Chapter III: Her Welcome Home

The curate and his daughter found themselves in a crowded carriage of the second class, on the Great Northern express train from Liverpool to Glasgow. I say crowded, for though no one was standing up, yet many of the passengers had well-grown children on their laps.

Mr. Campbell and Jennie took the last two vacant seats.

“Give me the baby now, papa dear,” said the little mother, holding opt her arms, as soon as she had settled herself in her seat.

“No, dear, the child is sleeping. If she wakes and frets, I will hand her over to you; otherwise I will hold her to rest you,” replied her father.

Their fellow travelers turned and looked at the young grandfather and the youthful mother, and very naturally drew false conclusions.

They were mostly of the class who listen, comment and observe.

“It’s easy to see that is a young married pair, with their first child,” whispered a fat, florid country woman, with one baby sitting on her knees and two on the floor at her feet.

“He won’t be quite so fond of loading himself down with, the kids when there’s a dozen of ’em, maybe,” replied her companion, a stout, brown woman with a burden of two heavy bundles and a basket on and about her.

The minister and his daughter heard every word of this whispered colloquy with slight smiles of amusement; but it warned them that they could not indulge in any very confidential discourse there, where every whispered word could be so distinctly heard.

All further explanations would have to be postponed until they should reach Medge Parsonage. And that was a hundred miles off as yet. Nothing but the commonplaces of conversation could pass between them.

“Are you quite comfortable, my dear?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“You don’t feel the draught from that window?”

“No, papa dear.” Etcetera.

Jennie took particular pains to call her young father “papa” whenever she spoke to him.

But that did not enlighten their companions as to the true relations between the two. They thought it only one more silly affectation of the youthful parents. Many vain young mothers called their husbands “papa” for baby, as many proud young fathers called their wives “mamma” also for baby.

So merely trivial talk passed between the father and daughter until the train blew the steam whistle and “slowed” into the first station after leaving Liverpool, stopped ten seconds and sped on again.

Jennie had not seen her native country for two years, and she looked out at the vanishing station almost with the curiosity of a stranger, and then exclaimed with a look of astonishment:

“Why, papa! That was Huton!”

“Well, my dear!”

Jennie looked at her father in amazement.

“What is the matter, my dear?” inquired the curate.

“Matter? Why, papa, matter enough. We have certainly taken the wrong train. Huton is on the Great Northern, and not the South Eastern Railroad. This is not the way to Medge.”

“But, dear, we are not going to Medge.”

“Not going to Medge?”

“No, my dear.”

Jennie stared.

“I also have something to tell you which I have reserved until now,” said the minister gravely.

“What is it, papa? Oh, what is it?” demanded the young girl in sudden alarm. “You said my dear mother was quite well. If she were in heaven, you might say with truth she was quite well; but oh! how could I bear it! Oh, how could I bear it! Is she quite well in this world?”

“Quite well, here on earth, my dear. Compose yourself.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing to alarm you, Jennie.”

“Where are we going?”

“To Haymore, in the North Biding of Yorkshire, where I have a curacy.”

“To Hay—— And you never told me!” said Jennie, aghast with astonishment. All her life, until her hasty marriage, two years before, she had lived with her parents at Medge. She considered them as fixtures to that spot. She would as soon have expected the old parish church and graveyard to be plucked up by the roots from Medge and transplanted to Haymore as to have her father and mother removed from the first to the last named place. “‘Haymore!’” she said to herself—“‘Haymore!’ Surely that was the name of the manor to which Kightly Montgomery had fallen heir. And in Yorkshire, too. It must be the same place! She and her father were going there! And—Kightly Montgomery, under his new name, and with his new bride, was also going there. The first as the lord of the manor, the second as pastor of the parish. What was to be done? They must surely meet, and then?” Jennie was dumfounded from consternation.

“Why, what ails you, Jennie, my child?” inquired her father.

She found her tongue at last, and said, because she did not know what else to say:

“You never told me.”

“I explained that I reserved the information for our meeting,” gently replied the curate.

“How long have you been at Haymore?” was her next question.

“About twelve weeks. Not quite three months. But don’t look so horrified, my dear. If I had changed my religion, instead of having changed my parish, you could scarcely seem more confounded,” said the curate, with a little laugh.

“Oh, papa dear, what made you leave dear old Medge?” she dolefully inquired.

“Necessity, Jennie. My old rector died——”

“Oh! Good old Dr. Twomby! Has he gone?” exclaimed Jennie in a tone of grief.

“Yes, dear—full of years and honors. It would be impious to mourn the departure of so sainted a man. His successor was a young Oxonian, who gave me warning and put in a classmate of his own as his curate.”

“And what made you go so far—quite from the south to the north of England?”

“Again necessity, my dear. I was out of employment, and your mother and myself were living in cheap lodgings in the village, when I received a letter from Dr. Orton—an old friend of my father, who had heard of my misfortune—inviting me to come with my wife to Haymore and take his parish and occupy his parsonage for a year, during which he was ordered by his physician to travel for his health. I gratefully accepted the offer.”

“And how do you like it, papa?”

“Very much, my dear. The rectory is a beautiful old house, very conveniently fitted with all modern improvements and very comfortably furnished. The house is covered with ivy and the porches with climbing plants. There is a luxuriant old garden, full of flowers and herbs and all kinds of fruits and vegetables that our climate will grow, and there is a lawn with old oak trees.”

“How lovely!” impulsively exclaimed Jennie. But then her face fell.

“Yes, it is lovely,” assented the minister, who had not noticed the change in his child’s countenance. “And I like it so well that I shall grieve to leave it.”

“Oh, but you are sure of it for a twelvemonth!” exclaimed Jennie, eager to please her father, yet again stopping short at the sudden memory of what must meet him at Haymore.

“Oh, no, my dear. I am not sure of the place for a month even. Orton has heart disease, and, though he may live for months or years, he may drop dead at any moment. He may be dead now. And in such a case, you see, the very same thing that happened to me at Medge would happen again at Haymore.”

“How, papa?”

“If Orton should die, his successor would turn me adrift, to put in my place some friend of his own.”

“Who has the appointing of the incumbent? The bishop of the diocese or some nobleman?”

“Neither. The living is attached to Haymore Manor, and is in the gift of the new squire.”

In the gift of the new squire, and that squire Kightly Montgomery under a new name!

The thought of this complication turned Jennie pale. In her dismay and confusion, she could settle upon but one course—the course she had thought of all along—to tell her father everything; every single fact she knew concerning Kightly Montgomery.

The minister was now watching her curiously, anxiously.

To cover her distress, she asked the first question that came into her head, and not an irrelevant one:

“Were the terms favorable upon which you agreed to take this parish for a year, papa?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. The living is worth six hundred pounds a year, and Orton gives me two hundred, with the use of the rectory.”

“And you do all the work for one-third of the salary?”

“Yes, my dear; and I am very glad to do it. And there are hundreds of capable clergymen in England who would be glad to do it for one-sixth of the salary.”

Then Mr. Campbell suddenly became conscious that he was talking too freely of private matters in a crowded car. He looked about him. But every one seemed too sleepy to attend to him.

The woman with the three babies was sound asleep, as was her brood, and the group reminded the curate of a fat, cozy pussy cat and her kittens.

The woman with the bundles was nodding, catching herself, gripping her parcels and nodding again.

These were the nearest passengers to the curate and his daughter, and had evidently not been listening to the conversation.

The express had been running on a long while without stopping, but now, about noon, the steam horn shrieked again and the train drew into the station of a large manufacturing town, stopped two minutes and roared on again.

The swift motion of the train, that sent nearly all the grown people to nodding and all the children to sleep, seemed to have so overpowered the nerves of Jennie’s young baby as to steep it into a deep stupor.

The little mother at length grew anxious.

“Don’t you think baby sleeps too soundly, papa?” she inquired uneasily.

“Oh, no, my dear! She is all right. She will sleep until we get home and then wake up as bright as a daisy.”

“Ten minutes for refreshments!” shouted the guard at the window, as he climbed along on the outside of the carriage, while the train drew into the station of another large town.

“Will you get out, Jennie?” inquired her father.

“No papa dear, I would much rather not,” she answered.

“Then take the baby while I go,” he said, carefully placing the little one on her lap within her arms.

“Now, what shall I bring you, dear?” he next inquired.

“A cup of tea and a biscuit, papa, nothing more,” replied Jennie, who remembered the slender purse of the curate, who could ill afford the journey to Liverpool and back with his daughter.

She had ten pounds left of her own, but did not dare to offer them to her father, whose very poverty made him sensitive. She meant, however, when she should reach the parsonage, to put that little fund, through her mother’s agency, into the general household expenses.

Mr. Campbell left the carriage and went across to the refreshment rooms.

Jennie’s fellow passengers of the second class did not leave their seats, but took out luncheon baskets, and soon the air was full of the sound of popping ginger beer or ale or porter bottles, while bread and cheese and beef were laid out on laps covered with brown wrapping paper for a tablecloth.

The woman with the babies and the woman with the bundles, who sat opposite to Jennie and seemed to be friends, drew the cork of brown stout—one holding the bottle, and the other pulling the screw with all her might.

Then the mother filled a little thick glass tumbler with the foaming porter and held it to Jennie, saying kindly:

“Drink it, dearie. It’ll do ’ee good; ’specially as ye’re nussing a young babe.”

Jennie, touched by the kindness, smiled her sweetest and thanked her neighbor, explaining that her heart was weak and that she could not bear strong porter.

“Then I hope your good man will bring ’ee some light wine,” replied the woman.

“The gentleman with me is my father,” said Jennie, glad to make this explanation.

“Your fey—— And the grandfeyther o’ the bairn?” exclaimed the woman, opening her eyes with astonishment.

“Yes,” said Jennie.

“Well, it’s wonderful! He didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Do he, now, M’riah?” she said, appealing to her companion of the bundles.

“He don’t that,” replied the latter.

But here the three babies became clamorous for something to eat, and the two women turned their attention to them. And though this party had been nibbling cake or candy, more or less, during the whole journey, as is too much the custom of their class, yet now they all ate as if they had fasted since breakfast.

Mr. Campbell reappeared with a little tray in his hand, on which was arranged a cup of tea, a small plate of cream toast, and another plate with the wing of a roast chicken, which he placed on the vacant seat, while he relieved Jennie of her sleeping babe.

“Oh, dear papa, to think that you should remember my taste for milk toast and chicken, and bring them to me! This is killing the fatted calf, indeed,” said Jennie gratefully as she took the tray upon her lap.

Mr. Campbell then sat down on the vacant seat with the baby in his arms; but he made no reply except by a smile.

The train started.

“Oh, dear,” said Jennie, “we are carrying off the crockery ware!”

“Not at all,” replied the father. “The return train will bring them back and leave them at this station. Such is the arrangement.”

“Then my mind is easy. Did you get anything to eat, papa dear?”

“Oh, yes; a slice of cold beef and a cup of coffee while they were fixing up your tray.”

“I am glad,” said Jennie; and she gave her attention to her tray, and exhibited such a healthy appetite that not a crumb or a drop was left when she finished her meal and put the little service under the seat.

The train rushed on, nor stopped again until nearly sunset, when it ran in at the station of York.

Here the father and daughter got off to take a branch line to Chuxton, the nearest railway station to Haymore.

Willingly would the curate have stayed here overnight to show his daughter the great cathedral city, which she had never seen, had not two good reasons prevented—first, his poverty, which could not bear the expense; secondly, the anxiety of the wife and mother at home to see her long-absent daughter, which, he knew, could not tolerate the delay.

“Some day we will return to see this ancient city, my dear; but to-day we must hurry home to your mother,” he said as he led her into the waiting-room to stay till their train should be ready to start.

There the “little angel” awoke in no angelic temper, but impatient to be nursed.

Jennie took her into the dressing-room, where she attended to all her needs, and presently brought her back smiling and good-natured to the arms of her grandfather.

“I foresee what an idol the grandmother will make of this little one,” he said as he received her.

“The idea of calling my pretty young mamma a grandmother! It is well she is not a woman of fashion, or she would be disgusted,” said Jennie, laughing.

“As it is, she will be delighted,” said her father, looking curiously at his child. He was very pleasantly disappointed in Jennie. He had feared to meet in her a heartbroken woman—a forsaken wife, whom none of her “old blessings” of father and mother, home and family affection, could possibly console—and he found a daughter who had let go the unfaithful husband and comforted herself with her unoffending babe, and meant even to enjoy herself with her parents at the parsonage in the performance of every filial, maternal and domestic duty. And that this disposition was not forced, but was natural, might be seen and heard in her contented countenance and frequent laugh. Even now, if the thought would recur that the curate’s temporary parish lay in the manor of Haymore, and the reigning or pretending squire was Kightly Montgomery, still, upon later reflection, she felt so much confidence in the wisdom and goodness of her father that she dismissed all dread of any fatal or even serious result of his meeting with her husband. And for one circumstance Jennie felt glad and grateful, namely, for the change of residence from Medge, where everybody had known her from childhood, and might, therefore, wonder and ask questions why the curate’s married daughter should return home to live without her husband—since it was clear from her dress that she was not a widow.

No such wonder could be excited at Haymore; no such questions asked. The people were strangers. They had taken their temporary pastor upon well-merited trust, and his family history was unknown to them.

As for the other matter connected with Kightly Montgomery, she would tell her father everything, and he would know what to do.

Kightly Montgomery, she knew, never by any chance entered a church, so her father would never see him there.

As for the curate, when she should have told him who the new squire really was, it was unlikely that Mr. Campbell would feel disposed to make a clerical call at the manor house.

Under the divine Providence she would leave everything to her father.

While the father and daughter were still chatting pleasantly together a door was flung open and a voice was heard announcing:

“Train for Chuxton.”

“Come, my child,” said Mr. Campbell, rising with the baby on his arms and crossing the room, followed by Jennie.

They went out to the train and entered the second-class carriage.

In five minutes, after they were comfortably seated, the train was off, speeding away from the old cathedral city in a northerly direction across the moors.

The sun had not yet set, though it was on the edge of the horizon. Jennie fixed her eyes on the vastness of the brown moor that stretched, or rather rolled, away in all directions to meet the horizon. It reminded her of the sea. It seemed a boundless ocean, enchanted into stillness; for not a breath of air disturbed the motionless heather, and not a hamlet or a farmhouse broke the illusion. No doubt there were farms and villages not far off, but they were in the hollows, out of sight.

Presently Jennie turned from the window to look at her baby. The little one was fast asleep again; so was the curate, who had been traveling all night and all day, for twenty-four hours. He had his arms so securely wound around the sleeping child that Jennie forbore to take it away, lest she should disturb their rest.

The sun set; twilight faded; yet the train sped on over the moor.

Presently Jennie observed twinkling lights before her that seemed to be on the edge of the horizon. As the train sped on toward those lights she recognized them as belonging to a station.

Then the steam horn shrieked and waked up all the passengers, and the guide shouted:

“Chuxton!”

“Here we are, my dear,” said the curate, waking up as the train stopped.

There were but few passengers who got out here, and there were all sorts of conveyances waiting for them, from donkey carts to fine coaches.

“How far are we from Haymore, papa?” inquired Jennie as her father led her from the train to the waiting-room of the station.

“Ten miles, my dear.”

“Is there a stagecoach to Haymore?”

“No, my dear, but I took the precaution to engage the fly from the Red Fox to meet us here for this train. If it has not come yet—and I do not see it—it will be here soon.”

“How much expense I put you to, dear papa!”

“Tut, tut! there is a time to spend! Whether there is a time to save or not, while there is the least need anywhere of spending, I really do not know! There’s the fly now!” exclaimed the curate, at the sound of wheels, suddenly breaking off in his discourse and going to the door.

“Well, Nahum, you are on time, I see!” said Mr. Campbell, speaking cheerfully to some one in the outer darkness.

“Ay, bound to be, sir, when your reverence had bespoken the kerridge,” answered a buoyant voice from the shades.

“Come, my dear! But, Nahum, perhaps the mule wants food and water?”

“Not she, sir! She had her oats and her water and her mug of ale! You’d no believe, sir, how that lass loves ale! So, with your leave, I’ll e’en give her another mug of that same, whiles she rests five minutes. No longer, your reverence. No longer, sir.”

“Quite right. Let us know when you are ready.”

The curate sat down by his daughter.

In something less than five minutes the voice of the hostler was heard, calling:

“All right now, sir. Miss Nancy and me is at your service, sir.”

“Miss Nancy?” inquired Jennie as she arose and took her father’s arm.

“This mule, of course. Nahum is an oddity! His avocations are multiform. He is coachman, groom, hostler and handy man generally at the Red Fox,” Mr. Campbell explained as he took his daughter out to the carriage.

It was not a “fly” at all, though they called it so; it was a strong, snug carryall, covered all over with a black tarpaulin, except the front, which was open. It was drawn by a stout mule.

Mr. Campbell put his daughter and her child in the sheltered back seat and placed himself beside the coachman in the front. And the carryall rolled away over the murky moor until it seemed to be swallowed up in the darkness.

But “Miss Nancy” knew the road, and, if she had not known it, her driver did. So they went on in safety.