Judas Flowering Read Free Page B

own. Besides, he loved having Francis, and his mother seemed to enjoy her sister’s company. But he rose with relief at sight of the majordomo beaming at the doorto announce dinner. “Let me give you my arm, Aunt.”
    She had made a quick recovery and smiled up at him with an attempt at archness. “So gallant, dear boy. And so elegant! We owe a great debt to Francis, do we not, Sister? What a hobbledehoy it was when we first came, remember?”
    â€œI was thirteen.” Hart gritted his teeth and felt the blood start under the plaster on his face.
    â€œAnd such a big boy, too. All bones, and muscle, and exercise. I wonder you have not joined the army. Dear Francis would have given anything for a commission—in England, of course—could he but have afforded it. And you have such a tradition in your family, dear boy.”
    â€œDon’t speak of it!” Martha Purchis did not often use such a tone to her older sister. “How can you?” she went on now. “After two such losses as I have suffered! A husband—such a husband—and a brother-in-law, all in one year. No, no, Sister, my dear Hart is going to stay at home, take the burden of the estate off my shoulders, and be a comfort to his mamma, are you not, my dear?
    â€œWell.” He found himself, suddenly, at an expected hurdle, and took it fast. “Not precisely, Mother. I have been meaning for some time to tell you that I rather think of going to Harvard College in the fall.”
    â€œTo Harvard!” said his mother.
    â€œTo New England!” His aunt was appalled. “Where all the trouble started!”
    â€œRidiculous,” said his mother.
    â€œThey won’t take you,” said his aunt.
    â€œAs a matter of fact”—he smiled at them both—“they have. Ah, here’s our champagne at last. Will you drink to my success as a scholar, ladies?”
    â€œChampagne?” said Aunt Anne.
    â€œI ordered it. You’ll forgive me, Mother? I thought we might need it.”
    â€œWe do.” Suddenly, with tears in her eyes, she smiled at him. “Dear Hart. I drink to your great success.”

Chapter 2
    Mercy Phillips woke to broad daylight and an extraordinary mixture of sensations. Memory first. Horrible. Her father, that howling mob, the boy who had been so sure her father was dead. How should he know death, a sheltered child like him? She had watched her mother die, in the garret behind Drury Lane, and many others, too, on the crowded, stinking ship that brought them to America. But always there had been Father, with his wonderful confidence in the future. “In America all men are equal.”
    Equal! She was lying on a bed of unbelievable comfort, in the most luxurious room she had ever even dreamed of. She was wearing a nightgown of material softer and finer than the shirts she and her mother used to stitch, hour after hour, to eke out the meagre livelihood her father made by his writing. And she was clean. Really clean for the first time, it seemed to her, since the three of them had left their Sussex home and gone to London, following that will-o’-the-wisp hope of her father’s. If the great Dr Johnson could make a fortune with his unaided pen, could not others? Could not a grammar-school scholar who had carried every prize of his day?
    He had been wrong, of course, disastrously wrong. It would have been better for all of them if he had gone on running the little country school that had made such a successful start, but he had felt he had something to say to the world, and a duty to say it. And when Father got an idea of that kind fixed in his head, there was nothing to be done. Mother had cried all the time, while they were packing up, and Father had been gentle, loving—and obdurate. Well, he had been like that. It had been the same over here. Tears began to trickle slowly down her face. Father would never learn … Father would never have the