Jacobs Room | Page 7

I've told you a
thousand times. I won't have you chasing the geese!" she said, and
crumpling Mr. Floyd's letter in her hand, she held Johnny fast and
herded the geese back into the orchard.

"How could I think of marriage!" she said to herself bitterly, as she
fastened the gate with a piece of wire. She had always disliked red hair
in men, she thought, thinking of Mr. Floyd's appearance, that night
when the boys had gone to bed. And pushing her work-box away, she
drew the blotting-paper towards her, and read Mr. Floyd's letter again,
and her breast went up and down when she came to the word "love,"
but not so fast this time, for she saw Johnny chasing the geese, and
knew that it was impossible for her to marry any one--let alone Mr.
Floyd, who was so much younger than she was, but what a nice
man--and such a scholar too.
"Dear Mr. Floyd," she wrote.--"Did I forget about the cheese?" she
wondered, laying down her pen. No, she had told Rebecca that the
cheese was in the hall. "I am much surprised..." she wrote.
But the letter which Mr. Floyd found on the table when he got up early
next morning did not begin "I am much surprised," and it was such a
motherly, respectful, inconsequent, regretful letter that he kept it for
many years; long after his marriage with Miss Wimbush, of Andover;
long after he had left the village. For he asked for a parish in Sheffield,
which was given him; and, sending for Archer, Jacob, and John to say
good-bye, he told them to choose whatever they liked in his study to
remember him by. Archer chose a paper-knife, because he did not like
to choose anything too good; Jacob chose the works of Byron in one
volume; John, who was still too young to make a proper choice, chose
Mr. Floyd's kitten, which his brothers thought an absurd choice, but Mr.
Floyd upheld him when he said: "It has fur like you." Then Mr. Floyd
spoke about the King's Navy (to which Archer was going); and about
Rugby (to which Jacob was going); and next day he received a silver
salver and went--first to Sheffield, where he met Miss Wimbush, who
was on a visit to her uncle, then to Hackney--then to Maresfield House,
of which he became the principal, and finally, becoming editor of a
well-known series of Ecclesiastical Biographies, he retired to
Hampstead with his wife and daughter, and is often to be seen feeding
the ducks on Leg of Mutton Pond. As for Mrs. Flanders's letter--when
he looked for it the other day he could not find it, and did not like to
ask his wife whether she had put it away. Meeting Jacob in Piccadilly

lately, he recognized him after three seconds. But Jacob had grown
such a fine young man that Mr. Floyd did not like to stop him in the
street.
"Dear me," said Mrs. Flanders, when she read in the Scarborough and
Harrogate Courier that the Rev. Andrew Floyd, etc., etc., had been
made Principal of Maresfield House, "that must be our Mr. Floyd."
A slight gloom fell upon the table. Jacob was helping himself to jam;
the postman was talking to Rebecca in the kitchen; there was a bee
humming at the yellow flower which nodded at the open window. They
were all alive, that is to say, while poor Mr. Floyd was becoming
Principal of Maresfield House.
Mrs. Flanders got up and went over to the fender and stroked Topaz on
the neck behind the ears.
"Poor Topaz," she said (for Mr. Floyd's kitten was now a very old cat, a
little mangy behind the ears, and one of these days would have to be
killed).
"Poor old Topaz," said Mrs. Flanders, as he stretched himself out in the
sun, and she smiled, thinking how she had had him gelded, and how
she did not like red hair in men. Smiling, she went into the kitchen.
Jacob drew rather a dirty pocket-handkerchief across his face. He went
upstairs to his room.
The stag-beetle dies slowly (it was John who collected the beetles).
Even on the second day its legs were supple. But the butterflies were
dead. A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows
which came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to
the moor, now lost behind a furze bush, then off again helter-skelter in
a broiling sun. A fritillary basked on a white stone in the Roman camp.
From the valley came the sound of church bells. They were all eating
roast beef in Scarborough; for it was Sunday when Jacob caught the
pale clouded yellows in the clover field, eight miles from