Friends I Have Made Part 25

"`Acres of it.'

"`And plenty of fruit and flowers?'

"`Plenty to make you ill and to litter the house.'

"`And purply plums, and ruddy apples, and soft downy peaches, and great rich Morello cherries?'

"`Yes, yes, yes, and cabbages, and turnips, and 'tatoes, and beans, and brockylo enough to supply a greengrocer's shop,' I cried testily.

"`And it doesn't look new, and stiff, and bricky; and isn't overlooked by the neighbours, who hang out was.h.i.+ng; and there are no organs, nor cabs, nor street-singers?'

"`No, no, no, no, child. It's just what you asked me to get--old, and rugged, and picturesque, and inconvenient, and damp, and littered with leaves, and four miles from any railway-station; and now I hope you're happy.'

"`Oh, I am, dear, dear, dear father!' she cried, seating herself on my knee, and nestling her head on my shoulder.

"`There, hold up your head,' I said, `and look at me. Now tell me frankly, did you ever see such a weak, stupid old man in your life?'

"`I like weak, stupid old men,' she said archly; and her eyes twinkled with merriment, and then softened with the tears that stole into them.

"`Yes,' I said, `because you can tyrannise over them, and do what you please with them, and make them your slaves like you do me. A pretty rig I've been running this last two months to find a place you like-- just as if Bryanston Square wouldn't do. I tell you what, my lady, you'll have to take pains to make me comfortable down there, for I shall be as dull and as heavy as lead.'

"`No, you will not, pa dear,' she said, laughing, and then laying her cheek to mine. `I am so glad. You've made me so happy, for I was very tired of London.'

"I did not answer, but sat looking down on the smooth peachy cheek that one of my hands would keep stroking, and at the long yellow hair that hung down over the shoulders in waves, and, in spite of myself, a sigh escaped my lips.

"Ruth--Cobweb, as I always called her, because she was so soft and downy--started up, gazing earnestly in my face, and then kissed me very, very fondly.

"`Don't think about the past, dear father,' she said softly--she always called me father when she was serious.

"`Can't help it, child,' I said mournfully; and then, seeing the tears gather in her eyes, I tried to be cheerful, and smiled as I added, `I have the future as well as the past to make me sad, my dear.'

"She looked at me wonderingly, but did not speak, and I sat there holding her little hand to my heart as I thought of the past, and how ten years before, just as business was beginning to prosper with me, I was left alone with a little fair-haired girl of eight, who found it so hard to believe that her mother had been taken away never to return, only to live in our memories. And I thought, too, of how the years had fled away, and I had become a wealthy man, whose sole thought had been of the child I had seen grow up to maidenhood, making a very idol of her, yielding to her every whim, and doing the most I could to spoil one who never would be spoiled. For, with all the accomplishments I had lavished upon her, Ruth had grown up to be a notable little housewife, who disgusted our cooks by insisting upon going down into the kitchen and making my favourite puddings and tarts with her own hands, and generally behaving in what the servants called an unladylike way.

"And then I thought of my other sorrow--the future--and pictured, with an agony I cannot describe, the day when I should have to resign my claims to another, and be left alone, a desolate, broken old man.

"I am naturally a very common, hard, and businesslike fellow, and terribly selfish. Cobweb had woven herself so round my heart, that in my peevish, irritable way, I was never happy when home from the City without she was waiting on me--filling my pipe, mixing my one nightly gla.s.s of grog, upon which the butler frowned--in fact, he had once suggested to me that his late master of an evening always took port.

"Cobweb was very quiet as she glided down from my knee to her ha.s.sock at my feet, and was evidently thinking as much as I; and at last I brightened up, for a thought had come to me with a selfish kind of comfort.

"`She'll be quite away from all temptations to leave me, there, anyhow,'

I said to myself, as I thought of the `at-homes' and halls to which she was so often receiving invitations.

"This set me talking--fis.h.i.+ng, as I called it in my great cunning--to see if there were one of the rocks ahead of which I was in dread.

"`How shall you be able to leave all your fine friends--parties--and set-outs?' I said.

"`Oh, I'm tired of them all!' she said clapping her hands.

"`And gay cavaliers, with dandy airs and moustaches, and programmes.'

"`Ha, ha, ha!' she laughed merrily; and then, as it seemed to me in my jealous watchfulness, turning the subject, she began to talk about the country place I had taken.

"A fortnight later and we were settled down; and really, spite of all my London notions, I began to find the calm and repose of the country delicious. Cobweb was delighted, and constantly dragging me somewhere or another into the grounds of the pretty old place, where she arranged garden-seats in the snuggest, shadiest spots for my especial behoof.

"As I have said, there was a wilderness of a wood adjoining the garden, which the former possessor had left in a state of nature, saving that he had had the old footpaths and tracks widened in their old winding ways, carefully turfed, and dotted with a chair here and there.

"This was Cobweb's favourite place, and if I missed her out in the garden, I knew I should find her here, with the sun raining a shower of silver beams through the network of leaves overhead, to dance and flash among the waving tresses of her long golden hair.

"One day I found her leaning on a dead bough which crossed an opening in the wood, where all seemed of a delicate twilight green. She was listening intently to the song of a bird overhead, and as I stopped short, gazing at the picture before me, I said to myself with a sigh--

"`All that's bright must fade! My darling, I wish I had your likeness as you stand. Time flies.' I muttered, `and the winter comes at last, with bare trees to the woods--grey hairs and wrinkles to the old.'

"She caught sight of me directly, and the scene was changed, for I was listening the next moment to her merry, happy voice.

"A day or two later I was in the City, where I always went twice a week--for I could not give up business, it was part of my life--when old Smith dropped in, and in the course of conversation he said--

"`By the way, Burrows, why don't you have your portrait painted?'

"`Bah! stuff! What for?' I said.

"`Well,' he said, laughing, `I don't know, only that it would give a poor artist of my acquaintance a job; and, poor fellow, he wants it badly enough.'

"`Bah! I'm handsome enough without being painted,' I said gruffly.

Then as a thought flashed through my mind--for I saw again the picture in the wood with Cobweb leaning on the branch--`Stop a minute. Can he paint well?'

"`Gloriously.'

"`And is terribly hard up?'

"`Horribly, poor fellow.'

"`How's that?'

"`Don't know. He's poor and proud, and the world has dealt very hardly with him. It isn't so smooth with every one, Jack, as it is with us.'

"`True, Tom, old fellow,' I said, `true. Well, look here: I'll give him a job. Would he come down and stay at my place?'

"`Oh, yes, if you treat him well; but, as I tell you, he's poor and proud, and quite a gentleman.'

"`Well, I'm not,' I said testily. `I'll give him enough to eat, and a good bed to sleep on; and he'll have to put up with me dropping my "h's." But,' I added, slapping my pocket, `I can pay him like a gentleman.'

"`Get out, you purse-proud old humbug!' said Smith, laughing, as he clapped me on the shoulder. `But there, I'm obliged to you. Have him down, and I'll thank you. He's a gentleman, and a man of honour.'

"`Oh, I'm not afraid he'll steal the spoons,' I said, laughing.

"`No,' he said dryly, `no fear of that. But you'll make a good picture.'

"`Stuff!' I said. `Do you think I'm going to be painted?'