Chapter Twenty.
“They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests.”
Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.
Anthony walked towards Thorpe. He was going back to the cottage, and then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts. They evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house, and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he therefore consented tacitly.
But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell, and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion of his reflections. He was not thinking very much of anybody except himself, and the injustice of the world. What had he, of all men, done to be visited as he was? He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were, exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away. The very foundations were shaken. For if people ceased to believe in him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in which he could continue to believe. He had made himself the centre of his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest. To his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.
Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think. He thrust away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with him. This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would. But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the wrong direction. He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden feeling. He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr Bennett’s rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada’s assurance that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere. And then she was pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the days before the cloud,—which, indeed, she thought a matter of very small consequence,—and he felt a certain gratitude towards her. There may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too harshly.
His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as he drove to the door of the Bennetts’ house, and went slowly up the steps. There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for him. In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had surely offered no time for weariness. And yet a certain weariness touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little more warmth into his greeting than was usual.
“You are very late, Anthony,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, and shaking her long curl reprovingly. “Do you know that Aunt Henrietta fancied you were not coming at all?”
“But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?”
“No, indeed. I don’t think I should have spoken to you for a week if you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don’t know, that you would have minded that. But now that you are here, you are to tell me every single thing you have been doing.”
His face darkened slightly. This small affectionate tyranny was new to him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.
“Suppose we turn the tables,” he said, with a little restraint. “What have you been about to-day?”
“I? O, I have not been beyond the garden. I sat there and read and thought—”
“Thought?”
“Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are conceited enough already. O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom. Do go and look out of that window; do, please, go!”
There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so eager that Anthony obeyed. He rather dreaded Mr Bennett’s ponderous jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to them.
“Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon, after all. My wife took it into her head you’d be late, but I said, ‘My dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and the two must come together somehow.’ Ha, ha! not bad, was it? And you’d something else to draw you besides, hadn’t you? Ada,—where are you, Ada? Come, come, you’d have me believe you’ve never met before; perhaps you’d like to be introduced. It’s never too late to mend, is it?”
“O Uncle Tom!” said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush. She looked very pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony’s face relaxed from the lines which were becoming habitual. She was pretty and affectionate, adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment. The room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone for a few sins of colour. It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett’s prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way, and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which never fails to create a friendly atmosphere. If they were apt to err on the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners, dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the extent to which Mr Bennett credited him. Thus there were, on the whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid fret that had grown into his life—or out of his life, if you will—worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and gently flattered. Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought—if thinking is not too strong an expression for the occasion—that it would be a good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to have no opinions on the matter. It was very likely a mistake from beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good reasons for all he had done. Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved the way for the step which Ada’s prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate admiration brought about at last. No one could have suspected indolent Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.
“It is so hot,” she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step, and sinking into an easy-chair. “One of those things they have in India—punkahs, don’t they call them?—would be very nice. Does your mother feel the heat, Mr Miles? I really think it is quite a labour to have to go down to dinner.”
“My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,” said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the dining-room. “Come, Ada, it’s all very well to live upon air, but when you are as old as your aunt and I, you’ll find it’ll not pay. Not it, indeed. No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim. By the way, Miles, I haven’t seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten days. Nothing wrong, I hope?”
“I don’t speak from personal knowledge,” said Anthony, with the shade again on his face, “but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering was laid up with an attack of rheumatism.”
“Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder. Any one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the seven. Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us as soon as he can, and try a little variety. Or you might drive out there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter. I’ve the greatest regard for Mannering.”
“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed hardly able to utter a contradiction.
“And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta,” said Ada, cheerfully. “I want to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers. It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won’t you?”
“Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with,” said Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance. “I’ll meet you afterwards, and hear what you have seen.”
“Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one,” persisted Mr Bennett, “and, dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own! Say to-morrow.”
“To-morrow I am engaged.”
“Well then, Wednesday.”
“It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House,” said Anthony in an odd, unyielding tone.
Mr Bennett gave a long “Whew!”
Ada said with a pout, “O, but you must!” and Mrs Bennett came to the rescue with the unconsciousness which constituted a real charm in Anthony’s eyes.
“It will be too hot for us to drive there just yet. Ada and I must go some day when I am a little less overdone and the weather is cooler.”
Mr Bennett was sufficiently shrewd to be alive both to the jar and to a perception that the subject was one which had better be allowed to drop.
“It is hot, as you say, my dear, and perhaps it would be as well to wait until Mannering is about again. Try a little of that Sauterne, Miles; capital stuff for this weather. Well, Ada, what have you been doing with yourself? Warren told me he had seen you at the station.”
It was Ada’s turn to look discomposed.
“The station? O yes, I remember. I walked across to see whether the Mannerses came by the four-o’clock train. I forgot that I had been out of the garden when you asked me,” she said, with an elaboration of openness which was unnecessary, as Anthony had no suspicions to be allayed.
“O, he’s been asking you, has he?” said Mr Bennett jocosely. “It’s lucky you can explain yourself, or poor Warren would have put his foot in it.”
“Mr Warren!” said Ada with scorn.
“Come, come, what has the poor man done? Upon my word, I should have thought young ladies would consider him a good-looking, agreeable young fellow. I am sure you did when you first knew him, Ada, eh?”
“I don’t know what I thought once,” said Ada, looking down, and smiling prettily again; “all I know is that I don’t admire him now.”
If Anthony wanted mollifying,—which was perhaps not the case, although this family party had not seemed to go quite as smoothly as those which had preceded it,—this little speech effected its purpose. He liked the covert homage, and, congratulating himself upon the good-humour which Mr Bennett’s rather trying allusions could not ruffle, roused himself into the old brightness which only now came in occasional flashes. Ada was enchanted, shook back her long curl, and put out all her attractions; and Anthony, walking home through the quiet lanes sweet with the dewy freshness of a summer night, dreamed his new dream with a better success. Only, alas, even in dreams there are jangled notes, struggles, interruptions. People’s faces come and go, and look sadly at us, changing often, just as the joy of their presence makes itself felt. Every now and then out of Ada’s face other eyes looked at him; eyes that were grave and true and tender, and full of a trust that had never failed, although he had read it wrongly.