The Cost [8]
with his large hands and the small knife and fork were distressingly increased.
Pauline was disappointed in him--his clothes were ill-fitting and gave him the appearance of being in danger of bursting from them; his hair was too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane; though his hands were well-shaped they had the recent scars of hard manual labor. Thus, when Olivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper, she made no reply. She would have been ashamed to acknowledge the reasons for her lack of admiration, even had she been conscious of them.
But the next morning at breakfast she revised her opinion somewhat. He talked, and he had a remarkable voice--clear, musical, with a quality which made it seem to penetrate through all the nerves instead of through the auditory nerve only. Further, he talked straight to Pauline, without embarrassment and with a quaint, satiric humor. She was forgetting for the moment his almost uncouth hair and dress when, in making a sweeping gesture, he upset a glass of water and sent a plate of hot bread flying from the waitress' hand.
"He'd do well in the open air," thought she, "but he's out of place in a house."
Still, she found him interesting and original. And he persistently sought her--his persistence was little short of heroism in view of the never-wholly-concealed sufferings which the contrast between her grace and style and his lack of both caused him.
"He looks like a king who had been kidnapped as a child and brought up in the wilds," said Olivia. "I wonder who he is."
"I'll ask him," replied Pauline. And Olivia was slyly amused by her cousin's unconscious pride in her power with this large, untamed person.
III.
AND SCARBOROUGH.
His name was Hampden Scarborough and he came from a farm about twenty miles east of Saint X. He was descended from men who had learned to hate kings in Holland in the sixteenth century, had learned to despise them in England in the seventeenth century, had learned to laugh at them in America in the eighteenth century, had learned to exalt themselves into kings--the kings of the new democracy--in the free West in the nineteenth century.
When any one asked his father, Bladen Scarborough, who the family ancestors were, Bladen usually did not answer at all. It was his habit thus to treat a question he did not fancy, and, if the question was repeated, to supplement silence with a piercing look from under his aggressive eyebrows. But sometimes he would answer it. Once, for example, he looked coldly at the man who, with a covert sneer, had asked it, said, "You're impudent, sir. You insinuate I'm not enough by myself to command your consideration," and struck him a staggering blow across the mouth. Again--he was in a playful mood that day and the questioner was a woman--he replied, "I'm descended from murderers, ma'am--murderers."
And in a sense it was the truth.
In 1568 the Scarboroughs were seated obscurely in an east county of England. They were tenant farmers on the estates of the Earl of Ashford and had been strongly infected with "leveling" ideas by the refugees then fleeing to England to escape the fury of continental prince and priest. John Scarborough was trudging along the highway with his sister Kate. On horseback came Aubrey Walton, youngest son of the Earl of Ashford. He admired the rosy, pretty face of Kate Scarborough. He dismounted and, without so much as a glance at her brother, put his arm round her. John snatched her free. Young Walton, all amazement and wrath at the hind who did not appreciate the favor he was condescending to bestow upon a humble maiden, ripped out an insult and drew his sword. John wrenched it from him and ran it through his body.
That night, with four gold pieces in his pocket, John Scarborough left England in a smuggler and was presently fighting Philip of Spain in the army of the Dutch people.
In 1653 Zachariah Scarborough, great grandson of the preceding, was a soldier in Cromwell's army. On the night of April twentieth he was in an ale-house off Fleet Street
Pauline was disappointed in him--his clothes were ill-fitting and gave him the appearance of being in danger of bursting from them; his hair was too long, suggesting a shaggy, tawny mane; though his hands were well-shaped they had the recent scars of hard manual labor. Thus, when Olivia spoke enthusiastically of him after supper, she made no reply. She would have been ashamed to acknowledge the reasons for her lack of admiration, even had she been conscious of them.
But the next morning at breakfast she revised her opinion somewhat. He talked, and he had a remarkable voice--clear, musical, with a quality which made it seem to penetrate through all the nerves instead of through the auditory nerve only. Further, he talked straight to Pauline, without embarrassment and with a quaint, satiric humor. She was forgetting for the moment his almost uncouth hair and dress when, in making a sweeping gesture, he upset a glass of water and sent a plate of hot bread flying from the waitress' hand.
"He'd do well in the open air," thought she, "but he's out of place in a house."
Still, she found him interesting and original. And he persistently sought her--his persistence was little short of heroism in view of the never-wholly-concealed sufferings which the contrast between her grace and style and his lack of both caused him.
"He looks like a king who had been kidnapped as a child and brought up in the wilds," said Olivia. "I wonder who he is."
"I'll ask him," replied Pauline. And Olivia was slyly amused by her cousin's unconscious pride in her power with this large, untamed person.
III.
AND SCARBOROUGH.
His name was Hampden Scarborough and he came from a farm about twenty miles east of Saint X. He was descended from men who had learned to hate kings in Holland in the sixteenth century, had learned to despise them in England in the seventeenth century, had learned to laugh at them in America in the eighteenth century, had learned to exalt themselves into kings--the kings of the new democracy--in the free West in the nineteenth century.
When any one asked his father, Bladen Scarborough, who the family ancestors were, Bladen usually did not answer at all. It was his habit thus to treat a question he did not fancy, and, if the question was repeated, to supplement silence with a piercing look from under his aggressive eyebrows. But sometimes he would answer it. Once, for example, he looked coldly at the man who, with a covert sneer, had asked it, said, "You're impudent, sir. You insinuate I'm not enough by myself to command your consideration," and struck him a staggering blow across the mouth. Again--he was in a playful mood that day and the questioner was a woman--he replied, "I'm descended from murderers, ma'am--murderers."
And in a sense it was the truth.
In 1568 the Scarboroughs were seated obscurely in an east county of England. They were tenant farmers on the estates of the Earl of Ashford and had been strongly infected with "leveling" ideas by the refugees then fleeing to England to escape the fury of continental prince and priest. John Scarborough was trudging along the highway with his sister Kate. On horseback came Aubrey Walton, youngest son of the Earl of Ashford. He admired the rosy, pretty face of Kate Scarborough. He dismounted and, without so much as a glance at her brother, put his arm round her. John snatched her free. Young Walton, all amazement and wrath at the hind who did not appreciate the favor he was condescending to bestow upon a humble maiden, ripped out an insult and drew his sword. John wrenched it from him and ran it through his body.
That night, with four gold pieces in his pocket, John Scarborough left England in a smuggler and was presently fighting Philip of Spain in the army of the Dutch people.
In 1653 Zachariah Scarborough, great grandson of the preceding, was a soldier in Cromwell's army. On the night of April twentieth he was in an ale-house off Fleet Street