Chapter III

MR. WALTHEW IS FAR FROM EASY IN HIS MIND.

DANIEL WALTHEW'S mind was much exercised by the fact that his son had been invited to Mr. Mitcheson's, and treated like one of his own boys, for the solicitor was a very great man in his eyes. He was not only a lawyer, but the lawyer to whom noblemen, the first in the county, went for advice. He had property, too, which made him independent of his profession, and Mrs. Mitcheson had not come to him empty-handed. He entertained his aristocratic clients, and was entertained by them, and, as Mr. Walthew put it, "He thinks no more of a Member of Parliament coming to dinner, than I should of asking my next-door neighbour to a cup of tea."

Doubtless he thought less—for it was only after much deliberation that even such modest hospitality was dispensed at the cottage board at Grimblethorpe, and such occasions were few and far between.

Daniel Walthew was proud of the honour done to Mark, and yet it troubled him for two reasons. The first was because he could not understand that a lady like Mrs. Mitcheson had invited a simple country lad to her house from sheer kindness of heart, and with the single desire to brighten his young life.

Secondly, he felt that Mr. Mitcheson's life path lay on a much higher level than his own, and if Mark got accustomed to mix with grand people, how would he ever come down to that humble part of the road on which was his own rut?

"What do you think about it, Barbara?" he asked his wife.

"That Mrs. Mitcheson is very kind to Mark, and I am very thankful to her."

"But why should she ask him? That's what I want to know. I should like to know what will be the outcome of it."

"Maybe because you are a customer of her husband, and your father went and paid good money to his father. I reckon your custom has been worth a good bit to them from first to last."

"What I am afraid of is that Mark will get stuck-up notions, and when he has done with schooling, he will not want to settle down here again. If I were to see him with a cigar in his mouth, swaggering up and down like some of those empty-headed puppies that think fathers were only meant to work and scrape money together for them to waste, I should almost wish that he had followed the others when he was little."

"There is no better boy than Mark; and what is the worth of the money if neither I nor he is ever to be any the happier for it?" asked Barbara, stung to speak as she had never done before during more than twenty-five years of married life. "Why," she continued, "should Mark be tied to Grimblethorpe? He will be fit for something better, and I hope he will get it."

Very wroth was Daniel Walthew when these rebellious words met his ear. He had not married Barbara to teach him what he ought to do, or talk about money as if she brought him any.

"So you mean to encourage the lad in stuck-up ways, do you?" he asked. "You want Mark to be a fine, do-nothing gentleman when he leaves school? I wish I had never sent him, but I've promised him three years, and I never broke my word yet. He shall have his time, and then—"

There was comfort in the thought. Daniel Walthew never boasted of his money. It was happiness enough to know of his hoards, and how they grew—grew, day by day, as the grass grew, without being watched. No need that others should share the knowledge with him. But Daniel liked every one to regard him as a man of his word, and he would keep a promise at any cost to himself. So Barbara knew that Mark was safe up to seventeen, and by that time something might happen.

However much Mr. Walthew might wish to keep the actual amount of his property a secret, and perhaps most of all to his son, lest Mark should thereon found a claim to live as a gentleman, other people talked and calculated, unassisted by any hint from him. The talk reached Mark's ears, and he tried to speak about it to his mother.

"Everybody says my father is a very rich man. If he is, why should we not have a different house from this, and live like other people? It seems a shame that you should do the cleaning and washing, and that father should work just like a labouring man, when we might have things as pretty as the Mitchesons have. It is so pleasant even to look round one of their rooms, and to sit at a table where the silver and glass glitter when the light falls on them, and the table-cloth shines like satin. If we only had a few pretty vases to put flowers here and there, they would brighten the table, and we have plenty in the garden."

Mrs. Walthew looked terrified when Mark spoke of his father's wealth.

"Hush, dear!" she said. "People talk of things they know nothing about. How should they? Your father keeps his affairs to himself. As to him and me dressing up like gentlefolks, and having servants to wait on us in a big house, we should be fish out of water. We are used to our work, we couldn't be idle, and if we had to change our ways, we should be miserable. Let us alone, lad. We are best as we are. As to sticking flowers about the place, why, you have only to turn your head, and there they are all in sight, and the sweet smell coming in at the open door, so that you cannot help knowing they are there."

Mark had to be silent, for he could get no information from his mother with regard to his father's wealth; only a hurried, frightened whisper, for Mr. Walthew's step was heard on the gravel.

"Don't trouble yourself! There is only you for everything, but you will have to humour father, for he can do as he likes with what belongs to him."

"But, mother, he talks of my coming and living here in his way and working as he works. I never shall. Do you think if a blind man's eyes were suddenly opened, and he had the power either to keep his sight or go back to his old state, he would shut them and choose blindness? I have seen a better, brighter life, mother. I can never settle down at Grimblethorpe again."

Mr. Walthew's entrance prevented more conversation, and Mark, seeing that an allusion to money matters or his own future only troubled his mother, said no more, but worked harder than ever, and bided his time. He had, however, a confederate and devoted friend in Dolly Mitcheson. Dolly was the very soul of honour, and to be trusted. Her brothers, big and little, chose her as the repository of their secrets, and the one girl of the family was never known to "peach." It mattered not to her whether the smallest toddles in the nursery, or Fred, who was growing tall and manly, chose to speak confidentially, or whether the subject was trivial or important, she was equally trustworthy in every case.

When Dolly adopted Mark as a brother, in order to make a double fraternal quartet, she did him a vast service by giving him a friend on whose truth and good sense he could rely at all times.

At first, when the girl spoke to him in her frank fashion about his home, and asked him if this and the other in her own were like it, Mark hesitated, and scarcely knew what to say, whilst his face flushed painfully. How could this dainty maiden realise the difference between her parents beautiful house and its surroundings and the cottage he called home! So he turned the talk from furniture to flowers, and being great on this subject, he delighted and instructed Dolly by telling her about those she loved, and such as grew in his father's garden.

As time went on, Mark, after thinking over the matter, decided to tell this girl friend the exact story of his past life, and to describe, with the utmost minuteness, the cottage home and its contents, as well as the narrow circle in which his parents were satisfied to move.

Dolly listened attentively, picturing the while all that Mark was taking such pains to make clear to her. She could guess, too, what it cost him; but when he finished she bravely looked in his face and said—

"When people have lived so long in one way they cannot change, Mark, can they? They are like old trees—if you try to take them up and plant them somewhere else, the roots cling, and there is no moving them without breaking some. If people choose to live in a little house and wait on themselves, instead of in a big one and be waited on by other people, it is their own business, and nobody has a right to find fault. One working bee is worth a lot of drones, is he not? Any way, if your mother has no servants, she has not them to grumble about all the time she is out calling, as my mamma's visitors do. I do get tired of hearing them, when I am dressed up and sitting in the drawing-room sometimes, and I wish they would talk of something else. So does mamma. I mean to learn how to do everything, and then when I am grown-up, and have a house and servants, I shall be able to tell them what they do not know."

Mark agreed with the wisdom of this resolution; then he said:

"You must not think we are without anything that is really necessary. We have good food, beautifully cooked, and clothes, only they have to be taken great care of. I know my parents are very fond of me; only somehow, I have never been a boy like other boys. I never ran, and jumped, and raced, and got into scrapes, and tore my clothes, or got sent off to bed, as the neighbours' lads did. I think I was born rather old."

Dorothy laughed at this, and Mark joined her, then added that he had been growing younger every day since he came to Claybury, and it was all through Mr. and Mrs. Mitcheson and herself.

"But you work fearfully hard, Fred says."

"Because I want to get one scholarship at least—two if possible. I cannot live at Grimblethorpe always, and unless I can give a very good reason for doing so, my father will insist on my going home, and working as he does. He calls it 'keeping in the old rut.' If I had known no different life, I might have done it, but not now."

Months grew into years. Mark Walthew laboured incessantly at his studies. Daniel would have been more or less than human if he had not been proud of the place won by his son, of the reports which came at each term's end, and the prizes he carried off. Mrs. Walthew's glad tears ran down her cheeks, and even her husband had to turn his back upon her, that she might not see why his spectacles needed so much polishing before he could read what "schoolmaster had written about Mark."

The boy was no country lout or awkward bookworm to look at, but was growing into a fine youth, whose manners would disgrace no society. His mother's training had given him right habits to begin with, and under Mr. Mitcheson's roof he had learnt those practised by persons in a higher position. Frank, yet modest, simple but refined, sincere without forwardness, and with a mind richly stored for one so young, Mark Walthew was indeed a son on whom a father might have rejoiced to bestow all the advantages money could give.

But all the while Mr. Walthew was saying, "Barbara, this is Mark's last term. In July, he will come home to stay."

She, with a sinking of the heart, could only answer, "Yes; he will have had the three years you promised him," and hope for a solution as to future difficulties which she could foresee, though her husband could not. Whilst he, nevertheless, confessed that he was not altogether easy in his mind as to what all this learning would lead to.