?” said my father, quietly.

      “I don't know his name, and I doubt his competence. The poor creature seems to have had everything taken from her – her bed, her child's cradle.”

      “No doubt she was behind with her rent.”

      “Very likely, sir. She seemed very poor,” said I.

      “You take it coolly,” said my father, with an upward glance, half-amused, not in the least shocked by my statement. “But when a man, or a woman either, takes a house, I suppose you will allow that they ought to pay rent for it.”

      “Certainly, sir,” I replied, “when they have got anything to pay.”

      “I don't allow the reservation,” he said. But he was not angry, which I had feared he would be.

      “I think,” I continued, “that your agent must be too severe. And this emboldens me to say something which has been in my mind for some time” – (these were the words, no doubt, which I had hoped would be put into my mouth; they were the suggestion of the moment, and yet as I said them it was with the most complete conviction of their truth) – “and that is this: I am doing nothing; my time hangs heavy on my hands. Make me your agent. I will see for myself, and save you from such mistakes; and it will be an occupation – ”

      “Mistakes? What warrant have you for saying these are mistakes?” he said testily; then after a moment: “This is a strange proposal from you, Phil. Do you know what it is you are offering? – to be a collector of rents, going about from door to door, from week to week; to look after wretched little bits of repairs, drains, etc.; to get paid, which, after all, is the chief thing, and not to be taken in by tales of poverty.”

      “Not to let you be taken in by men without pity,” I said.

      He gave me a strange glance, which I did not very well understand, and said, abruptly, a thing which, so far as I remember, he had never in my life said before, “You've become a little like your mother, Phil – ”

      “My mother!” The reference was so unusual – nay, so unprecedented – that I was greatly startled. It seemed to me like the sudden introduction of a quite new element in the stagnant atmosphere, as well as a new party to our conversation. My father looked across the table, as if with some astonishment at my tone of surprise.

      “Is that so very extraordinary?” he said.

      “No; of course it is not extraordinary that I should resemble my mother. Only – I have heard very little of her – almost nothing.”

      “That is true.” He got up and placed himself before the fire, which was very low, as the night was not cold – had not been cold heretofore at least; but it seemed to me now that a little chill came into the dim and faded room. Perhaps it looked more dull from the suggestion of a СКАЧАТЬ