An Open Verdict · III

CHAPTER I.PATERNAL DIPLOMACY.

‘What!’ roared Mr. Scratchell, scarlet of visage, ‘you are asked to marry a man with fifteen thousand a year, and you refuse? Did anybody ever hear of such lunacy?’

Bella sat shivering at the paternal wrath. Mrs. Scratchell was weeping dumbly. All the younger Scratchells were ready to lift up their voices in a chorus of condemnation. Bella’s folly in refusing Mr. Piper was, in their eyes, a personal injury.

‘You would not ask me to marry a man I cannot love, would you, father?’ faltered Bella; ‘a man I can hardly respect.’

‘You cannot respect fifteen thousand a year?’ cried Mr. Scratchell. ‘Then, in the name of all that’s reasonable, what can you respect?’

‘He is so rough-mannered and dictatorial,’ urged Bella, ‘so stout and puffy. And it is really dreadful to hear him murder the Queen’s English.’

Mr. Scratchell looked round at his assembled family with a wrathful glare, as if he were calling upon them all to behold this ridiculous daughter of his.

‘That ever I should have bred and reared such foolishness!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s that fairy tale you were reading the little ones, mother, about the Princess and the seven feather beds? She had seven feather beds to sleep upon, one atop of the other, and couldn’t rest because there was a parched pea under the bottom one. There’s your proud Princess for you!’ pointing at his tearful daughter. ‘She turns up her nose at fifteen thousand a year because the owner of it doesn’t arrange his words according to Lindley Murray. Why, I never had much opinion of Lindley Murray myself, and, what’s more, I never could understand him.’

‘Father, it isn’t a question of bad grammar. If I loved Mr. Piper, or felt that I could teach myself to love him, I shouldn’t care how badly he talked. But I cannot love him.’

‘Who asks you to love him?’ cried Mr. Scratchell, folding and unfolding his newspaper violently, in a whirlwind of indignation. ‘Nobody has made mention of love—not Piper himself, I warrant. He’s too sensible a man. You are only asked to marry him, and to do your duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call you. And very grateful you ought to be for having been called to fifteen thousand a year. Think what you can do for your brothers and sisters, and your poor harassed mother! There’s a privilege for you. And if Piper should take to buying property hereabouts, and give me the collection of his rents, there’d be a lift for me.’

Then Mrs. Scratchell feebly, and with numerous gasps and choking sobs, uplifted her maternal voice, and made her moan.

‘I should be the last to press any child of mine to marry against her inclination,’ she said, ‘but I should like to see one of my daughters a lady. Bella has been a lady in all her little ways from the time she could run alone, and I am sure she would become the highest position—yes, even such a station as Mr. Piper, with his fortune, could give her. If there was anything better or brighter before her—any chance of her getting a young good-looking husband able to support her comfortably—I wouldn’t say marry Mr. Piper. But I’m sure I can’t see how any girl is to get well married in Little Yafford, where the young men——’

‘Haven’t one sixpence to rub against another,’ interrupted Mr. Scratchell, impatiently.

Bella gave a deep, despondent sigh. It was all true that these worldly-minded parents were saying. She was no romantic girl to believe in an impossible future. She knew that for women of the Scratchell breed life was hard and dry, like the crusts of the stale loaves which she so often encountered at the family breakfast-table. What was there before her if she persisted in refusing this high fortune that was ready to be poured into her lap? Another rebellious family to teach—an unending procession of verbs, and pianoforte exercises, dreary fantasias, with all the old familiar airs turned upside down, and twisted this way and that, and drawn out to uttermost attenuation, like a string of Indian-rubber. If nothing else killed her, Bella thought, she must assuredly die of those hateful fantasias, the everlasting triplets, the scampering arpeggios, stumbling and halting, like the canter of a lame horse.

Mr. Scratchell heard that long sigh and guessed its meaning. He checked his loud indignation, all of a sudden, and had recourse to diplomacy. The girl’s own sense was beginning to argue against her foolishness.

‘Well, my dear,’ he said, quite amiably, ‘if you’ve made up your mind there’s no use in our saying any more about it. Your mother and I would have been proud to see you settled in such a splendid way—the envy of all the neighbourhood—holding your head as high as the best of ’em. But let that pass. You’d better look out for another situation. With so many mouths as I’ve got to feed, I can’t afford to encourage idleness. There must be no twiddling of thumbs in this family. The Yorkshire Times comes out on Saturday. There’ll be just time for us to get an advertisement in.’

Bella gave another sigh, an angry one this time.

‘You’re very sharp with me, father,’ she said. ‘I should have thought you’d have been glad to have me at home for a little while, with my time disengaged.’

‘What?’ ejaculated Mr. Scratchell. ‘Haven’t you had your afternoons for idleness? Your time disengaged, indeed! Do you think I want a daughter of mine to be as useless as a chimney ornament, good for nothing but to look at?’

And then Mr. Scratchell took out a sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and wrinkled his brow in the effort of composition.

‘Governess, residential or otherwise,’ he began, pronouncing the words aloud as he wrote, ‘competent to impart a sound English education, French, Italian, German, music, drawing and painting, and fancy needlework. Able to prepare boys for a public school. Has had the entire charge of a gentleman’s family. First-rate references.’

‘There,’ exclaimed Mr. Scratchell. ‘That will cost a lot of money, but I think it is comprehensive.’

‘I don’t know about drawing and painting,’ objected Bella, with a weary air. ‘I never had much taste that way. I learnt a little with Beatrix, but——’

‘Then you can teach,’ said Mr. Scratchell, decisively. ‘If you’ve learnt you know all the technical words and rules, and you’re quite competent to teach. When your pupil goes wrong you can tell her how to go right. That’s quite enough. Nobody expects you to be a Michael Angelo.’