The Good Comrade | Page 3

There was something of the school-boy in his look and in his deprecating manner, especially to Mrs. Polkington; he had always been a little deprecating to her even when he had first known her, a bride, while he himself was the wealthy bachelor friend of her husband. He was still a bachelor, and still her husband's friend, but the wealth had gone long ago. He had now only just enough to keep him, fortunately so secured that he could not touch the principal. It was a mercy he had it, for there was no known work at which he could have earned sixpence, unless perhaps it was road scraping under a not too exacting District Council. He was a harmless enough person, but when he took it into his head to leave his lodgings in town for others, equally cheap and nasty, at Marbridge, Mrs. Polkington felt fate was hard upon her. It was like having two Captain Polkingtons, of a different sort, but equally unsuitable for public use, in the place. In self defence she had been obliged to make definite rules for Mr. Gillat's coming and going about the house, and still more definite rules as to the rooms in which he might be found. The dining-room was allowed him, and there he was when Julia came.
He looked up as she entered, and smiled; he regarded her as almost as much his friend as her father; a composite creature, and a necessary connection between the superior and inferior halves of the household.
"Father not in, I hear," he said.
"No," Julia answered. "What a smell there is!"
Mr. Gillat allowed it. "There's something gone wrong with Bouquet," he said, thoughtfully regarding the stove.
The "Bouquet Heater" was the name under which it was patented; it did not seem quite honest to speak of it as a heater, so perhaps "Bouquet" was the better name.
Julia went to it. "I should think there is," she said, and turned it up, and turn it down, and altered the wicks, until she had improved matters a little.
"I'm afraid your father's having larks," Johnny said, watching her.
"It's rather a pity if he is," Julia answered; "he has got to see some one on business to-morrow."
"Who?"
"Mr. Frazer, a clergyman who wants to marry Violet."
Mr. Gillat sat upright. "Dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "No? Really?" and when Julia had given him an outline of the circumstances, he added softly, "A wonderful woman! I always had a great respect for your mother." From which it is clear he thought Mrs. Polkington was to be congratulated. "And when is it to be?" he asked.
"Violet says a year's time; they could not afford to marry sooner and do it properly, but it will have to be sooner all the same."
"A year is not a very long time," Mr. Gillat observed; "they go fast, years; one almost loses count of them, they go so fast."
"I dare say," Julia answered, "but Violet will have to get married without waiting for the year to pass. We can't afford a long engagement."
Mr. Gillat looked mildly surprised and troubled; he always did when scarcity of money was brought home to him, but Julia regarded it quite calmly.
"The sooner Violet is married," she said, "the sooner we can reduce some of the expenses; we are living beyond our income now--not a great deal, perhaps, still a bit; Violet's going would save enough, I believe; we could catch up then. That is one reason, but the chief is that a long engagement is expensive; you see, we should have to have meals different, and fires different, and all manner of extras if Mr. Frazer came in and out constantly. We should have to live altogether in a more expensive style; we might manage it for three months, or six if we were driven to it, but for a year--it is out of the question."
"But," Mr. Gillat protested, "if they can't afford it? You said he could not; he is a curate."
"He must get a living, or a chaplaincy, or something; or rather, I expect we must get it for him. Oh, no, we have no Church influence, and we don't know any bishops; but one can always rake up influence, and get to know people, if one is not too particular how."
Mr. Gillat looked at her uneasily; every now and then there flitted through his mind a suspicion that Julia was clever too, as clever perhaps as her mother, and though not, like her, a moral and social pillar standing in the high first estate from which he and the Captain had fallen. Julia had never been that, never aspired to it; she was no success at all; content to come and sit in the dining-room with him and Bouquet; she could not really be clever, or else she would