A Costly Freak

Front matter

A COSTLY FREAK BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Each with Frontispiece by Gordon Browne. AN INNOCENT IMPOSTOR, and Other Stories. Second Edition. 6s. IN THE HEART OF THE STORM. Third Edition. 6s. THE REPROACH OF ANNESLEY. Fifth Edition. 6s. THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. Ninth Edition. 6s. WESTMINSTER CHIMES, and Other Poems. Small 8vo, 5s. London : Regan Paul, Trench, TrUbner, & Co. L™ " All is against me, Millie — no one believes in me.'' chap. BY MAXWELL GRAY AUTHOR OF "THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND," " IN THE HEART OF THE STORM," "THE LAST SENTENCE," ETC. " Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass, Wer nie die kummervollen Nachte Aus seinem Bette weinend sass, Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte." LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO. L™ PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.

Chapter I

The crude, pale brightness of a lengthening February day made the dingy room dingier than ever ; it showed patches and rents in the faded cretonne and called attention to the thread-bare carpet, the original colour and pattern of which were forgotten. A small fire was burning dead and dusty between clay sides put into the grate to save coal ; one long thickly moted sunbeam fell across Walter's couch and the dull red table-cover, ending on Mr. Ray, who sat, a thin, bent figure, with arms crossed before him on the table, pensively smiling. His coat-sleeves were green and shiny, with frayed cuffs, his all-round clerical collar was fresh but jagged at the edge, his face, as worn as his clothing, was clean shaven except A for a small grey whisker, his hair was grey and scanty, his lips, now tremulously smiling, were both severe and sweet in expression, there was a light of unspeakable tenderness in the pale-blue eyes bent on his crippled son, who was laughing aloud.

Near the lad's couch, which was placed before the window, sat his mother with a great pile of linen that she was darning with near-sighted care ; she, like her husband, was elderly, grey, and care-worn, and she, too, was smiling pensively and letting her work lie idle while she removed her spec tacles to look at the antics of the little pug dog, who had just abstracted a handkerchief from unconscious Mr. Ray's pocket, and was hiding it behind the window curtain. " Well done, Buffie ! Clever Buffie ! " cried the boy, his pretty pale face transformed from its habitual pinched fretfulness to a natural boyish expression. " I don't know, Wattie," said his father, beguiled to a mild little joke, " if it is strictly moral to teach Buffie such tricks. Fie, Buffie, fie ! " " Bring it back, Buff," said the mother ; "see, Wattie, he is tearing it ; call him off, dear."

It was then that the tabby kitten, hitherto content with demurely watching the little dog's sport, thought fit to descend with a tigerish spring upon the handkerchief and snatch the end of it with a pretty affectation of fierceness from Buffie. Whereupon Buffie worried one corner of the frail rag, and the kitten, with glittering eyes, bristling whiskers and quivering tail, and many a quick twist and turn of its lithe little body, bit and let go, and caught and tossed and twirled the other, with infinite A^ariety of graceful gesture and pretty play, sometimes rushing aAvay with a comic face of feigned terror, then quickly returning to the charge with an air of business-like determination, as if play were the serious and sole aim of existence, until Buffie, disgusted at the hiding's frivolity, walked away and curled himself with a discon tented grunt and many turns on the shabby hearth-rug.

While Mr. Ray looked and smiled at all this guileless mirth, his under lip quivered a little. He was thinking of the doctor's prescription for Walter of generous diet, and various impossible luxuries. With these the boy might grow out of his weakness and become a fairly capable man ; without them he would probably sink and pass away in a decline. Walter was his only son, the long desired child of his old age. "Twenty pounds," he repeated to himself, " only twenty pounds might save my boy." Then the spectacles through which he was watching the kitten's play were dimmed, and something rose chokingly in his throat. Why, people gave twenty pounds for a piece of furniture, a watch, a cart, a lady's gown, a pony, or a cow, while he could not anywhere find twenty pounds to save his child, his only beloved son.

He kept racking his brains, as he sat at the table, in the end of the sunbeam, to find some way of raising this trivial sum. His old silver watch would fetch next to nothing ; his books were few, shabby and old ; he had no luxuries to give up. It was hard, very hard to sit still and see his handsome, gifted son fade before his very eyes, and be absolutely impotent to help him. Sometimes when the boy suffered acute pain, his great dark eyes seemed to reproach his father in their large agonised gaze, crying dumbly in the words of Ugolino's little dying son in the Hunger Tower — " Padre mio, che non m' aiuti ? " "And I would give the whole world, I would give my very soul to help him," the poor father moaned in helpless anguish. Had he deserved this at the hands of his Maker ? he was sometimes tempted to ask in the bitterness of his soul.

" Doth Job serve God for naught ? " he heard in reply. Then again he would think of his many sorrows, his hard labours, his lonely youth and long deferred marriage, his plodding colourless life, and wonder that he and his patient blameless wife should be denied this one solace of a strong-armed son to comfort their old age. " We have three good daughters, William," the pfentle wife would remind him. But he wanted a son, a strongs man-child on whom he could lean, above all, he wanted Walter, and to save Walter's young life from cruel suffering and early death. So many men had healthy, happy sons rich men, happy men, careless men, men who feared not God neither regarded man, while he, who had walked uprightly from his cradle, had but this one poor blighted boy, who was dying for lack of twenty pounds.

The sunbeam faded from the man's grey pathetic face and the boy's clustered curls, a quick firm step struck the gravel outside, and the door-bell rang sharply. " It's old Burroughes," said Walter, whose corner commanded the exits and entrances to the house, " I like old Burroughes." "Old Burroughes" was just over thirty, and Mr. Ray's rector ; it was as if a Russian should patronise the Czar. Old Burroughes' amiable and usually happy countenance was clouded this afternoon ; he did not like his errand, and though he rang sharply and resolutely, as one rings at the dentist's bell, with resolution screwed up to extraction-point, he was glad of the delay that occurred before the door was slowly, ten tatively, and suspiciously opened an inch at a time, until the startled countenance of Bella, the little maid-of-all-work, was fully revealed.

It was a rosy and well-scrubbed face, in spite of one large dab of smut on the nose and another on the forehead, Bella's one distinguishing characteristic being a pro nounced talent for attracting the whole of the household dust and dirt to her own small person. Other talent she had none ; her fourteen brief summers having been spent in acquiring a wild terror of every human crea ture, which terror effectually scattered what few wits she might once have possessed. " Bella," said old Burroughes, contemplat ing the panic-stricken face thoughtfully and speaking solemnly, " I am not an ogre, I don't eat girls up alive." Bella curtseyed with a distracted air, smoothing her hands over her clean white apron, and leaving a black trail upon it, while her poor eyes looked as if they would jump out of her head.

"Bella," continued old Burroughes in his deep voice, "when were you last beaten?" " Please, sir, the day father took ill," she gasped. " Now he's dead, I ain't got nobody to beat me no more," she added pathetically, trembling and shrinking before her inter locutor. Old Burroughes frowned, and silently handed Bella a shilling, and then, having asked for the master of the house, was admitted and announced in the frightened whisper in which Bella habitually communi cated information. He had often stood in that room before, but its dingy cheerlessness had never before so forcibly impressed itself upon him. "If I 'm not the bio^est coward in the habitable universe," he said to himself, during his re ception, when he found himself swallowing down a rebellious something that rose in his throat, " I'll eat my hat.

I'll do more. I'll crunch a Bishop's mitre. If only they weren't so glad to see me ! " " Hooray !" cried Walter, when it came to his turn to have his thin hand squeezed in the rector's powerful fist. " Why, I knew your step before you came round the corner. ' Here's old Burroughes,' I said." " Let him call me 'old Burroughes,' I like it," was the rector's response to Mr. Ray's gentle rebuke. The heartiness of George's deep voice, the largeness of his manner and his breezy cordial presence filled the dingy little parlour with a sense of ampler, freer, and more wholesome life. Walter's pains diminished, Mrs. Ray's pile of mending seemed smaller and her household cares less oppressive, and the grey curate's burden appeared lighter, and his narrow horizon wider and brighter under the cheery in fluence.

" Here's a poet," the guest added, handing Walter a green, cloth-bound volume, " superior to Longfellow, but not quite up to Homer's ' mark.' " " These moderns," scornfully returned Walter, whose acquaintance with this century's poetry was limited to the esteemed American and an odd volume of Moore, " are milksops, molly-coddles, old grannies. There ain't any fight in 'em." In response to which George Burroughes, still standing large and lofty above the little lad, snatched the volume back, and, opening it at random, began in his strong deep voice with the long booming rhythm of an Atlantic breaker — " So all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea," which two fine lines were enough ; for when he paused to draw in a mighty breath at the end of the magnificently rising roll, he was startled by the sound of a short sob, and saw tears in the sensitive boy's eyes.

" Better read it alone first, Watt," he said, Avith a gentle, pitiful smile, "it's a stunning fight, though the man who wrote it isn't dead yet. I want to speak to your father now, on — on — business." Burroughes sighed and his face clouded again at the last word, as he turned with a slight inclination of the head to Mr. Ray, who was absorbed in the emotion the lines of poetry evoked in the susceptible lad. " Poor child ! " Mr. Ray sighed, leading his guest from the room; "his mind is too strong for his body. Anything grand brings tears to his eyes." " There isn't enough animal in him, that's all," Burroughes replied cheerily. " He'll grow out of that with care." "With care," echoed the poor father abstractedly, "and generous diet, port wine, open air, change of scene. I — I hope you're not cold.

I — I'm sorry there's no fire," he added, drawing up a chair before the empty hearth. "Not in the least," returned the rector nervously, " as warm as a toast. But — hm ! — well ! — ha ! — " Mr. Ray, ignoring these ineffectual stutters, began upon some parish detail, while George Burroughes looked round the chill and cheer less room. It boasted some pathetic ornamental de tails ; a pair of cold alabaster vases on the cold white painted mantel-piece, a small oaken cross, made out of the wood from a cruelly restored church in which Mr. Ray had ministered, some sea-shells, a large pre sentation Bible, some faded photographs, a print of the Finding of Moses, and one of Rebecca at the Well, with some dreadful home-made imitations of wood-carving made out of peach-stones and fir-apples, and some girlish arrangements of muslin and ribbons, which accentuated the melancholy of cheap and faded upholstery.

The apartment was clean, and distressingly tidy, its small shabby piano was the sole piece of furniture that gave evidence of daily use, else its impossible little sofa and penitential arm-chair, its obsolete, wool-worked fender-stool and half-dozen cane-bottomed chairs, its white netted cur tains, and veneered walnut table, had a dole fully uninhabited, unused look. It was not only cold with the chill of a sunless, fireless room, but it Avas distinctly fusty, and Bur roughes averred that the smell of it always gave him a cold in the head. He sat on the end of the impossible couch, which he likened to a pale reflection of St. Lawrence's gridiron, and leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his eyes upon the well-saved carpet, vaguely catching the drift of his curate's communication on the efficiency of the infant-school staff, and won dering how in the world he was to plunge into the subject that was uppermost in his mind.

"Yes," he replied, "yes, yes. I should certainly counsel and countenance a little wholesome corporal punishment." " Corporal punishment ! " exclaimed the curate, aghast. " Certainly ; most wholesome at that age," returned the rector, with profound gravity. " You see, to appeal to reason where reason is not to be looked for is — ah ! — rot." " I am, to my sorrow, obliged to agree with you on the inefficacy of an appeal to reason in this case," continued Mr. Ray, " but corporal punishment ! " " My dear sir," continued George, intently examining the half-moons in his strong, well kept finger nails, " you are tender-hearted to a fault. I'm not for any savagery myself, especially on such a tender subject as this, but just a little sharp sonorous smacking with the open hand, you know. I'll do it myself, if that's all."

" You will smack the infant-schoolmis tress ! " slowly ejaculated Mr. Ray, with a look of distraught bewilderment and a voice of matchless horror. George threw back his head and laughed — how that stalwart young parson could laugh! The laughter of Homeric gods was a feeble cackle in comparison with his whole hearted, strong-chested roar. " No, no ! " he replied, " poor little Miss Sprigg shan't be smacked. No, no, we won't smack Miss Sprigg on any account. Miss Sprigg ! ha ! ha! Not," he added, after a reflective pause, " but what those firm, solid cherry-cheeks of hers are not tempting ; they offer," he added, unconsciously opening his strong palm, "such a fine field for a good sound ing smack." " Mr. Burroughes ! " exclaimed the curate, with slow and emphatic reproof, his face turning pink and then pale with shame and distress.

" I beg your pardon ! " cried George, with a smothered splutter, " but upon my so — upon my word ! If only you wouldn't — for give me, sir, but you take things so seri ously. One smile from you — and I could have borne it." " You are young, Mr. Burroughes," returned his curate with gentle sadness, the extreme distress softening from his wistful face, "and I fear that I am old — too old perhaps," he added with a sigh that went to the younger man's heart, and emphasised the feeling that had oppressed him ever since the Marquis of Woolford presented him to this rich benefice some six months back, and he found Mr. Ray Adrtually curate-in-charge, as he had been during the indolent, invalidish rule of the last rector — a feelingof the serious incongruity of his position with regard to this saintly elder.

"Dear Mr. Ray," he replied, catching at this opening to unfold the purpose of his visit, "it is not that you are too old, but that I am too young — ah ! h'm ! You see, ah — I've often thought — and I daresay it has struck you as well — that — h'm — in point of fact, I ought to have a younger curate." Mr. Ray had turned deathly pale ; his head drooped forward a little with the look of a man hearing his long-expected doom. " You want me," he said slowly and hoarsely, " you want me — to — to resign ? " " I was merely suggesting," returned George quickly and a little huskily, "that you mightn't care — ah ! at your time of life — to be, ah ! under a — rector younger than yourself. Why, it's a thundering shame," he blurted out, "that a man of your at tainments, your long and faithful service in the ministry — a man revered for saintly living " " No, no !

" interrupted Mr. Ray, turning pink, "you must not say such things. My dear young brother " " That you shouldn't be rector," thundered George; "you ought to have a sole charge at least." " True, very true. At my age I ought to have done better. But somehow," Mr. Ray added, " I never got on. I am a failure. I am not a good preacher. I strive to set the Word honestly and clearly before the people, but I have not the gift of eloquence — and — the young need to be attracted — the people must be ' compelled to come in,' in the words of the parable. I " Tears choked his voice. "My very dear sir," cried George dis tressed, "you misunderstand me. You're too good for the place, that's what I mean. As for your sermons, I'm sure, for my part, I've never heard one without feeling, though I'm afraid not being, the better for it."

"But you wish me to go?" added Mr. Ray, swallowing down his emotion, and look ing up with a wistful eagerness that pained George to the heart. " Indeed, I don't. I know how splendidly you've worked the parish. I know what the poor think of you. I'm not in the running with the cottagers and the sick— why, you're the prince of parish priests." " Nay," returned the poor curate, blushing again, " you must not say such things indeed. But I had hoped— I had humbly trusted — that I had been permitted to begin a good Avork in the youths' Bible classes and the cottage lectures, and — well ! I should grieve to have to leave those dear people. I trust I am not presumptuous in thinking that these works have — under Providence — been blessed. Still " He sighed, and his fingers trembled in their nervous play with a book-marker in the presentation Bible.

"Now, why the dickens," murmured Bur roughes to himself, "must this good old chap say 'under Providence,' and put on the conventional snuffle? How can he ex pect people to stand him ? " For it must be confessed that the Rev. George's dislike of shibboleths, and especially of what he termed evau shibboleth, was such that he could not have put up Avith St. Paul himself had he used them. R "Nobody," he said aloud, "doubts that. Why, only yesterday, old Betty James said to me, ' Lard bless 'ee, sir, there baint nothen wuth living in this yer world for, without it's the gospel we gets at they lectures, and a cup o' tay to comfort anybody's inside.' She's a ripping old girl, is Betty. But " Burroughes paused ; it flashed upon him that altar-flowers, embroidered stoles, cassocks and frequent services were poor things in comparison with genuine piety and efficient ministrations to the poor.

Yet Mr. Ray was emptying the church ; the parishioners demanded more music, brighter services, progress. " But there is something else?" faltered Mr. Ray. " I — I know I am behind the times. The old spoken responses seem to me more fit, more uplifting — still " " Oh ! it isn't that," returned Burroughes hastily, " besides, you've given in about the responses. But the Marquis " "The Marquis!" echoed the curate, with a piteous, uncontrollable quiver of the lip, " oh ! if he is displeased " " Oh ! well, the Marquis is a mere man of the world. He was only saying that he thought — but never mind the Marquis. He ought to give you a living, and won't. But suppose now, dear Mr. Ray, that you were to seek a sole charge ; that would surely be the better plan, don't you think so ? " The Rev. George was still considering the pearly half-moons in his finger nails, and tell ing himself that he was the biggest bungler on this side of Acheron, and wondering why tact had been left out in the making of him, when a faint sound made him look up, to see his curate's face, greyer still in the grey of fast gathering twilight, partly covered by a shaking hand, beneath which George saw a quivering chin and divined the slow cold tears of age and anguish.

" I will try," the old man faltered in a broken voice, when he looked up after a painful struggle with himself. " But my boy, my poor blighted boy ! Alas ! alas ! I put my Walter before my people, the Lord for give and pity me ! " George, shocked and pained, sprang up, and laid his strong hand gently on the old man's heaving shoulder, " Sir, Mr. Ray, dearest sir," he cried, "you don't like the plan ; think no more of it, I entreat you." " It — it is Walter's last chance," gasped Mr. Ray. "Think no more of it, my dear sir. I only threw out a suggestion," continued George, in his hearty voice. " You shall not leave unless you wish it. As for the Marquis, and the whole blessed lot of them, they may go to Hong Kong ! "

Chapter II

The table was set for tea in the parlour, when the two clergymen returned to its warmer atmosphere ; the dull fire had been stirred and replenished, and Bella, with a black kettle in her hand, Avas just tumbling into the grate in over-zealous efforts to be quick, at which Buffie was madly barking, and the kitten, converted for the moment into a tiny treble arch on double pillars, swearing the prettiest little swear in the world. Mr. Ray, with the abstracted air of long habit, silently rescued the kettle, while the distraught Bella regained the perpendicular, moustached herself fiercely by drawing a smutty forefinger immediately beneath her small nose, and, casually upsetting the milk on her way, left the room, audibly falling over the umbrella-stand outside. The family sometimes thought that, " but for the honour of the thing," it would have been more convenient to have dispensed with Bella's services.

" But then what would become of Bella?" Mr. Ray always objected, when there was a question of sending her away. " No one else would or could employ the poor child," — an argument the family considered un answerable. Bella out of the way, the kettle began its homely song, Buffie subsided with a con tented grunt into his spasmodic dog-sleep, the kitten's temporary agitation passed and she resumed her interrupted pastime of fran tically assaulting, biting, and tearing a piece of crisp paper under Walter's couch. The paper was so light it floated before the wind of the kitten's onrush, she caught it in her paws, tossed and tore it, let it go, sprang on it, and worried it with her teeth till nothing was left but some fluttering bits, one of which George Burroughes, with bachelor's tidiness, mechanically picked up, and threw into the fire.

"Hark to this!" Walter cried, turning to the firelight when Buffie was still — 'The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, The hard brands shiver on the steel, The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly, And horse and rider reel ; They reel, they roll in clanging lists, And, when the tide of combat stands ' — "Why, you can hear all the swords and the spears smashing ; you feel as if some fellow was knocking you clean out of your saddle " " Look here, young one," said George, taking the volume gently from him, " if you carry on like this, I shall bring you nothing more exciting than Dr. Watts' ' Divine and Moral Songs ' — ' How doth the little busy bee Improve this shining hour ! She's gathered honeycomb that we This minute will devour ' something domestic, pious and soothing, you know." "My dear Mr. Burroughes!" exclaimed Mrs. Ray.

" One drops into poetry when demoralised by Walter, Mrs. Ray. Pray let me hold the kettle for you." Mr. Ray then began an elaborate grace ; George bending his head, and looking on the table-cloth — which, though spotless, had evidently seen service since its latest jour ney from the laundress's hand — and hoping the powerful odour from the newly lit ben zoline lamp was nourishing and conducive to digestion. Before the grace was finished, the door softly opened and as softly closed again, admitting a tired, dowdily-dressed girl, who remained standing, stiff and awkward, until the grace was said, when she came forward, blushing furiously at her ill-timed entrance, and ungraciously offered a limp hand to the guest. " One might suppose me an embodied indigestion, a Avalking cold in the head, an unpaid bill, or even the doctrine of Predes tination, from her scowl," he thought, stiffly accepting the favour.

" Tired, Millie ?" asked her father. " What made you so late, my dear ?" She murmured something uninteresting to George, and sat down rather heavily in a chair against the wall, faintly illumined by the flaring lamp on the centre-table, and drew her clumsily-shod and mud-covered feet beneath her skirts. Her mother, looking at her face purpled by the chill night air, thought that she had been crying. George, who, like most men, viewed women at the wrong end, wondered how she came to have such clumsy feet, and why she wore such shabby boots and gloves. Millie Ray was, in his eyes, a species of criminal : she dressed badly, stammered and blushed for nothing — in short, had no manner. All women, he held, should dress well, however simply and cheaply ; every woman should have a Avinning and gracious manner ; for why do women exist if not to please men ?

Millie Ray could in no way justify her entrance on this earthly scene. He usually spoke of her, with mild contempt, as " that poor Miss Ray." Her entrance vexed him, he scarcely knew why. As the climax to her iniquity, she carried a good sized and not ornamental basket : a basket carried by a woman was an offence to him, it suggested cheap trippers, luncheon-laden — it gave a woman a sort of greedy, acqui sitive air, especially when accompanied by an anxious face ; and Millie's face was always anxious — another sin, because anxiety is un dignified and unbecoming, especially to young women. " For Wattie," the unconscious criminal said in an undertone, drawing something folded in a fresh green leaf from the offend ing basket, and passing it to her mother. " Butter ! " cried Walter, in pouting dis gust ; "and I wanted eggs !

" " But you were longing for fresh butter, Wattie," reproved his father ; and the Rev. George observed that the butter on the table was in sharp-angled and white-crystalled cubes, such as are cut out of tubs in grocers' shops, and offer a marked contrast to the soft dimples and inviting curves of the fresh farm-product. " And I waited for it, Wattie," said Millie from her corner. " The butter wouldn't come till the afternoon, and was hard to work when it did." She spoke with a wearied, studied gentleness, yet with a faint quiver, almost a whine of reproach, that further irritated the stalwart rector, who was never weary, reproachful, or studious of speech, but spoke out straight and strong, without stint, whatever was in his heart. "Poor beggar!" he thought, when the parlour was emptied of his large and breezy presence ; " no wonder he is prosy and narrow.

But he shan't be turned out. They're molly-coddling that jolly little chap, Walter, between them. I suppose he's doomed, and it will kill the old man. Wine, good nourish ment — h'm. Surely a dozen of sound old port would be no offence — yet I don't like — " Certain words floated through the rector's mind, and he coloured up in the darkness. The piteous quiver of the old man's chin, and his passionate self-accusations and laments over his own unspirituality, came before him. Perhaps Mr. Ray was nearer the apostolic standard than the man whose paid subordi nate he was, the latter reflected, as he stepped into his own ample, well-ordered, Avell-lighted hall, through which vibrated the musical murmur of a gong, warning the decorous to prepare for the solemn rite of dinner, the approaching celebration of which was further betokened by an appetising whiff of odour from an opened and gently shut door to the back regions, and by the glitter and sparkle of silver, glass, and flowers on snowy napery in the dining-room close at hand.