The Paper Cap. A Story of Love and Labor

“Too late to-night.”

“Not a bit too late. Even if we stop there till midnight, God loves the midnight prayer. Oh, Squire Annis, thou hes done big things for workingmen in London, and – ”

“Ay, I did! I wouldn’t come home till I saw the workingmen got their rights. And I shall see that my men get all, and more, than I hev promised them. My word is my bond.”

Then the men with hearty good-bys, which is really the abbreviation of “God be with you!” went quickly down the hill and in half-an-hour the chapel bells were ringing and the squire stood at his open door and listened with a glad heart to them. His wife and daughter watched him, and then smiled at each other. They hardly knew what to say, for he was the same man, and yet far beyond the same. His child-likeness, and his pleasant bits of egotism, were, as usual, quite evident; and Annie was delighted to see and hear the expressions of his simple self-appreciation, but in other respects he was not unlike one who had just attained unto his majority. To have had his breakfast and be ready for a day’s tramp at eight o’clock in the morning was a wonderful thing for Antony Annis to promise. Yet he faithfully kept it, and had been away more than an hour when his wife and daughter came down to breakfast.

Dick soon joined them, and he was not only in high spirits, but also dressed with great care and taste. His mother regarded him critically, and then became silent. She had almost instantly divined the reason of his careful dressing. She looked inquisitively at Katherine, who dropped her eyes and began a hurried and irrelative conversation about the most trifling of subjects. Dick looked from one to the other, and said with a shrug of his shoulders, “I see I have spoiled a private conversation. I beg pardon. I will be away in a few minutes.”

“Where are you going so early, Dick?”

“I am going to Mr. Foster’s. I have a message to him from father, and I have a very important message to Faith Foster from myself.” He made the last remark with decision, drank off his coffee, and rose from the table.

“Dick, listen to your mother. Do not be in a hurry about some trivial affair, at this most important period of your father’s – of all our lives. Nothing can be lost, everything is to be gained by a little self-denial on the part of all, who fear they are being neglected. Father has the right of way at this crisis.”

“I acknowledge that as unselfishly as you do, mother. I intend to help father all I can. I could not, would not, do otherwise. Father wants to see Mr. Foster, and I want to see Miss Foster. Is there anything I can do for yourself or Kitty when I am in the village?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

“Then good-by,” and with a rapid glance at his sister, Dick left the room. Neither mother nor sister answered his words. Mistress Annis took rapid spoonfuls of coffee; Katherine broke the shell of her egg with quite superfluous noise and rapidity. For a few moments there was silence, full of intense emotion, and Katherine felt no inclination to break it. She knew that Dick expected her at this very hour to make his way easy, and his intentions clear to his mother. She had promised to do so, and she did not see how she was to escape, or delay this action. However, she instantly resolved to allow her mother to open the subject, and stand as long as possible on the defensive.

Mistress Annis made exactly the same resolve. Her lips quivered, her dropped eyes did not hide their trouble and she nervously began to prepare herself a fresh cup of coffee. Katherine glanced at her movements, and finally said, with an hysterical little laugh, “Dear mammy, you have already put four pieces of sugar in your cup,” and she laid her hand on her mother’s hand, and so compelled her to lift her eyes and answer, “Oh, Kitty! Kitty! don’t you see, dearie? Dick has gone through the wood to get a stick, and taken a crooked one at the last. You know what I mean. Oh, dear me! Dear me!”

“You fear Dick is going to marry Faith Foster. Some months ago I told you he would do so.”

“I could not take into my consciousness such a calamity.”

“Why do you say ‘calamity’?”

“A Methodist preacher’s daughter is far enough outside the pale of the landed aristocracy.”

“She is as good as her father and every landed gentleman, in or near this part of England, loves and respects, Mr. Foster. They ask his advice on public and local matters, and he by himself has settled disputes between masters and men in a way that satisfied both parties.”

“That is quite a different thing. Politics puts men on a sort of equality, the rules of society keep women in the state in which it has pleased God to put them.”

“Unless some man out of pure love lifts them up to his own rank by marriage. I don’t think any man could lift up Faith. I do not know a man that is able to stand equal to her.”

“Your awn brother, I think, ought to be in your estimation far – ”

“Dick is far below her in every way, and Dick knows it. I think, mother dear, it is a good sign for Dick’s future, to find him choosing for a wife a woman who will help him to become nobler and better every year of his life.”

“I hev brought up my son to a noble standard. Dick is now too good, or at least good enough, for any woman that iver lived. I don’t care who, or what she was, or is. I want no woman to improve Dick. Dick hes no fault but the one of liking women below him, and inferior to him, and unworthy of him: – women, indeed, that he will hev to educate in ivery way, up to his own standard. That fault comes his father’s way exactly – his father likes to feel free and easy with women, and he can’t do it with the women of his awn rank – for tha knaws well, the women of ivery station in life are a good bit above and beyond the men, and so – ”

“Dear mammy, do you think? – oh, you know you cannot think, father married with that idea in his mind. You were his equal by birth, and yet I have never seen father give up a point, even to you, that he didn’t want to give up. I think father holds his awn side with everyone, and holds it well. And if man or woman said anything different, I would not envy them the words they would get from you.”

“Well, of course, I could only expect that you would stand by Dick in any infatuation he had; the way girls and young men spoil their lives, and ruin their prospects, by foolish, unfortunate marriage is a miracle that hes confounded their elders iver since their creation. Adam fell that way. Poor Adam!”

“But, mammy dear, according to your belief, the woman in any class is always superior to the man.”

“There was no society, and no social class in that time, and you know varry well what came of Adam’s obedience to the woman. She must hev been weaker than her husband. Satan niver thought it worth his while to try his schemes with Adam.”

“I wonder if Adam scolded and ill-treated Eve for her foolishness!”

“He ought to have done so. He ought to hev scolded her well and hard, all her life long.”

“Then, of course, John Tetley, who killed his wife with his persistent brutality, did quite right; for his excuse was that she coaxed him to buy railway shares that proved actual ruin to him.”

“Well, I am tired of arguing with people who can only see one way. Your sister Jane, who is just like me, and who always took my advice, hes done well to hersen, and honored her awn kin, and – ”

“Mother, do you really think Jane’s marriage an honor to her family?”

“Leyland is a peer, and a member of The House of Lords, and considered a clever man.”

“A peer of three generations, a member of a House in which he dare not open his mouth, for his cleverness is all quotation, not a line of it is the breed of his own brain.”

“Of course, he is not made after the image and likeness of Harry Bradley.”

“Mother, Harry is not our question now. I ask you to give Dick some good advice and sympathy. If he will listen to anyone, you are the person that can influence him. You must remember that Faith is very lovely, and beauty goes wherever it chooses, and does what it wants to do.”

“And both Dick and you must remember that you can’t choose a wife, or a husband, by his handsome looks. You might just as wisely choose your shoes by the same rule. Sooner or later, generally sooner, they would begin to pinch you. How long hev you known of this clandestine affair?”

“It was not clandestine, mother. I told you Dick was really in love with Faith before we went to London.”

“Faith! Such a Methodist name.”

“Faith is not her baptismal name. She came to her father and mother as a blessing in a time of great trouble, and they called her Consola from the word Consolation. You may think of her as Consola. She will have to be married by that name. Her father wished for some private reason of his own to call her Faith. He never told her why.”

“The one name is as disagreeable as the other, and the whole subject is disagreeable; and, in plain truth, I don’t care to talk any more about it.”

“Can I help you in anything this morning, mother?”

“No.”

“Then I will go to my room, and put away all the lovely things you bought me in London.”

“You had better do so. Your father is now possessed by one idea, and he will be wanting every pound to further it.”

“I think, too, mother, we have had our share.”

“Have you really nothing to tell me about Harry and yourself?”

“I could not talk of Harry this morning, mother. I think you may hear something from father tonight, that will make you understand.”

“Very well. That will be soon enough, if it is more trouble,” and though she spoke wearily, there was a tone of both pity and anxiety in her voice.

Indeed, it was only the fact of the late busy days of travel and change, and the atmosphere of a great reconstruction of their whole life and household, that had prevented Mistress Annis noticing, as she otherwise would have done, the pallor and sorrow in her daughter’s appearance. Not even the good fortune that had come to her father, could dispel the sickheartedness which had caused her to maintain a stubborn silence to all Harry’s pleas for excuse and pardon. Dick was his sister’s only confidant and adviser in this matter, and Dick’s anger had increased steadily. He was now almost certain that Harry deserved all the resentment honest love could feel and show towards those who had deceived and betrayed it. And the calamity that is not sure, is almost beyond healing. The soul has not forseen, or tried to prevent it. It has come in a hurry without credentials, and holds the hope of a “perhaps” in its hands; it may not perhaps be as bad as it appears; it may not perhaps be true. There may possibly be many mitigating circumstances yet not known. Poor Kitty! She had but this one sad circumstance to think about, she turned it a hundred ways, but it was always the same. However, as she trailed slowly up the long stairway, she said to herself —

“Mother was talking in the dark, but patience, one more day! Either father or Dick will bring the truth home with them.”