"There's no mistake about it," observed Mr. Furze, rousing himself, "that I have had my suspicions of Master Tom, but I never thought it would come to this; nor that Catharine would have anything to say to him. It was she, though, who said I could not do without him."

"It was she," added Mrs. Furze, "who always stuck out against our coming up here, and was rude to Mrs. Colston and her son. I do not blame her so much, though, as I do that wretch of a Catchpole. What he wants is plain enough: he'll marry her and have the business, the son of a blind beggar who used to go on errands! Oh me! to think it has come to this, that my only child should be the wife of a pauper's son, and we've struggled so hard! What will the Colstons say, and all the church folk, and all the town, for the matter of that!"

Here Mrs. Furze threw herself down in a chair and became hysterical. Poor woman! she really cared for Catharine, loved her in a way, and was horrified for her sake at the supposed engagement, but her desire for her daughter's welfare was bound up with a desire for her own, a strand of one interlaced with a strand of the other, so that they could not be separated. It might be said that the union of the two impulses was even more intimate, that it was like a mixture of two liquids. There was no conflict in her. She was not selfish at one moment, and unselfishly anxious for her child the next; but she was both together at the same instant, the particular course on which she might determine satisfying both instincts.

Mr. Furze unfastened his wife's gown and stay-laces, and gave her a stimulant. Presently, after directing him with a gasp to open the window, she recovered herself.

"I'll discharge Mr. Tom at once," said her husband, "and tell him the reason."

"Now, don't be stupid, Furze; pull down that blind, will you? Fancy leaving it up, and the moon staring straight down upon me half undressed!

Don't you admit anything of the kind to Tom. I would not let him believe you could suspect it. Besides, if you were to dismiss him for a such a reason as that, you would make Catharine all the more obstinate, and the whole town would hear of it, and we should perhaps be laughed at, and lots of people would take Tom's part and say we might go farther and fare worse, and were stuck up, and all that, for we must remember that all the Furzes were of humble origin, and Eastthorpe knows it. No, no, we will get rid of Tom, but it shall not be because of Catharine--something better than that--you leave it to me."

"Well, how about Catharine?"

"We will have her in to-morrow morning, when we are not so flurried. I always like to talk to her just after breakfast if there is anything wrong; but do not you say a word to Tom."

Mrs. Furze took another sip of the brandy-and-water and went to bed. Mr.

Furze shut the window, mixed a little more brandy-and-water, and, as he drank it, reflected deeply. Most vividly did that morning come back to him when he had once before decided to eject Mr. Catchpole.

"I do not know how it is with other people," he groaned, "but whenever I have settled on a thing something is sure to turn up against it, and I never know what to be at for the best. My head, too, is not quite what it used to be. Half a dozen worries at once do muddle me. If they would but come, one up and one down, n.o.body could beat me." He took another sip of the brandy-and-water. "Want of practice--that's all. I have been an idiot to let him do so much. He shall go"; and Mr. Furze put out the candles.

Catharine was down before either her father or mother, and stood at the window reading when her father came in. She bade him good morning and kissed him, but he was ill at ease, and pretended to look for something on the side-table. He felt he was not sufficiently supported by the main strength of his forces; he was afraid to speak, and he retreated to his bedroom, sitting down disconsolately on a rush-bottom chair whilst his wife dressed herself.

"She's there already," he said.

"Then it is as well you came back."

"I think you had better begin with her; you are her mother, and we will wait till breakfast is over. Perhaps she will say something to us. How had we better set about it?"

"I shall ask her straight what she means."

"How shall we go on then?"

"How shall we go on then? What! won't _you_ have a word to put in about her marrying a fellow like that, your own servant with such a father? And how are they to live, pray? Am I to have him up here to tea with us, and is Phoebe to answer the front door when they knock, and is she to wait upon him, _him_ who always goes down the area steps to the kitchen? I do not believe Phoebe would stop a month, for with all her faults she does like a respectable family. And then, if they go to church, are they to have our pew, and is Mrs. Colston to call on me and say, 'How is Catharine, and how is your _son-in-law_?' And then--oh dear, oh dear!--is his father to come here too, and is Catharine to bring him, and is he to be at the wedding breakfast? And perhaps Mrs. Colston will inquire after him too. But there, I shall not survive _that_! Oh! Catharine, Catharine!"

Mrs. Furze dropped on the chair opposite the looking-gla.s.s, for she was arranging her back hair while this monologue was proceeding, although the process was interrupted here and there when her emotions got the better of her. Her hair fell into confusion again, and it seemed as if she would again be upset even at that early hour. Her husband gave her a smelling-bottle, and she slowly recommenced her toilette.

"Would it not," he said, "be as well to try and soften her a bit, and remind her of her duty to her parents?"

"You might finish up with that, but I don't believe she'd care; and what are we to do if she owns it all and sticks out? That's what I want to know."

Mr. Furze was silent.

"There you sit, Furze; you _are_ provoking! Pick up that hairpin, will you? You always sit and sit whenever there's any difficulty. You never go beyond what I have in my own head, and when I _do_ stir you up to think it is sure to be something of no use."

"I'll do anything you want," said the pensive husband as his wife rose and put on her cap. "I've told you before I'll get rid of Tom, and then perhaps it will all come round!"

"At it again! What _did_ I tell you last night?--and yet you go on with your old tune. All come round, indeed! Would it! She's your daughter, but you don't know her as I do."

Here there came a tap at the door. It was Phoebe: Miss Catharine sent her to say it was a quarter-past eight: should she make the coffee?

"Look at that!" said Mrs. Furze: "shall she make the coffee!--after what has happened! That's the kind of girl she is. It strikes me you had better have nothing to do with her and leave her to me."

Phoebe tapped again.

"Certainly not," replied Mrs. Furze. "I'll begin," she added to her husband, "by letting her know that at least I am not dead."

"We'll, we'd better go. You just tackle her, and I'll chime in."

The couple descended, but their plan of campaign was not very clearly elaborated, and even the one or two lines of a.s.sault which Mrs. Furze had prepared turned out to be useless. It is all very well to decide what is to be done with a human being if the human being will but comport himself in a fairly average manner, but if he will not the plan is likely to fail.

Mr. Furze was very restless during his meal. He went to the window two or three times, and returned with the remark that it was going to be wet; but the observation was made in a low, mumbling tone. Mrs. Furze was also fidgety, and, in reply to her daughter's questions, complained of headache, and wondered that Catharine could not see that she had had no sleep. At last the storm broke.

"Catharine!" said Mrs. Furze, "it _was_ Tom, then, who came home with you last night."

"It was Tom, mother."

"Tom! What do you mean, child? How--how did he--where did you meet him?"

Mr. Furze retired from the table, where the sun fell full upon him, and sat in the easy chair, where he was more in the shade.

"He overtook me somewhere near the Rectory."

"Now, Catharine, don't answer your mother like that," interposed Mr.

Furze; "you know what you heard, or might have heard, last Sunday morning, that prevarication is very much like a lie; why don't you speak out the truth?"

Catharine was silent for a moment.

"I have answered exactly the question mother asked."

"Catharine, you know perfectly well what I mean," said Mrs. Furze; "what is the use of pretending you do not! Tom would never dare to walk with you in a public street, and at night, too, if there were not something more than you like to say. Tom Catchpole! whose father sold laces on the bridge; and to think of all we have done for you, and the money we have spent on you, and the pains we have taken to bring you up respectably! I will not say anything about religion, and all that, for I daresay that is nothing to _you_, but you might have had some consideration for your mother, especially in her weak state of health, before you broke her heart, and yet I blame myself, for you always had low tastes--going to Bellamy's, and consorting with people of that kind rather than with your mother's friends. Do you suppose Mrs. Colston will come near us again!

And it all comes of trying to do one's best, for there's Carry Hawkins, only a grocer's daughter, who never had a sixpence spent on her compared with what you have, and she is engaged to Carver, the doctor at Cambridge. Oh, it's a serpent's tooth, it is, and if we had never sc.r.a.ped and screwed for you, and denied ourselves, but left you to yourself, you might have been better; oh dear, oh dear!"

Catharine held her tongue. She saw instantly that if she denied any engagement with Tom she would not be believed, and that in any case Tom would have to depart. Moreover, one of her defects was a certain hardness to persons for whom she had small respect, and she did not understand that just because Mrs. Furze was her mother, she owed her at least deference, and, if possible, a tenderness due to no other person.

However weak, foolish, and even criminal parents may be, a child ought to honour them as Moses commanded, for the injunction is, and should be, entirely unconditional.

"Catharine," said Mr. Furze, "why do you not answer your mother?"

"I cannot; I had better leave."

She opened the door and went to her room. After she had left further debate arose, and three points were settled: First, that no opposition should be offered to a visit to Chapel Farm, which had been proposed for the next day, as she would be better at the Farm than at the Terrace; secondly, that Tom and she were in love with one another; and thirdly, that not a word should be said to Tom. "Leave that to me," said Mrs.

Furze again. Although she saw nothing distinctly, a vague, misty hope dawned upon her, the possibility of something she could not yet discern, and, notwithstanding the blow she had received, she was decidedly more herself within an hour after breakfast than she had been during the twelve hours preceding.

CHAPTER XIV