Joe Ford

Chapter I

Showing how the Air of Weston was not conducive to the Growth of the so-called Best Policy,

CHAPTER I

I Showing how the carefully-prepared Schemes of Bipeds and Small Quadrupeds frequently fail,

CHAPTER I

I I Merely the very Old Story,

CHAPTER IV

Showing how Kitty became suddenly curious about Her Ancestry, .....

CHAPTER V

Showing how Leslie Dalton, to serve His Own Ends, acted the Part of Eros, ....

CHAPTER VI

Showing how the Family increased from Two to Three, ...... CONTENTS VIII

CHAPTER VII PAGE

Showing how the Family increased from Three to Four, .... 162

CHAPTER VIII

Showing how there were Symptoms that the Familywould soon increase to Five, 176

CHAPTER IX

Showing how the Family did increase to Five,

CHAPTER I

Showing how the Air of Weston was not conducive to the Growth of the So-called Best Policy. Joe put down his spade and wiped his wet forehead with a vast red and green handkerchief. At the same moment, he became aware of the presence of a small white-frocked figure seated on the edge of a tub containing the malodorous fluid known as liquid manure. No one but a child or gardener could have remained for five minutes within a hundred yards of it this broiling July day, when an unsavoury steam rose visibly from its filthy brown con tents. But in children and gardeners, how ever, the sense of smell is apparently missing. A ' Are you the new boy ? ' asked the small figure, gravely. Yes, miss.' Do you like gardening ? ' No, miss.' Have you got a mother?' No, miss.' Have you got a father ? ' ' No, miss. ' Oh,' her solemn face breaking up into a smile, ' I am so glad.

I haven't neither. Everybody says to Molly when they think I'm not listening, poor little thing, she has no father, no mother, just as if it was wicked not to have them. Do you mind not having any ? I don't. I have Guardie and Molly and Leslie. Leslie is coming home soon now. He is at a boarding-school and plays football. There is a boy at his school who can kick. He kicked another boy's leg one day in mistake and broke it. I wish I was a boy and could play football, but Guardie says I mustn't.' ' Here, get 'ee on with 'ee's work or I'll darned soon make 'ee,' interposed another voice. 'And get 'ee off thet tub, Miss Kitty, afore 'ee falls in and makes a muck of 'ee self.' Joe obeyed and resumed his digging, but Kitty only settled herself more firmly on her seat. ' Give me a peach and I will,' she said. ' 'Ee'll get na peaches from me,' replied the old man, who had been head gardener at Weston for over thirty years.

Kitty looked fearlessly up into his wrinkled face and laughed. He had not shaved that morning, and a white stubble of hair showed in the creases about his mouth. It looked like snow in road ruts on a December mid day, she thought. ' There are such lots, Timmins,' she said, in a coaxing tone. ' Do give me just one.' ' They bean't ripe,' growled the old man. 'That's a naughty fib,' she rejoined, shaking her dark head reprovingly. ' They are ripe. There's dozens in the nets, and you told me yourself they were ripe when they fell off.' But Timmins suddenly became deaf and walked away on his bowed legs, leaving her with a disappointed frown on her small face. ' Joe,' she called, ' Joe — Molly told me your name was Joe — come here close. I want to talk secrets.' The boy obeyed. At fourteen any excuse for a rest comes in useful. ' Joe,' in a stage whisper, ' do you know where Timmins keeps the key of the peach house ? ' ' Yes, miss.' ' Oh, Joe,' rapturously, ' tell me quick, quick, and I'll steal it ; and, Joe, I'll take two peaches and give you one.

Oh, they are — so — lov — ly. Where is it?' ' In his coat pocket.' ' Oh, Joe!' with a complete change of tone. ' But,' with a return of joyousness, ' he hasn't got his coat on. It's hanging up in the potting shed, and he's gone to the farm. I've got lots of time. Good-bye. I'll be back presently.' There was a whisk of short, white petti coats and a flash of black-stockinged legs, as O O ' she disappeared round the artichoke bed, only to reappear five minutes later with three of the reddest and largest of Timmins's treasures carried carefully in her pinafore. Her face was flushed and her eyes sparklino with excitement. 'Here,' she said; 'I've brought two for you because you are so much bigger than me. Don't eat them now ; you'd have to hurry to get done before Timmins comes back, which would be a pity, because they're so what Molly calls " 'licious."

She stood on tiptoe and carefully deposited one of her spoil in each side pocket of Joe's coat which hung from a bean stake. ' Now, I must run ; Timmins is coming. Good-bye, Joe; I think I'll like you. I'll often come and see you.' 'What be thet child doin' here all thet time ? ' grumbled the old man, as he came round the corner of the tall green artichoke plants and caught sight of her retreating figure. 'Some mischief, I'll warrant; and you, you charity brat, what do 'ee mean by hanging your coat on they young beans ?' As he spoke, he seized the offending gar ment and threw it spitefully at its owner, with the result that Kitty's gifts flew out of the pockets and went bounding like rubber balls over the clods of newly turned-earth. With an almost inarticulate cry of rage, Timmins rushed at the boy, his hands with distended crooked fingers, his mouth open, showing his toothless gums in a ghastly grin of anger.

Joe instinctively raised his arm to defend his face, as though it were an ancient infuriated Tom cat which threatened him with outstretched claws ; but within a few yards of him the old man paused, and recovered his power of speech. ' Na, I'll not hit 'ee ; I'd loike to — I'd loike to bate the loife out of 'ee, you charity brat. When I was a lad, moy feyther bruk monie a gude ash plant on ma back. Them wor the gude days ; now its salt and batter ef you pull a brat's year. But look ee 'ere, ma young chap, I'll tell master on 'ee, and 'ee'll send 'ee off to prison, 'ee will. I can't bide dishonesty — onything but dishonesty,' he muttered, as he laboriously bent his stiff old back to pick up the peaches, and saw their fat red sides were too much bruised for them to be sent to Covent Garden to a dealer who had sold many a dozen for him and asked no questions. ' Onything but dishonesty,' he muttered, as he put the damaged fruit into the basket intended for the house, and removed two sound ones from it to a cotton-wool-lined box, which he proposed sending by the evening post. ' Onything but dishonesty,' he muttered again, as he walked down the path which led from the glass-houses to his cottage, and ran an eye over the broad border of great opium poppies on either side of it, making a rough calculation in his wicked old brain how many pounds of poppy heads he would have to sell to a certain manufacturing chemist in Manchester.

The sight of some decapitated stalks on a few of the plants bearing single scarlet blossoms roused him to a new access of wrath. ' Thet dratted child's been at they flowers again, making what she calls parasolses for her dolls. Childer be a cuss to this warld, they be. Thank the Lard I ain't got none.' Every window in the great oriel of the library was open. The lake, whose waters came up to the very walls of the castle, lay like a sheet of silver only broken by little ripples made by the black feet of the swans, as they lazily propelled themselves along on the eastern side, where the silvery willows cast ever-lengthening black shadows. Inside the room there were books everywhere — they lined the walls from floor to ceiling, they lay in heaps on tables and chairs, even on the floor they were so piled that the mind pictured a day when they would gradually encroach on the available space, until it was all filled up, and the room became a solid mass of paper and leather.

Sir James Keith, Kitty's 'Guardie,' the owner of it all, sat in a high-back, carved oak chair beside the open window. Kitty herself was on a white woolly mat at his feet, laboriously reading aloud, with many childish, quaint mis-pronunciations, a wondrous fairy tale of robbers and goblins, brave princes and imprisoned maidens of marvellous beauty. ' And they* were married and lived happily ever afterwards.' The shrill, young voice stopped, she shut the book and gazed up at the picturesque face above her. Picturesque was the only word ever applied to James Keith in description. His nose was too thin and aquiline for beauty, and his eyebrows too heavy, but the shape of the head was modelled in the o-rand curves of an old Greek statue. The curly hair, abundant as in youth though now silvered by the winters of middle age, was only cut when its length touched the bounds of eccentricity, and with the short, pointed beard, down-turned collar and large, loosely knotted necktie, gave the whole man an air of being something out of the common ruck, which made people turn to gaze at him as he passed through the streets of towns.

He boasted of no ancient lineage ; his father had been a fellmonger, who made hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, and bought mines and stocks, O-* O ? which increased and multiplied ; who had also built himself a lordly pleasure-house just outside his native city, and em bellished it with much gilt and furniture of divers hues, all of which his dreamy son had promptly sold as soon as the good man and his wife were gathered to their fathers. The scent of the hides and the tan seemed to him to cling to it. Then he bought himself a small southern castle from its impoverished owner, whose family had possessed the land for centuries. Tapestry, spindle-legged chairs, painted ancestors — all complete. Some had thought him a Goth for his next proceeding, for he had found, after a few months' occupation, that there are certain drawbacks to modern comfort in ancient dwellings, so he caused his new toy to be pulled stone from stone, and the lake now covered the spot on which it had stood so many hundred y*ears, and on the edge of the lake there arose a new Weston Castle, outwardly an exact replica of the old one, but fresh, sweet and clean, void of the dust of centuries which had covered its predecessor inside and out.

And into this new dwelling, with its picturesque exterior, yet with internally all the fin de siecle contrivances for admitting light and air, its owner removed all the artistic belongings o o he had purchasd with the old one, and dwelt there with his books, his old Scotch valet and sundry other servants, in solitary grandeur, until one day he heard how a distant cousin had died in Australia leaving two mother less children quite unprovided for. He had at once cabled for them to be sent to him, intending to board them out somewhere ; but baby Christine, made bold by many pettings on her homeward voyage, had at once claimed him as a friend. The touch of her soft pink fingers had reminded him of his own almost forgotten childish days, so he kept her and her five-year-old brother at Wreston, and amused himself by playing with her and laughing at her merry antics as though she were the very kitten after which she was nicknamed.

It was only on the June evening, when she sat gazing at him, that the thought how some day she would be a woman and marry to live happily, or, more probably, otherwise, ever afterwards, intruded itself upon him for the first time. How he wished he could by some magic means keep her the pretty little playful thing she was. But man can not thwart nature, be he ever so wise. Sir James Keith sighed. ' What's the matter, Guardie ? ' queried Kitty. 'Didn't you like the story? I thought it lov-aly.' 'Oh, yes, it was beautiful,' he answered, absently. ' What is it ?' to a footman who had opened the door, ' Timmins wants to see me, does he ? Send him in.' Kitty felt guilty and insinuated a hot little hand into Sir James's big cool one. Perhaps the old man had found out about the peaches, but after all they were Guardie's and not his.

The gardener, after the footman had shut the door behind him, remained on a mat near it. He did not feel inclined to trust his old bones on the slippery parquet. It was a standing wonder to him why the gentry preferred it to a safe, warm carpet. 'Good-evening, Timmins,' said his master, by way of an opening. ' Gude-evenin', zur,' answered the gardener, and then hesitated, moving with much mysterious creaking (which made Kitty wonder if he had joints like her French doll) from one foot to the other. He knew Sir James was much interested in Joe Ford, and although he affected to despise the 'new man? as he still called his present employer, he yet feared to offend him, for, turned away from Weston, he could not expect to get another place at his time of life, and his miserly instincts would not allow him to relish the thought of livinoon his savings, though he could have done so with every comfort.

He moved his feet, and his boots creaked again, which irritated the other man, so that he said, sharply, — ' Out with it, Timmins. What do you want?' 'Well, zur,' was the answer, 'it be this, thet lad Joe Ford be a bad 'un ; e'e's bin staylin' they peaches. The Lard knows how mony. A shuk two out of his coat this marning.' Kitty* started up as if to speak, but thought better of it and sat down on her mat again. Sir James stroked an eyebrow with a finger tip meditatively for some seconds, then asked, — ' Does he work well ? ' ' Yes ; 'ee does a power o' diggin' for 'ee's age. ' Does he obey you ? ' ' Yes, 'ee do, and 'ee doan't answer back ; but 'ee's dishonest, and I can bide onything but dishonesty.' Sir James smiled. Old Timmins evidently wanted to monopolise that vice in the Weston establishment.

He knew there were dozens of peaches and pounds of grapes grown at his expense, but certainly not for his benefit. Those, however, which his head gardener permitted him and his friends to have, were good, so he did not trouble about the others. ' And what do you want me to do ? ' he asked. ' Send him away.' ' No,' said Sir James, sternly, ' I'll never do that, unless he commits murder or some thingequally bad. If you have any com plaints to make of the boy, come to me and I will talk to him about them, but it is no use your suggesting to send him away ; nothing will make me do that.' The old man knew when his master's voice rang out decisivelythe matter was settled for good and all, so he picked up his hat from the floor and departed, stop ping half way down the avenue to extricate a white deal box from under some shrubs where he had concealed it on his way to the house.

He put it carefully under his arm and trudged a mile down a lane to the main road to intercept the mail cart. He could have saved himself half the walk if he had gone by a footpath across the fields which joined the highway further on, but there he would encounter the man sent with his master's letters, some pert young footman or groom, whose sharp eyes could read the printed address tacked on to the box he carried, and who would report how he, Timmins, was sending things to Buttons, Fruiterer and Florist, Covent Garden. The mail-cart driver he had squared long ago. He was a man who could not bide dishonesty in his subordinates any more than he (Timmins) could. 'Kitty,' said Sir James, 'remember and tell Leslie, if I forget, that Joe is never to be sent away.' ' Who could send him but you, Guardie ? and you are nearly always here.' ' Yes, but I am going away some day when you and Leslie are big and able to take care of yourselves.' ' For a long time, Guardie ? ' ' Very likely, for I am going a long way.' ' But why ? ' ' Because I want to see the places where the people lived who made those things, thousands of years ago.' He indicated some queer little clay figures, mostly broken, and some scraps of pottery in a small cabinet near the window. ' They are dirty old broken things,' returned Christine. ' WThy don't you throw them into the lake and buy some pretty new ones?

But I don't want to talk about them, I want to know what you are going to do to Joe ? ' Nothing probably. Why* ? ' Because he didn't steal the peaches. I did. I asked him where Timmins kept the key, and I gave him two to keep him from telling, and he didn't either. He just let Timmins think he took them himself instead of telling on me. I like Joe.' ' Quite right, Kit,' answered her com panion, 'quite right. Keep your liking for those who are useful to you, and don't go spilling it about the world.' ' I don't ; I keep it all for you and Leslie. But I think I will grow a new weeny bit for Joe.' The new idea that Kitty would, or rather must, grow into a woman some day haunted Sir James Keith all the evening, followed him to his bedroom and made him sad. How he would miss his play thing. These children were a most inter esting subject for study.

He had rather a way of regarding everything round him as something to be investigated. He wanted to pull: everything to pieces 'to see what made it go,' like a child with a watch. Yes, Kitty and her brother were interesting, and would, after all, no doubt, prove more so as they grew up. Leslie was at school ; that could not be helped. It was a pity, though, for it was bound to make him, to a certain extent, conventional. But as soon as he was a little older and had mastered those rudiments of education, which he, James Keith, had dreaded teaching him, he should come back to Weston and lead the same free untrammelled life as Kitty was destined to. She had learnt to read in the library at her Guardie's knee. She should have no governess, the boy should B have no tutor. They should pass their time as they pleased, and form their own ideas of life.

Two natural, human beings, unchecked, unmoulded, Yes, it would be interesting, decidedly, to see their young minds unfolding at Nature's touch, to see them growing into a man and a woman after Nature's pattern, not after the world's The conventional, one-ideaed, old world, which has made one mould for each sex in the three great divisions of society, and is either too lazy, or too ignorant, to make new ones.

Chapter II

Showing how the carefully - prepared Schemes of Bipeds and Small Quadrupeds frequently fail. So the years went on until Leslie and Christine Dalton grew from two pretty children into a man and a woman. In spite of their unconventional upbringing, they were outwardly much the same as others of their age and generation. Sir James Keith was rather disappointed. What he had expected them to become he, however, could not exactly define. He concluded that heredity counts for much, and he had foolishly forgotten this quality when he wanted his two adopted children to develop into something different from the common ruck. Kitty was decidedly the most common place. She was a slight, graceful girl, rather small as girls go nowadays ; she had a mass of dark hair, with heavy waves in it, large dark eyes, set in a small, white skinned face, and a full-lipped, soft, red mouth.

She did not even pretend to be learned. She had read nothing but fairy tales as a child. In her later years, she only cared for the fairy tales written by grown ups for grown-ups, and entitled novels ; she was sweet and womanly, loving and some times merry, that was all. Leslie Dalton's outward semblance to his contemporaries irritated Sir James. He disliked the younger man's close-cropped, sleek, dark head and clean-shaved face ; his high collars, the well-fitting frock-coat o o and top hat, which he insisted on wearing on Sundays when he accompanied Kitty to church, where he horrified the Vicar by never even pretending to be devout. He made no secret of the fact that he went solely to hear how the choir acquitted them selves after his personal training during the week. Music was his sole hobby ; in fact, it came as near to being a passion with him as anything could to a man of his cold disposition.

The full flowing melody of sacred music soothed and pleased the one sensuous chord in his character. Sir James regarded time spent at any instrument as wasted, but he did not remonstrate. Had he not vowed to himself that these two should shape their own lives. So when Kitty began to find companions for herself in the vicarage girls, who introduced her to others in Hillbury, which possessed a priory church and clergy, with wives and families in plenty, and many of these wives, pitying the girl's loneliness, asked her to make prolonged stays with them in the pretty villas with their terraced gardens, which clung in dovecote fashion to the steep hillside on which the town is built, Sir James again said no word of disapproval, though he often found himself lonely, for Leslie had developed a strong liking for town and other country houses, he having already firmly planted himself in Society, with a moderately large S, and was apparently striving hard to climb into the section which boasts a capital letter of the largest dimensions.

As supposed heir to most of the fellmonger's millions, he was welcomed by both old and young, although he had only been a few years at school and never at college, yet constant association in boyhood with Sir James, who was not nearly so un orthodox as he thought, and the literary, scientific men who now and again were honoured with an invitation to WTeston, together with his own omniverous reading, had caused Leslie to become a cultured, though extremely cynical, man. Sir James, like so many of his learning, was an atheist, pure and simple. He never even troubled to think whether a deity existed or not. Leslie professed a curious belief of his own, which he aired on all available occasions, and which his unthinking acquaintances stigmatised as 'comfortable.' He held, so he said, that one ought always to be guided by one's desires.

They are im planted in us by the all Mother, and there fore ought to be obeyed. Men and women are, he argued, but units in the great scheme. Our deeds, whether they be good or ap parently bad, are forced upon us, because their carrying out is necessary in some obscure way for the ultimate good of humanity. Kitty, through Molly, her old nurse's tuition, was merely a good little Protestant. She was not even High Church. Leslie was twenty-three, and Kitty eighteen when one morning Sir James calmly announced at the breakfast table how, in a week, he intended starting for South America to explore those mysterious ruins of which no man now living can name the builders. Kitty protested and cried a little when she saw words would not shake his resolve. She did not call the little clay* statuettes and broken bits of pottery ' Dirty old things ' now, she even took a deep interest in them.

But still she could not see why her ' Guardie ' should want to leave England and comfort, and particularly her, just to see the place they came from. She was childish for her age, she had no mother to instil the responsibility of her coming womanhood into her mind. At the week's end, when Sir James went, she cried again, and asked him to take her with him, then reflected that she could not leave her brother who she equally adored, and said she would not go if she was asked ; at which Sir James laughed and remarked he certainly was not going to invite her to ac company him, kissed her again, got into the train, gripped Leslie's hand, told him to take care of himself and Kit, and so passed from their sight waving them a lighted-hearted farewell. During the first six months, letters came often from South America to Weston.

He was getting on famously, Sir James wrote. He was only too glad that he had left Macgregor, his old Scotch valet, at home, for he had two half-bred Spanish guides who were such fervent Roman Catholics that Macgregor would never have been able to have held his tongue on the subject of ' Papishness,' which would have been dangerous, as knives instead of fists were used to revenge insults in those regions. The two at Weston pursued the even tenor of their way. They rode and generally amused themselves when they were not paying flying visits to London or their various friends, Leslie devoting most of his spare time to the culture of the long-suffering choir boys. He loved the artistic side of the church ceremonies. There came at last a morning which brought a letter in badly-spelt Spanish English from one Don Zalas of Guatemala.

Leslie, who was walking up and down smoking meditatively on the gravel drive in the autumn sunshine, selected it from several others which Macgregor handed him, and slowly opened it. He never hurried. He thought hurry ungraceful and undignified. But when he had compre hended what the almost unintelligible scrawl meant, he uttered an exclamation and went to look for his sister. Startled out of his usual composure, he ran up the stairs calling her name aloud. This was altogether so unusual that she wrenched herself from the hands of Molly, who was endeavouring to twist her hair into a tight enough coil to keep up while she rode over to Hillbury and back, and appeared on the gallery, which ran round the square hall, in her dressing-gown, with her dark locks streaming down her back. ' Kit,' he panted, as he reached her, ' read this.' She drew him into her room and told Molly to go.

He sat down by the dressing-table, and rested his head on his hands. Kitty read the letter, then threw it down and burst into a torrent of tears. Her brother let her cry on for a few minutes, then remarked, — ' I suppose there can be no mistake. This man says he, himself, with two friends found the — the — Guardie, you know, at the bottom of the cliff. He thinks he was pushed over and then robbed, as the only thing left in his pockets was a letter from me. It is very sad, poor old chap.' His sister raised her streaming eyes and shook her head. ' No,' she said, ' there can be no mistake. I thought something must have happened, we have not heard from him for so long.' o Leslie went downstairs again and sent for Macgregor, who now served him in the capacity in which he had served Sir James. He detested the idea of tellinothe o man, for he expected another outburst of emotion, and emotion irritated him.

There was, he had once said to him, as much indecency in displaying one's naked feel ings in public as there would be in displaying one's naked body. But whether it was because Macgregor was Scotch or hard, it so turned out that he received the news of his late master's death with the utmost coolness, a fact which much pleased his present one. ' He had a forewarning of this, puir body,' he said, ' else he would not have said to me the varra morn he left, as I was petten oot his claes, " Macgregor," he said, "if I should come to my death oot yonder, when you hear of it, tell Mr Leslie he'll find all my papers in the big safe in the library. He's just to write to Dalkin the lawyer for the keys and look them over himself." ' Leslie did not want telling twice to write for those keys. He would have telegraphed if he could.