To hear a demand made for a daughter when the Major had possibly been thinking the demand might be for his life, was undoubtedly a relief. It brought back his courage.
"What do you mean, fellow?" he growled, stamping out the fire of the cigar. "Are you out of your mind?"
"Not quite. You might have driven some men out of theirs, though, by what you"ve done. _We"ll let that part be_, Major. I have come to-night about my daughter. Where is she?"
They stood looking at each other. Reed stood just inside the door, hat in hand; he did not forget his manners even in the presence of his enemy; they were a habit with him. The Major, who had risen in his surprise, stared at him: he really knew nothing whatever of the matter, not even that the girl was missing; and he did think Reed"s imprisonment must have turned his brain. Perhaps Reed saw that he was not understood.
"I come home from prison, into which you put me, Major Parrifer, to find my daughter Catherine gone. She went away the day I was taken up. Where she went, or what she"s doing, Heaven knows; but you or yours are answerable for it, whichever way it may be."
"You have been drinking," said Major Parrifer.
"_You_ have, maybe," returned Reed, glancing at the spirits on the table. "Either Cathy went out on a harmless jaunt, and is staying away because she can"t face the shame at home which you have put there; or else she went out to meet your son, and has been taken away by him. I think it must be the last; my fears whisper it to me; and, if so, you can"t be off knowing something of it. Major Parrifer, I must have my daughter."
Whether the hint given about his son alarmed the Major, causing him to forget his bl.u.s.ter for once, and answer civilly, he certainly did it.
His son was in Ireland with his regiment, he said; had not been at the Hall for weeks and weeks; he could answer for it that Lieutenant Parrifer knew nothing of the girl.
"He was here at Christmas," said George Reed. "I saw him."
"And left two or three days after it. How dare you, fellow, charge him with such a thing? He"d wring your neck for you if he were here."
"Perhaps I might find cause to wring his first. Major Parrifer, I want my daughter."
"If you do not get out of my house, I"ll have you brought before me to-morrow for trespa.s.sing, and give you a second month"s imprisonment,"
roared the Major, gathering bl.u.s.ter and courage. "You want another month of it: this one does not appear to have done you the good it ought.
Now--go!"
"I"ll go," said Reed, who began to see the Major really did not know anything of Cathy--and it had not been very probable that he did. "But I"d like to leave a word behind me. You have succeeded in doing me a great injury, Major Parrifer. You are rich and powerful, I am poor and lowly. You set your mind on my bit of a home, and because you could not drive me from it, you took advantage of your magistrate"s post to sentence me to prison, and so be revenged. It has done me a great deal of harm. What good has it done you?"
Major Parrifer could not speak for rage.
"It will come home to you, sir, mark me if it does not. G.o.d has seen my trouble, and my wife"s trouble, and I don"t believe He ever let such a wrong pa.s.s unrewarded. _It will come home to you, Major Parrifer._"
George Reed went out, quietly shutting the hall-door behind him, and walked home through the thick flakes of snow that had begun to fall.
V.
COMING HOME TO HIM.
The year was getting on. Summer fruits were ripening. It had been a warm spring, and hot weather was upon us early.
One fine Sunday morning, George Reed came out of his cottage and turned up Piefinch Lane. His little girls were with him, one in either hand, in their clean cotton frocks and pinafores and straw hats. People had gone into church, and the bells had ceased. Reed had not been constant in attendance since the misfortune in the winter, when Major Parrifer put him into prison. The month"s imprisonment had altered him; his daughter Cathy"s mysterious absence had altered him more; he seemed unwilling to face people, and any trifle was made an excuse to himself for keeping away from service. To-day it was afforded by the baby"s illness. Reed said to his wife that he would take the little girls out a bit to keep the place quiet.
Rumours were abroad that he had heard once from Cathy; that she told him she should come back some day and surprise him and the neighbours, that she was "all right, and he had no call to fret after her." Whether this was true or pure fiction, Reed did not say: he was a closer man than he used to be.
Lifting the children over a stile in Piefinch Lane, just beyond his garden, Reed strolled along the by-path of the field. It brought him to the high hedge skirting the premises of Major Parrifer. The man had taken it by chance, because it was a quiet walk. He was pa.s.sing along slowly, the children running about the field, on which the second crop of gra.s.s was beginning to grow, when voices on the other side of the hedge struck on his ear. Reed quietly put some of the foliage aside, and looked through; just as Major Parrifer had looked through the hedge in Piefinch Lane at him, that Sunday morning some few months before.
Major Parrifer had been suffering from a slight temporary indisposition.
He did not consider himself sufficiently recovered to attend service, but neither was he ill enough to lie in bed. With the departure of his family for church, the Major had come strolling out in the garden in an airy dressing-gown, and there saw his gardener picking peas.
"Halloa, Hotty! This ought to have been done before."
"Yes, sir, I know it; I"m a little late," answered Hotty; "I shall have done in two or three minutes. The cook makes a fuss if I pick "em too early; she says they don"t eat so well."
The peas were for the gratification of the Major"s own palate, so he found no more fault. Hotty went on with his work, and the Major gave a general look round. On a near wall, at right angles with the hedge through which Reed was then peering, some fine apricots were growing, green yet.
"These apricots want thinning, Hotty," observed the Major.
"I have thinned "em some, sir."
"Not enough. Our apricots were not as fine last year as they ought to have been. I said then they had not had sufficient room to grow. Green apricots are always useful; they make the best tart known."
Major Parrifer walked to the greenhouse, outside which a small basket was hanging, brought it back, and began to pick some of the apricots where they looked too thick. Reed, outside, watched the process--not alone. As luck had it, a man appeared on the field-path, who proved to be Gruff Blossom, the Jacobsons" groom, coming home to spend Sunday with his friends. Reed made a sign to Blossom to be silent, and caused him to look on also.
With the small basket half full, the Major desisted, thinking possibly he had plucked enough, and turned away carrying it. Hotty came out from the peas, his task finished. They strolled slowly down the path by the hedge; the Major first, Hotty a step behind, talking about late and early peas, and whether Prussian blues or marrowfats were the best eating.
"Do you see those weeds in the onion-bed?" suddenly asked the Major, stopping as they were pa.s.sing it.
Hotty turned his head to look. A few weeds certainly had sprung up. He"d attend to it on the morrow, he told his master; and then said something about the work acc.u.mulating almost beyond him, since the under-gardener had been at home ill.
"Pick them out now," said the Major; "there"s not a dozen of them."
Hotty stooped to do as he was bid. The Major made no more ado but stooped also, uprooting quite half the weeds himself. Not much more, in all, than the dozen he had spoken of: and then they went on with their baskets to the house.
Never had George Reed experienced so much gratification since the day he came out of prison. "Did you see the Major at it?--thinning his apricots and pulling up his weeds?" he asked of Gruff Blossom. And Blossom"s reply, gruff as usual, was to ask what might be supposed to ail his eyes that he shouldn"t see it.
"Very good," said Reed.
One evening in the following week, when we were sitting out on the lawn, the Squire smoking, Mrs. Todhetley nursing her face in her hand, with toothache as usual, Tod teasing Hugh and Lena, and I up in the beech-tree, a horseman rode in. It proved to be Mr. Jacobson. Giles took his horse, and he came and sat down on the bench. The Squire asked him what he"d take, and being thirsty, he chose cider. Which Thomas brought.
"Here"s a go," began Mr. Jacobson. "Have you heard what"s up?"
"I"ve not heard anything," answered the Squire.
"Major Parrifer has a summons served on him for working in his garden on a Sunday, and is to appear before the magistrates at Alcester to-morrow," continued old Jacobson, drinking off a gla.s.s of cider at a draught.
"No!" cried Squire Todhetley.
"It"s a fact. Blossom, our groom, has also a summons served on him to give evidence."
Mrs. Todhetley lifted her face; Tod left Hugh and Lena to themselves: I slid down from the beech-tree; and we listened for more.
But Mr. Jacobson could not give particulars, or say much more than he had already said. All he knew was, that on Monday morning George Reed had appeared before the magistrates and made a complaint. At first they were unwilling to grant a summons; laughed at it; but Reed, in a burst of reproach, civilly delivered, asked why there should be a law for the poor and not for the rich, and in what lay the difference between himself and Major Parrifer; that the one should be called to account and punished for doing wrong, and the other was not even to be accused when he had done it.
"Brandon happened to be on the bench," continued Jacobson. "He appeared struck with the argument, and signed the summons."