He stood still,looking across the valley to where the frosty line of the hill-tops met the steel-blue,steadfast sky.Yes,I felt sure he WOULD 'live it down.'
We dismissed the subject,and spent an hour more in pleasant chat,about many things.Passing homeward through the beech-wood,where through the bare tree-tops a light snow was beginning to fall,John said,musingly:
"It will be a hard winter--we shall have to help our poor people a great deal.Christmas dinners will be much in request.""There's a saying,that the way to an Englishman's heart is through his stomach.So,perhaps,you'll get justice by spring.""Don't be angry,Phineas.As I tell my wife,it is not worth while.
Half the wrongs people do to us are through sheer ignorance.We must be patient.'IN YOUR PATIENCE POSSESS YE YOUR SOULS.'"He said this,more to himself than aloud,as if carrying out the thread of his own thought.Mine following it,and observing him,involuntarily turned to another passage in our Book of books,about the blessedness of some men,even when reviled and persecuted.
Ay,and for all his many cares,John Halifax looked like a man who was "blessed."Blessed,and happy too,throughout that day,especially in the midst of the mill-yard dinner--which reminded me forcibly of that feast at which guests were gathered out of the highways and hedges--guests such as John Halifax liked to have--guests who could not,by any possibility,"recompense"'him.Yet it did one's heart good to hear the cheer that greeted the master,ay,and the young master too,who was to-day for the first time presented as such:as the firm henceforward was to be,"Halifax and Son."And full of smiling satisfaction was the father's look,when in the evening he stood in the midst of his children waiting for "Guy's visitors,"as he pertinaciously declared them to be--these fine people,for whose entertainment our house had been these three days turned upside down;the sober old dining-room converted into a glittering ball-room,and the entrance-hall a very "bower of bliss"--all green boughs and Chinese lanterns.John protested he should not have known his own study again;and that,if these festive transformations were to happen frequently he should soon not even know himself!
Yet for all that,and in spite of the comical horror he testified at this first bouleversement of our quiet home ways,I think he had a real pleasure in his children's delight;in wandering with them through the decorated rooms,tapestried with ivy and laurel,and arbor vitae;in making them all pass in review before him,and admiring their handiwork and themselves.
A goodly group they made--our young folk;there were no "children"now--for even Maud,who was tall and womanly for her age,had bloomed out in a ball dress,all white muslin and camellias,and appeared every inch "Miss Halifax."Walter,too,had lately eschewed jackets,and began to borrow razors;while Edwin,though still small,had a keen,old-man-like look,which made him seem--as he was,indeed,in character--the eldest of the three.Altogether,they were "a fine family,"such as any man might rejoice to see growing,or grown up,around him.
But my eyes naturally sought the father as he stood among his boys,taller than any of them,and possessing far more than they that quality for which John Halifax had always been remarkable--dignity.
True,Nature had favoured him beyond most men,giving him the stately,handsome presence,befitting middle age,throwing a kind of apostolic grace over the high,half-bald crown,and touching with a softened grey the still curly locks behind.But these were mere accidents;the true dignity lay in himself and his own personal character,independent of any exterior.
It was pleasant to watch him,and note how advancing years had given rather than taken away from his outward mien.As ever,he was distinguishable from other men,even to his dress--which had something of the Quaker about it still,in its sober colour,its rarely-changed fashion,and its exceeding neatness.Mrs.Halifax used now and then to laugh at him for being so particular over his daintiest of cambric and finest of lawn--but secretly she took the greatest pride in his appearance.
"John looks well to-night,"she said,coming in and sitting down by me,her eyes following mine.One would not have guessed from her quiet gaze that she knew--what John had told me she knew,this morning.But these two in their perfect union had a wonderful strength--a wonderful fearlessness.And she had learned from him--what perhaps originally was foreign to her impressible and somewhat anxious mind--that steadfast faith,which,while ready to meet every ill when the time comes,until the time waits cheerfully,and will not disquiet itself in vain.
Thus,for all their cares,her face as well as his,was calm and bright.Bright,even with the prettiest girlish blush,when John came up to his wife and admired her--as indeed was not surprising.