the darkness. From Ned's manner of doing this, I knew that he was sure of shelter for that night, at least. Noah, the old black servant, having seen his master through the panel windows, had already opened the door; and so we went in to the warm, candle-lit hall, Mr. Faringfield's agitation now perfectly under control, and his anger showing not at all upon his surface of habitual sternness.
As for the others, Phil walked in a kind of deep, troubled study, into which he had been thrown by Ned's words regarding him; I was awed into breathless silence and a mouse-like tread; and kind little Fanny went gently sobbing with sorrow and fear for her unhappy brother—a sorrow and fear not shared in the least degree by her sister Madge, whose face showed triumphant approval of her father's course and of the outcome.
CHAPTER III.
Wherein 'tis Shown that Boys Are but Boys.
The Faringfield house, as I have said, was flanked by garden space on either side. It was on the Eastern side of the street, and so faced West, the next house Southward being ours. The wide hall that we entered ran straight back to a door opening from a wooden veranda that looked toward the rear garden. At the right of this hall, as you went in, a broad oak stairway invited you to the sleeping floor above. But before you came to this stairway, you passed a door that gave into the great parlour, which ran the whole length of the hall, and, being used only on occasions of festivity or ceremony, was now closed and dark. At the left of the hall, the first door led to the smaller parlour, as wide but not as long as the great one, and in daily use as the chief living-room of the house. Its windows were those through which the candle-light within had welcomed us from the frosty, snowy air that evening. Behind this parlour, and reached either directly from it, or by a second door at the left side of the hall, was the library, so-called although a single case of eight shelves sufficed to hold all the books it contained. Yet Philip said there was a world in those books. The room was a small and singularly cosy one, and here, when Mr. Faringfield was not occupied at the mahogany desk, we children might play at chess, draughts, cards, and other games. From this room, one went back into the dining-room, another apartment endeared to me by countless pleasant memories. Its two windows looked Southward across the side grounds (for the hall and great parlour came not so far back) to our house and garden. Behind the dining-room, and separating it from the kitchen and pantry, was a passage with a back stairway and with a bench of washing-basins, easily supplied with water from a cistern below, and from the kettle in the adjacent kitchen. To this place we youngsters now hastened, to put ourselves to rights for supper. The house was carpeted throughout. The great parlour was panelled in wood, white and gold. The other chief rooms were wainscoted in oak; and as to their upper walls, some were bright with French paper, while some shone white with smooth plaster; their ceilings and borders were decorated with arabesque woodwork. There were tiled fireplaces, with carved mantels, white, like the rectangular window-frames and panelled doors. Well, well, 'twas but a house like countless others, and why should I so closely describe it?—save that I love the memory of it, and fain would linger upon its commonest details.
Mighty snug was the dining-room that evening, with its oaken sideboard, its prints and portraits on the wall, its sputtering fire, and its well-filled table lighted from a candelabrum in the centre. The sharp odour of the burning pine was keen to the nostrils, and mingled with it was the smell of the fried ham. There was the softer fragrance of the corn meal mush or porridge, served with milk, and soft was the taste of it also. We had sausage cakes, too, and pancakes to be eaten either with butter or with the syrup of the maple-tree; and jam, and jelly, and fruit butter. These things seem homely fare, no doubt, but there was a skill of cookery in the fat old negress, Hannah—a skill consisting much in the plentiful use of salt and pepper at proper stages—that would have given homelier fare a relish to more fastidious tongues. I miss in the wholesome but limited and unseasoned diet of the English the variety and savouriness of American food (I mean the food of the well-to-do in the large towns), which includes all the English and Scotch dishes, corrected of their insipidity, besides countless dishes French, German, and Dutch, and many native to the soil, all improved and diversified by the surprising genius for cookery which, in so few generations, the negro race has come to exhibit. I was a busy lad at that meal; a speechless one, consequently, and for some minutes so engrossed in the business of my jaws that I did not heed the unwonted silence of the rest. Then suddenly it came upon me as something embarrassing and painful that Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield, who usually conversed at meals, had nothing to say, and that Philip Winwood sat gloomy and taciturn, merely going through a hollow form of eating. As for Fanny, she was the picture of childish sorrow, though now tearless. Only Madge and little Tom, who had found some joke between themselves, occasionally spluttered with suppressed laughter, smiling meanwhile knowingly at each other.
Of course this depression was due to the absence of Ned, regarding the cause of which his mother was still in the dark. Not missing him until we children had filed in to supper after tidying up, she had then remarked that he was not yet in.
"He will not be home to supper," Mr. Faringfield had replied, in a tone that forbade questioning until the pair should be alone, and motioning his wife to be seated at the table. After that he had once or twice essayed to talk upon casual subjects, as if nothing had happened, but he had perceived that the attempt was hopeless while Mrs. Faringfield remained in her state of deferred curiosity and vague alarm, and so he had desisted.
After supper, which the lady's impatience made shorter than my appetite would have dictated, the husband and wife went into the small parlour, closing the door upon us children in the library. Here I managed to make a pleasant evening, in games with Madge and little Tom upon the floor. But Philip, though he came in as was his wont, was not to be lured into our play or our talk. He did not even read, but sat silent and pondering, in no cheerful mood. I, not reading him as Madge did, knew not what the matter was, and accused him of having vapours, like a girl. He looked at me heedlessly, in reply, as if he scarce heard. But Madge, apparently, divined his feeling, and at times respected it, for then she spoke low, and skilfully won me back from my efforts to enliven him. At other times, his way seemed to irritate her, and she hinted that he was foolish, and then she was extraordinarily smiling and adorable to me (always, I now suspect, with the corner of her eye upon him) as if to draw him back to his usual good-fellowship by that method. But 'twas in vain. I left at bedtime, wondering what change had come over him.
That night, I learned afterward, Philip slept little, debating sorrowfully in his mind. He kept his window slightly open at night, in all weather; and open also that night was one of the windows of Mr. and Mrs. Faringfield's great chamber below. A sound that reached him in the small hours, of Mrs. Faringfield whimpering and weeping, decided him. And the next morning, after another silent meal, he contrived to fall into Mr. Faringfield's company on the way to the warehouse, which they had almost reached ere Phil, very down in the mouth and perturbed, got up his courage to his unpleasant task and blundered out in a boyish, frightened way:
"If you please, sir, I wished to tell you—I've made up my mind to leave—and thank you very much for all your kindness!"
Mr. Faringfield stared from under his gathered brows, and asked Phil to repeat the strange thing he had said.
"Leave what, sir?" he queried sharply, when Phil had done so.
"Leave your warehouse, sir; and your house; and New York."
"What do you mean, my boy?"
And Phil, thankful that Mr. Faringfield had paused to have the talk out ere they should come among the men at the warehouse, explained at first in vague terms, but finally in the explicit language to which his benefactor's questions forced him, that he seemed, in Master Ned's mind, to be standing in Ned's way; that he would not for the world appear to supplant any man's son, much less the son of one who had been so kind to him; that he had unintentionally been the cause of Ned's departure the evening before; and that he hoped his going