The Paper Cap. A Story of Love and Labor

“In this house I want you to see and hear all you can. What do you think of the young lady?”

“Why should I think of her at all?”

“For my sake.”

“That plea is worn out.” She smiled as she spoke and then some exigency of the ball separated them.

Miss De Burg was not a pretty woman and yet people generally looked twice at her. She had a cold, washed-out face, a great deal of very pale brown hair and her hair, eyebrows, and eyes were all the same color. There was usually no look in her eyes and her mouth told nothing. It was a firm and silent mouth and if her face had any expression it was one of reserve or endurance. And Katherine in the very flush of her own happy excitement divined some tragedy below this speechless face, and she held Agatha’s hand and looked into her eyes with that sympathy which is one of youth’s kindest moods. This feeling hesitated a moment between the two women; then Agatha surrendered, and took it into her heart and memory.

Now balls are so common and so natural an expression of humanity that they possess both its sameness and its variability. They are all alike and all different, all alike in action, all different in the actors; and the only importance of this ball to Katherine Annis was that it introduced her to the mere physical happiness that flows from fresh and happy youth. In this respect it was perhaps the high tide of her life. The beautiful room, the mellow transfiguring light of wax candles, the gayly gowned company, the intoxicating strains of music, and the delight of her motion to it, the sense of her loveliness, and of the admiration it brought, made her heart beat high and joyfully, and gave to her light steps a living grace no artist ever yet copied. She was queen of that company and took out what lovers she wished with a pretty despotism impossible to describe; but

Joy’s the shyest bird,
Mortals ever heard.

And ere anyone had asked “What time is it?” daylight was stealing into the candle light and then there was only the cheerful hurry of cloaking and parting left, and the long-looked-for happiness was over. Yet after all it was a day by itself and the dower of To-morrow can never be weighed by the gauge of Yesterday.

“Right! There is a battle cry in the word. You feel as if you had drawn a sword. A royal word, a conquering word, which if the weakest speak, they straight grow strong.”

CHAPTER VII – IN THE FOURTH WATCH

LADY LEYLAND had ordered breakfast at ten o’clock and at that hour her guests were ready for it. Mistress Temple and Katherine showed no signs of weariness, but Lord Ley-land looked bored and Mistress Annis was silent concerning the squire and his manner of passing the night. Then Leyland said:

“By George! Madam, you are very right to be anxious. The company of ladies always makes me anxious. I will go to my club and read the papers. I feel that delay is no longer possible.”

“Your breakfast, Fred,” cried Katherine, but Fred was as one that heard not, and with a smile and a good-by which included all present, Leyland disappeared, and as his wife smilingly endorsed his

“Love puts out all other cares.”

and anxious but soon voiced her trouble in a wish forget everything else but now if I can be excused apologies, no one made the slightest attempt to detain him. Certainly Mistress Annis looked curiously at her daughter and, when the door was closed, said:

“I wonder at you, Jane – Leyland had not drank his first cup of coffee and as to his breakfast it is still on his plate. It is not good for a man to go to politics fasting.”

“O mother! you need not worry about Fred’s breakfast. He will order one exactly to his mind as soon as he reaches his club and he will be ten times happier with the newspapers than with us.”

Just at this point the squire and his son entered the room together and instantly the social temperature of the place rose.

“I met Leyland running away from you women,” said the squire. “Whatever hev you been doing to him?”

“He wanted to see the papers, father,” said Katherine.

“It was a bit of bad behavior,” said Madam Temple.

“Oh, dear, no,” Jane replied. “Fred is incapable of anything so vulgar. Is he not, father?”

“To be sure he is. No doubt it was a bit of fine feeling for the women present that sent him off. He knew you would want to discuss the affair of last night and also the people mixed up in it and he felt he would be in everybody’s way, and so he was good-natured enough to leave you to the pleasure of describing one another. It was varry agreeable and polite for Fred to do so. I hedn’t sense enough to do the same.”

“Nay, nay, Antony, that isn’t the way to put it. Dick, my dear lad, say a word for me.”

“I could not say a word worthy of you, mother, and now I came to bid you good-by. I am off as quick as possible for Annis. Father had a letter from Mr. Foster this morning. It is best that either father or I go there for a few days and, as father cannot leave London at this crisis, I am going in his place.”

“What is the matter now, Dick?”

“Some trouble with the weavers, I believe.”

“Of course! and more money needed, I suppose.”

“To be sure,” answered the squire, with a shade of temper; “and if needed, Dick will look after it, eh, Dick?”

“Of course Dick will look after it!” added Madam Temple, but her “of course” intimated a very different meaning from her sister-in-law’s. They were two words of hearty sympathy and she emphasized them by pushing a heavy purse across the table. “Take my purse as well as thy father’s, Dick; and if more is wanted, thou can hev it, and welcome. I am Annis mysen and I was born and brought up with the men and women suffering there.”

She spoke with such feeling that her words appeared to warm the room and the squire answered: “Thy word and deed, Josepha, is just like thee, my dear sister!” He clasped her hand as he spoke, and their hands met over the purse lying on the table and both noticed the fact and smiled and nodded their understanding of it. Then the squire with a happy face handed the purse to Dick, telling him to “kiss his mother,” and be off as soon as possible. “Dick,” he said in a voice full of tears – “Dick, my lad, it is hard for hungry men to wait.”

“I will waste no time, father, not a minute,” and with these words he clasped his father’s hand, leaned over and kissed his mother, and with a general good-by he went swiftly on his errand of mercy.

Then Jane said: “Let us go to the parlor. We were an hour later than usual this morning and must make it up if we can.”

“To be sure, Jane,” answered Mistress Temple. “We can talk as well in one room as another. Houses must be kept regular or we shall get into the same muddle as old Sarum – we shall be candidates for dinner and no dinner for us.”

“Well, then, you will all excuse me an hour while I give some orders about household affairs.” The excuse was readily admitted and the squire, his wife, sister and daughter, took up the question which would intrude into every other question whether they wished it or not.

The parlor to which they went looked precisely as if it was glad to see them; it was so bright and cheerful, so warm and sunny, so everything that the English mean by the good word “comfortable.” And as soon as they were seated, Annie asked: “What about The Bill, Antony?”

“Well, dearie, The Bill passed its third reading at seven o’clock this morning.”

“Thou saw it pass, eh, Antony?”

“That I did! Why-a! I wouldn’t hev missed Lord Grey’s final speech for anything. He began it at five o’clock and spoke for an hour and a half – which considering his great age and the long night’s strain was an astonishing thing to do. I was feeling a bit tired mysen.”

“But surely the people took its passing very coldly, Antony.”

“The people aren’t going to shout till they are sure they hev something to shout for. Nobody knows what changes the lords may make in it. They may even throw it out again altogether.”

“They dare not! They dare not for their lives try any more such foolishness,” said Josepha Temple with a passion she hardly restrained. “Just let them try it! The people will not allow that step any more! Let them try it! They will quickly see and feel what will come of such folly.”

“Well, Josepha, what will come of it? What can the people do?”

“Iverything they want to do! Iverything they ought to do! One thing is sure – they will send the foreigners back to where they belong. The very kith and kin of the people now demanding their rights founded, not many generations ago, a glorious Republic of their own, and they gave themsens all the rights they wanted and allays put the man of their choice at the head of it. Do you think our people don’t know what their fathers hev done before them? They know it well. They see for themsens that varry common men can outrank noble men when it comes to intellect and courage. What was it that Scotch plowboy said: —

“A king can mak’ a belted knight,
A marquis, duke and a’ that,
But an honest man’s aboon his might —

and a God’s mercy it is, for if he tried it, he would waste and spoil the best of materials in the making.”

“All such talk is sheer nonsense, Josepha.”

“It is nothing of the kind. Josepha has seen how such sheer nonsense turns out. I should think thou could remember what happened fifty years ago. People laughed then at the sheer nonsense of thirteen little colonies in the wilds of America trying to make England give them exactly what Englishmen are this very day ready to fight for – representation in parliament. And you need not forget this fact also, that the majority of Englishmen at that day, both in parliament and out of it, backed with all the power they hed these thirteen little colonies. Why, the poor button makers of Sheffield refused to make buttons for the soldiers’ coats, lest these soldiers should be sent to fight Englishmen. It was then all they could do but their children are now two hundred thousand strong, and king and parliament hev to consider them. They hev to do it or to take the consequences, Antony Annis! Your father was hand and purse with that crowd and I knew you would see things as they are sooner or later. For our stock came from a poor, brave villager, who followed King Richard to the Crusades, and won the Annis lands for his courage and fidelity. That is why there is allays a Richard in an Annis household.”