Halfway House: A Comedy of Degrees

by Maurice Hewlett

BOOK I

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HALFWAY HOUSE

A COMEDY OF DEGREES

I
MR. GERMAIN TAKES NOTICE

It was when Mr. John Germain, a gentleman of fifty, and of fine landed estate in Berks—head of his family, Deputy-Lieutenant, Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and I don’t know what not—was paying one of his yearly visits to his brother James, who was Rector of Misperton Brand, in Somerset, that an adventure of a sentimental kind presented itself to him, engaged him, carried him into mid-air upon a winged horse, and set him treading clouds and suchlike filmy footing. Chance-caught combinations, associations tenderly touched—what do I know? He had a vision and located it; he dreamed a dream, and began to live it out; out of a simple maid he read a young goddess, into a lover’s ardent form he pressed his leanness and grey hairs. Bluntly, he, a widower of ten years’ standing, fell in love with a young person half his age, and of no estate at all—but quite the contrary; and, after an interval of time which he chose to ignore, applied himself earnestly to the practice of poetry. There ensued certain curious relationships between quite ordinary people which justify me in calling my book a Comedy of Degrees.

This sudden seizure of the heart overtook him one afternoon in July, on the occasion of a Sunday-school feast, an annual affair. He had lent himself to that because, while he claimed his mornings, his afternoons were always at the disposition of his hostess and sister-in-law, the Hon. Mrs. James Germain, who naturally made the most of them. She, of course, must be present at the affair, must have a tea-party for the notables. The Cantacutes always came, and the Binghams; there might be others: John must really consent to be bored. There would be no occasion to pass the railing which separated the revellers in the paddock from the Rectory lawn; all he had to do was to show himself and allow Mrs. Bingham to talk round about him. True, the afternoon was very hot; but the Rectory garden was at its best, velvet-lawned, shady and trim. Mr. Germain confessed that it was the very day for out-of-door merrymaking—by other people—and smilingly added that the exertion of the school-feasters would lend a savour to the leisure he was promised. He appeared—somewhat late—in a suit of summer coolness, and white spats, and was charming with Lady Cantacute, an old friend; perfect with Mrs. Bingham, whose fault was that she was too anxious to please. In the absence of the Rector and Lord Cantacute, who were conferring on parish business, these ladies made much of their cavalier. He had a comfortable chair, which allowed him to stretch his long legs before him at the right and only angle. Leisurely and measured in all that he did, talking but little, he was allowed to feel that his presence was the utmost that would be asked of him, and that leisure and measure were at his disposal. When, therefore, he had said all that seemed proper, he adjusted his glasses, gave one glance to the white spat upon the foot of his crossed leg, put his elbows on the arms of his chair, clasped his hands, and set himself to observe the sports. All was well with the world so far, and he—the handsome, fine-featured, thin gentleman—as good a thing as this fraction of a world contained. He was in the mood to receive impressions and be charitable to them. This was the moment chosen by the Blind God.

The flags drooped lazily about their poles, the great elms beyond the paddock seemed muffled in their July wrappage, and a swoon; but over the sward the figures of the children and their friends flashed and darted, and crossed each other as on a scene. A stentorian curate in black and white cap directed the cricket. Mr. Germain marked his flying coat-tails and approved them. “Ha! my excellent friend Soames!” he reflected aloud, and added that years left no marks upon Soames. The swiping boys were young England at play—our future was safe in their hands, Soames to urge them. He had his own ideas about our future, and called himself a Liberal in politics; but confessed that Young England was all the better for a Soames or two to guide it. He was a sound Churchman.

His benevolent eye, seeking other objects of interest, was now turned to the girls.

Oranges and Lemons was the cry with them: a pretty game, as elaborate and rhythmical as an old-world dance, with a romp interposed. Two of the tallest hold the gate—their raised arms make it. About the skirts of each you see the clustered bevy of her capture; the doomed ones creep in a file beneath their hands; the sing-song swells, rises, grows, holds—and presently falls with the blow.

The gate-keepers stoop, they clasp, they catch close some struggling prisoner; hot cheek lies fast to pillowing breast, laughing child to laughing maid. It is the strife of love in a dream; like all figure-dances, it figures that; for what cuddling girl but mimics there the transports she is to know one day? Sometimes the captive breaks away and runs; then must the taker give chase: and as the race is swift, and may be long, so is the end the sweeter both for huntress and for quarry. Kisses mark the end; you die of a surfeit of kisses. The strife of love in a dream—a gentle, innocent parody of it!

Whether these amiable musings were cause or consequence of what happened to catch Mr. Germain’s eye more than once or twice, there’s no telling. I content myself with recording that the most active of those young people beyond the railings was a graceful, quick-limbed girl in white muslin—whose long black sash-ribbons and wide-brimmed hat of straw marked her vividly out for his contemplation. He was near-sighted and could get no details, but was agreeably aware of her, as the swiftest in pursuit, the hardiest to catch and hold, to be chased by whom and to be caught was the aim of every flying child. She was the beloved, it was plain; her close arms the haven of choice. Sitting in the pleasant shade, at peace with himself and all mankind, Mr. Germain found in her a stimulating vein for thought to explore, and pursued it with zest, while Lady Cantacute murmured “Dear things!” at intervals, or sighed for tea, and Mrs. Bingham felt it her duty as a guest to envy the lot of Misperton Rectory.

She had envied the garden, the weather, the curate, the cricket field, and might have gone on to covet her friend her rector had not the “I say, Aggie,” from her youngest daughter, Cecily, given her a new object to admire.

“Aggie, I say,” said Cecily to her sister, “you know—that girl can run.” Mr. John Germain, as the pivot of his thoughts was touched, turned with animation to the speaker.

“Indeed, yes. She runs like Atalanta, Miss Cecily, if you know who Atalanta was.”

Miss Cecily wriggled. She was fifteen. “Yes, I know. She raced with Milanion, and picked up the apple. I don’t think Mary’s a bit like her.”

“She is as swift, I am sure,” said Mr. Germain. “But it’s true she has not yet picked up the apple. Perhaps that will lie in front of her some day, and then she’ll be caught.”

“He didn’t catch her,” said Cecily. “She stopped, and he won.”

“True,” Mr. Germain replied smiling. “You and I mean the same thing, I believe.”

To this Miss Cecily had no reply but a sudden jerk of the leg. Mrs. Bingham beamed upon her hostess.

“The Earthly Paradise! My Cecily adores it. But who is their Atalanta, dear Mrs. Germain?”

Mrs. James Germain said that she had no notion, which was quite untrue. Aggie replied to her mother by pointing out the nymph of the chase. Mrs. Bingham clasped her hands.

“There again! Your extraordinary fortune! Mary, of course—that nice teacher you have. Quite a charming person!”

Mrs. Germain primmed her lips. “Very charming, I believe. But she’s in private service.”

“Do you mean she’s somebody’s maid, Constantia?” This came briskly from Lady Cantacute, who knew very well what had been meant, but had a kind heart. Mr. John Germain, while watching the players, listened.

“I think you must know her,” Mrs. James explained. “She is governess—I suppose you would call it—to Nunn’s family. Nursery-governess, I fancy, is the phrase. She teaches in our Sunday-school, it is true; but that is a privilege rather than a duty. At least, we consider it so.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Mrs. Bingham. “You mean that one doesn’t pay——”

“Of course one doesn’t,” replied the Rector’s wife, and would have closed the discussion.

But her brother-in-law reopened it by saying that she appeared to him an attractive young lady, and caused Mrs. James to sniff.

“I should not have said that; indeed, we think her plain.” Surely enough of the young person: but the conversation hung about her yet.

“She has pretty manners,” Lady Cantacute considered; and her eyes were good. Mrs. James allowed her eyes. “They speak, I believe, upon occasion,” she added. “But I am rather deaf to that kind of language.”

“Perhaps, my dear Constantia, they don’t address themselves to you,” said Lady Cantacute, and Mr. Germain, stretching his arms forward to the fulness of comfort, resumed his observation of Oranges and Lemons. Cecily Bingham heard the click of his clasped fingers.

“Very possibly I should be the last to receive them,” Mrs. James was heard to say, “though I believe they address themselves otherwise impartially.”

“I am sure she is a good girl,” said Mrs. Bingham, and to that the lady of Misperton said “We all hope so.”

A merry, a warm-hearted girl. Mr. Germain was confident of that. When a child of her party tripped in running, and fell, how she picked her up, and sitting, cradled her upon her lap and soothed her with voice and soft cheek and quick, kissing lips. A pretty sight, a gracious act sweetly done. Absorbed, he lost the thread of the talk about him, but awoke to hear his sister-in-law’s tones of authority telling Mrs. Bingham things which he wished to know.

“Yes, Middleham—Mary Middleham.—No, she’s three or four and twenty, I believe. She has been here a year or two—teaching the little Nunns. No, no French; and the merest rudiments of piano. But for children of that position piano I consider absurd. Nunn is a most sensible man—no airs at all. . . . Yes, she has nice ways with children; they mind her and like her, too. Really, she and Soames manage everything—but—that is most tiresome!” Mrs. James sat upright. “I must speak to her. I see that they are doing precisely what I did not intend with the tea. It’s very stupid of Mrs. Blain. I’ll send somebody for her if I—.” She looked about her, vaguely offended that a footman did not emerge from the clump of pampas; and—“Cecily, darling,” said Mrs. Bingham.

Cecily jumped up. “I’ll go, Mrs. Germain.”

“That is very nice of you, my dear. Do. Tell Mary that I want to speak to her here.”

Miss Cecily vaulted her black legs over the railing and ran up the field whistling. Conversation, unaided now by Mrs. Germain, ran a languid course.

But Oranges and Lemons stopped short, and crimped tresses could be swept from shoulders and eyes, the better to regard Miss Cecily from the Rectory party. Presently, after an eager colloquy, expressive on one side of dismay and disarray, Miss Cecily was seen returning with her convoy, talking gaily. The captive nymph, though still busy with hat and hairpins, or fanning herself with her pocket handkerchief, walked confidently, carried her head well, and joined happily in the laugh. This until within hail. But then she changed. Her tongue was still, her head was bent the least in the world, and her eyes became guarded and watchful. At the railing, which Miss Cecily again neatly vaulted, Miss Middleham paused, and blushed before she climbed. But she had nothing to be afraid of, for Mr. Germain was looking at his white spats. When she stood before her betters, however, he, following her example, stood before her. And now he observed her sedately.

He was struck first by a caution in her fine eyes which caused them to loom as with reproach, to peer as if she doubted. Her colour, heightened by exertion and, perhaps, by shyness, was very becoming to her. She glowed like a peach burnt by the sun. She looked wholesome and healthy, and her voice did not belie her appearance—a fresh, confident, young voice. She kept her hands behind her—as if she were a catechumen—and with her shoulders back, looked watchfully at you as she listened and replied. The attitude showed her figure to be charming—softly, tenderly curved; a budding figure. Undoubtedly she was pleasant to behold, but she would have been no more to any one but a confirmed amorist had it not been for her eyes.

Mr. Germain was little of an amorist by temperament, though time and the hour had led him to muse over maids at play. And that being so, he was shocked rather than struck by the discrepancy between the playing nymph of his fancies and this healthy sunburnt girl with peering eyes. It almost shocked him to see her so wary. It gave her a guilty look as if she feared detection momently. He thought of a squirrel in leafage, of a dormouse by a tree-bole; he thought, above all, of flinching, of harsh treatment, of the whip. “Great God,” he cried to himself, “what a state of things is this when, upon a summons suddenly, flashing limbs grow stiff and sparkling eyes burn large with apprehension!” And then he said in his heart, “To woo the confidence back to such eyes, to still the doubts in such a breast, were work for a true man.”

From the height of his argument to the flat of the facts is a longish drop. The Catechism had taken this simple form. “Mary,” Mrs. Germain had said with something, but very little after all, of the air of a proprietor, “I see that they are bringing out the tea.”

“Yes, Mrs. Germain.” A young, fresh, confident voice.

“Surely, it is not time?”

“Tea was to be at four, Mrs. Germain.”

“Oh. Well, the Rector is busy with his lordship and cannot be disturbed. Tea must not begin until he can say Grace.”

“Very well, Mrs. Germain. But Mr. Soames——”

“No doubt. But I don’t wish Mr. Soames to say Grace.” This was explained to Mrs. Bingham. “Mr. Soames is a most worthy young man—we are fortunate in him. But he knows only two forms of Grace—Benedictus benedicat, which is of course, absurd, and For these and all Thy mercies.”

“Oh,” said Lady Cantacute, “and won’t that do?”

Mrs. James looked to the tree-tops. “We think that village children should be taught to expect other things besides mercies. James always says For what we are about to receive, which of course might be anything.”

“I suppose it might, poor things,” said Lady Cantacute, comfortably; and Mrs. Bingham whispered, “So sensible!” to her eldest daughter.

“Besides, the Rector is the proper person on such a day. See to it, if you please, Mary.”

“Very well, Mrs. Germain.” She lowered her eyes again directly she had spoken, as she was apt to do before her notables.

“My dear,” said Lady Cantacute suddenly, “you look very hot.” She now looked hotter, but she laughed as she admitted the fact. Laughing became her. Mr. Germain admired her teeth—small, white, and, so far as he could see, perfect. He formed a higher opinion of Lady Cantacute’s character—an old friend. To make a young girl smile and show her teeth is to use both tact and benevolence—natural benevolence.

“It is a very hot afternoon,” he said, as if delivering a considered judgment, and as he blinked upon her she flashed him one of her hasty looks.

“Yes, it is, Mr. Germain.”

“And I think you must be a most unselfish young lady.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Germain, indeed.” She was quite pleased, and looked very pretty when pleased.

“But I must maintain that you are. You put us luxurious people to shame. Now, Miss Cecily and I will undertake to help you after tea. Is that a bargain, Miss Cecily?” Cecily looked dogged, and said, “If he liked.”

“All well at home, dear child?” Mrs. Bingham asked here, and made Cecily snort. I am afraid, too, that she nudged her sister Agatha.

“Quite well, thank you, Mrs. ——.” She stopped, her voice tailing off into breath, as if she guessed that she had been using too many names just now, and yet knew that, from her sort, the full title was expected. Conversation not being resumed, Mrs. James said shortly, “That will do, Mary, I think. See about the tea, will you?”

Miss Middleham promised, and retired with veiled eyes and an inclination of the head; but Cecily asked, “May I go with her, mother?” and went without the answer.

Their backs turned, the rail safely over, there was a different Miss Middleham to be found, the sparkling, audacious, merry Miss Middleham of Oranges and Lemons who, to Cecily Bingham’s “I say, I can run,” replied, “And so can I, you know,” and egged Cecily on to propose “Let’s race to that clump of grass.” Miss Middleham flew, and Cecily tumbled on to her at the winning post. They resumed their way close together.

Her arm within Mary Middleham’s, Cecily talked in jerks, between breaths. “I say—old Germain talked a lot about you.” The colour flew over Mary’s face, was reflected in her eyes.

“No! Did he really?”

“I swear he did. He called you Atalanta. He said—I say—wasn’t it rot of Mother, asking after your people? She hadn’t the faintest idea whether you had any, and didn’t—I suppose you have, though?”

“I have indeed—lots. I’ve got four sisters.”

“Oh, sisters! No brothers?” She shook her head.

“I’ve got one,” said Cecily, “and he’s at Eton all the summer. Jolly for him.”

“Very jolly, I should think. Now I am to tell Mr. Soames about the tea. Don’t run away.”

“Rather not. I’ll wait here for you. I hate curates. Father’s got two—one tame one and one wild one. We call them Romulus and Remus, after some puppies we had once.” They separated with eye-signals.

Mr. Soames—the Rev. Seymour Soames, B.A.—was explicitly a curate, flaming-haired, crimson, spectacled, and boyish. He was very enthusiastic, and when enthusiastic could not always rely upon his voice. Being now told his affair, he said “I see” very often, and concluded, “Very well, Miss Mary, I’ll do as I’m told—as you tell me, you know. You’re the queen of this beanfeast. I’m not above taking orders from the head of affairs, you see.” It was indeed to be seen that he was not. “Thank you, Mr. Soames,” said the Mary of laughing eyes, and as she went he sighed, collected himself and plunged into hectoring the urn-bearers. Miss Middleham and her young friend strolled off arm-in-arm, and the last thing to be heard spoken between them was, “What did Mr. Germain really say?” The rest was whispers.

II
MR. GERMAIN REVELS SEDATELY

Conversation within the Rectory garden did not, could not, revive until the young footman, released from his urn-bondage, could bring out the tea-tray. Punctually with that glittering apparatus came the Rector and Lord Cantacute, prosperous, clean, leisurely gentlemen both: the peer with a huntsman’s face and white whiskers, a square-topped felt hat and neatly folded white tie with a foxhead pin, Mr. James Germain, thin, smiling, and fastidious, amused at his own benevolence. A little desultory talk flickered up on their approach; the Rector was packed off to say Grace for what the revellers might be about to receive. Lord Cantacute took his tea and asked, “Where’s Hertha?” Miss Hertha de Speyne was only child of his noble house.

“Hertha’s gone to play tennis at the cottage—in this grilling heat,” said her ladyship. “But she’s to be here to tea. Mrs. Duplessis is very sadly, I’m told. Ah!” and she put up her lorgnette. “Here they come, dear things.”

A tall young man in white flannels accompanied a tall young lady, also in white, round the house.

“What a pair!” murmured Mrs. Bingham to her eldest daughter, and caused Lady Cantacute to say rather sharply, “Not at all. They’ve known each other from the cradle.”

Mr. Tristram Duplessis was this young man—a cousin of Mrs. James Germain’s. He was good-looking, every foot of him, and there were six, high-coloured, light in the eye. He had a profusion of fair and straight hair, which he was accustomed to jerk away from his forehead, and a trick of knitting his brows, as if he scowled, and of biting his cheek, as if he was annoyed. Very frequently he was. Apart from these peculiarities, his manners were easy—Mr. John Germain thought, much too easy. One of his least pleasing habits was his way of looking at you in conversation as if you were either ridiculous or his property. Mr. Germain, very sure of being neither, did not pretend to like this youth.

He was greeted with “How’s your mother, Tristram?” from Lady Cantacute, and replied, “I believe she’s ill—at least, she says so;” whereat the second Miss Bingham choked in her tea-cup, and Mr. Duplessis looked at her for a minute with narrowed eyes.

Mrs. Bingham said, “Oh, I hope not,” with solicitude.

“Naturally,” said Duplessis, “and so do I. I can only tell you what she says.” He helped himself to bread, butter, and jam, took the chair which had of late been Mr. John Germain’s, and ate in silence and complete comfort. Miss de Speyne helped herself, too. Her tennis dress had the air of a riding habit, and her person that of a young Amazon. She was not only sumptuous, but severe, a golden beauty, as nearly indifferent to the fact as a girl may be. “Helen of Troy, fancy-free, before Paris beguiled her,” she had been called—but the Diana of the Louvre comes readiest to mind.

Mr. John Germain, seeing his chair in possession—and in that of Duplessis—crossed the railing and walked over the field towards the trestle-tables where the scholars feasted. Miss Bingham—the eldest—and Duplessis were now side by side. “Your young lady has made another conquest,” she told him, and nodded towards the severe, retreating form. Duplessis observed her calmly. “It’s no good, Mildred,” he said. “You can’t get a rise out of me, you know.” She laughed. “I think I’ve been saved the trouble, I was only calling your attention to it. He is greatly interested.” The young man’s answer was to look at Mr. Germain, retreating still in a stately manner, and then at Mildred Bingham. Graphic commentary enough.

When Mr. Germain approached the tables, Miss Middleham, who had been very aware of his coming, became instantly circumspect. He advanced deliberately and stood by her side for a while without speaking: he then offered himself to hand tea-cups, and when she assured him that the work was done, held to his post without any more words or seeming embarrassment. He was affable to Mr. Soames, if somewhat lofty; spoke of cricket and cricketers, the performances of Somerset, and of its champion, whom he was careful to call Mr. Palairet. For Berks, his own county, he apologized. He had a theory, not fully worked out yet, that the Scandinavian blood in us produced the best athletes. Consider Yorkshire and Lancashire. Kent, too: there was an undoubted strain of the Norseman in Kent. Surrey was against him—apparently; but he could not admit it. Of course, London gave the pick of everything; Surrey, a metropolitan shire, could hardly be reckoned, nor, by a parity of reasoning, Middlesex. Mr. Soames, who had not hitherto considered the ethnological side of his game, shook his head and said, “No, by jingo!” then plunged to another table and appeared to be busy. Mr. Germain turned to Miss Middleham and begged to know how he could be of service. “I must make good my boast: I rely upon the loyalty of Miss Cecily Bingham. Do you play after tea?” She said that there would be games. “For instance?” he inquired, and Mr. Soames, who was now hovering near again, said, “We shall finish the match. Perhaps you would care to umpire?” But Mr. Germain had picked up a small wooden implement and was turning it about like a fan. Bat, trap, and ball, he supposed? She laughed him yes. “Very well, then,” said he, “you shall allow me to help you in bat, trap, and ball.” Cecily Bingham’s eyes had now to be avoided at all costs.

The tall, stiff-shouldered gentleman made good his word—if that can be called playing the game where a player never hits the ball, frequently himself, and once (with a resounding smack) the boy fielding behind him. Grouped girls admired with open mouths; but the temptation to giggle when he caught himself for the second time upon the elbow and betrayed something of the torment he suffered was not to be resisted. Miss Middleham bit her lip, but turned to rend one of her pupils. “Gracie,” she said in a fierce whisper, “if you dare to laugh I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Here comes Tristram,” said Cecily, but Miss Middleham had no need to be told that. She was very busy teaching a small boy how to wield the bat which Mr. Germain now hastened to discard. “Thank you, Mr. Germain,” she said sincerely. “It’s very kind of you.”

“I am delighted to have been of the least service to you,” he replied with a bow. “You set us all an example which I, for one, am proud to follow.”

The games languished, flickered out under the calm eyes of Mr. Duplessis, but he took no part in reviving them. Nor did Miss Middleham do more than pretend to instruct. He stood, hands in pockets, for a while, looking at nothing, whistling softly to himself, then strolled towards Mary Middleham and, without looking at her, said two or three words. She listened to them intently without turning her head, said, “Yes,” and went on with her business of the moment. Still whistling, Duplessis strolled away, and, in passing, tweaked Cecily Bingham’s straight hair.

Mr. Germain, after salutations of a courtly kind, had returned leisurely to the Rectory Garden—to help his sister-in-law feel the early peaches on the wall.

III
MR. DUPLESSIS PREVARICATES

That evening there was a vacant place at the Rectory dinner-table. Tristram Duplessis was to have filled it, but did not appear until dessert. He entered then with smiles and light-hearted apologies.

“It isn’t often that I work, you’ll say, but when I do, I believe I’m not to be restrained. Thanks, Molesworth, anything will do for me.” This was how he put it, first to his hostess, next to the anxious butler, each of whom knew better. He chose to add, for the general benefit, “As a matter of fact, I got interested, and entirely forgot that a man must eat.”

“Or behave himself,” said the Rector, with lifted brows.

Duplessis paused, soup-spoon in air. “He should, no doubt. That’s why I’m so late. I had to dress, you see. Anon Soames must needs come in and talk his cricket. They play Cromberton to-morrow, and are two short. Will I be one, and bring another man? says Soames.” The spoon was emptied and put down. “I half promised to bring you, you know, Germain.” This was suavely addressed to Mr. John Germain, who unblinkingly received it.

“Where is your match?” Mr. Germain was peeling a peach, and did not look up. He was told, a home match, and then, without faltering before the “You play?” of as rude a young man as these islands can contain, replied deliberately, “I am very ready to oblige Mr. Soames.” The hush upon the dinner-table which followed this declaration was its most eloquent commentary. Mrs. James Germain surveyed the walls, as if calling them to witness her secret thoughts. The Rector drained his glass of sherry, and took another.

“My dear fellow, you make me feel an old fogey,” he said. “Do you know that I’ve not had a bat in my hand since I left Cambridge? And you’ll forgive me for remarking that you haven’t either, to the best of my belief.”

Mr. Germain, whose serenity was proof, reflected before he replied that that seemed an excellent reason for having one to-morrow. “Assuredly,” he said, “I shall rally to Mr. Soames, with whom I had a little chat this afternoon. He seemed an amiable and intelligent young man.”

“I like Soames,” the Rector agreed. “He’s a worker.”

Mrs. James said sharply, “He needs to be,” and received a bow. “My dear, it is now you who put me to shame.”

“Not in the least, James,” cried the lady. “You are as incapable of the feeling as I am of the action.”

The Rector twinkled. “Shameless? Really, my dear——”

“While Soames plays cricket, Cousin James writes sound theology,” said Duplessis, and got the lady off the rocks.

Mr. John Germain was now sedately sipping his port.

“That was a pleasant girl you had here,” he said, and got his sister-in-law’s attention. Duplessis did not look up from his plate, but he listened.

“You mean, I suppose——?”

“I mean Mrs. Bingham’s girl—the youngest of the three. I had a little chat with her, too—over our games. I was pleased with her friendly ways. They sit charmingly upon young ladies who are so apt to think that because their frocks are short their manners may be.”

Mrs. James spoke to her plate. “I think I understand, but am not altogether prepared to agree with you. Of course, at such gatherings one welcomes help; but I doubt whether it is wise to put ideas into heads which——”

“Which are not capable of holding ’em?” asked the Rector, using his eyebrows.

“Which can have little or no use for them, perhaps.”

Mr. Germain, having given this oracle due attention, pronounced upon it as if he were admonishing a poacher. “I am constrained to say that I did not observe a preponderance of ideas in Miss Cecily’s conversation.”

“Took the rails very neatly, I thought,” Duplessis put in, but Mrs. James was not to be balked.

“I don’t object to her taking rails or anything else of the sort. But I certainly think it a pity that she should take Mary Middleham’s arm, and walk among the children as if they were bosom friends.”

Mr. Germain squared his shoulders and lifted his head to reply. “Miss Middleham—” he said; but he was a slow beginner; Mrs. James had risen. It was her husband who fired the parting shot, that he would as soon take Mary Middleham’s arm as that of any one in the parish; and it was Duplessis, with his hand on the door, who received her answering shake of the head, and peered after her with quizzical eyes.

Conversation at her exit was between those two. John Germain never spoke to the young man if he could help it, and if he had occasion to look at him always blinked as he did so. Just now he had no occasion, being occupied with his thoughts, smiling quietly at them, drumming time to them with his thin fingers on the table.

We must inquire into Mr. Tristram’s avowed labours, and may not, perhaps, be surprised to find out of what nature they were. They had taken him, not to the study and the lamp, but into Lord Cantacute’s fine park by a wicket in the wall, to a largely spreading oak-tree and a seat upon the roots, to elbows on knees, a cigar, and some moments of frowning meditation, from which a light step upon the acorns caused him to look up, but not to rise. Miss Middleham, very flushed and bright-eyed, approached. She wore a cloak over her white dress. Watching her, his eyes narrowed, and as she came near hers lost much of their light.

“Good evening, Mr. Duplessis,” she said with careful formality.

He disregarded the greeting. “You’re late, my young friend.”

Then her grievance broke from her, and her eyes were eloquent with reproach. “My heart is in my mouth. I ought not to have come. You ought not to expect it.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I ask, but I never expect—and mostly I don’t want. What’s the matter?”

“Oh,” she sighed, “anything—everything. You never know who you may happen upon. And—if you’re going to be cross with me——”

“I’m not, my dear. I’m only cross with things that—well, with other sorts of things. Come and sit down. It’s all right now.”

She obeyed, but at some distance. She arranged her skirts over her ankles, and waited, not without the colour of expectancy, looking down at the toe of her shoe. Duplessis surveyed her at leisure.

“Well,” he said, and flicked the ash from his cigar, “I observed your junketings at the Rectory. My dear, you pleased.”

She looked prim. “Did I really?”

“You know that you did. How did you find old Germain?”

“He was very kind.”

“So I gathered. But how was he kind?”

“He was very kind.”

“My dear girl, I didn’t ask you how kind he was, but, How was he kind?”

“I beg your pardon. He praised me.”

“And you liked that?”

She made some show of spirit. “Of course I did. We all do—if we deserve it.”

“We’ll pass the quibble. Well—and did you deserve it?”

He got a reproachful look—and was rewarded.

“I did my best. I got very hot and was overtired. I’m awfully tired now.” If she expected pity from so naive an appeal, she got none.

“Well? Why come out, if you are tired?”

She flamed. “Because you asked me—because you said—I wish I had not come with all my heart.” She was on the edge of tears.

“I asked you because I thought that you would like to come. I have had some reason to think so. But we won’t talk about it if it distresses you. Have you read my book?”

She admitted that.

“Well?”

Her defences broken, she looked at him for the first time. “It was very kind of you to let me read it.”

But he couldn’t have her praises. “Oh, kind! Everybody’s kind—to you. What did you think about it?” That sent her eyelids down.

“I don’t suppose I understood half of it. I’m not clever, you know.”

He chuckled. “I’m not sure about that. Did you like ‘The Saint’s Walk’?”

“It was beautiful.”

“It was all about you, let me tell you. You in that red frock you had.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no, no.”

“But I am telling you that it was. It was an exercise perhaps—an exercise in the scenic. It may well be that there are no Saints—but either you can look the part, or I can see you in it.”

She may have had a sense that this kind of talk was intolerable, and her silence may have expressed it. Or she may have been ashamed to find out that it was not intolerable. At any rate, she made no attempt to break down the arm’s length at which he chose to hold her, while he continued to survey her, and to entertain himself.

“You cling to your saintship? Is that it?”

She raised her eyebrows, not her head. “You have just told me that I am not a saint. I think that you know very well.”

“If you were—I suppose you mean—you would not be talking to me under the Royal Oak?”

She laughed ruefully. “No, indeed. I ought not to be here!”

If she expected pity—was she to get it thus? Duplessis had no pity to bestow.

“It’s not the first time we have met here, is it?” Extraordinary, that to his screwing her nerves responded so faithfully.

“There should never have been a time,” she said, and meant it. It was part of his luxury to be sure that she felt in the wrong.

“Why not?” he probed her airily. “If two people want to talk to each other, what else are they to do? And there’s no doubt about our needs, I suppose?”

She had nothing to say to that—she was discretion itself; but the effect of her frugality was to bring him closer to where she sat.

“Do you care to keep my book?”—and before she could answer—“Well, then, keep it,” he said. “I’ll come up to-morrow and write your name in it, and mine too. Would you like that? Tell me, child.”

But as she hung her head and had no words, he had to tell himself. His arm went about her; he could feel her heart. He drew her to him, and her head lay on his breast. “That’s well,” he said, “that’s as it should always be. You are made to be captured.”

He had what he wanted of her after that, that sense of fluttering under the hand, of throbbing response to stroking phrases of which an epicure of the sort is never weary. With power grew the lust of power; if he could have made her see white black it would have gratified him. He told her that he must soon go to London, and made her lie the closer; he told her that he loved her, and made her sigh and cling. He told her that she was that which indeed she was not—a lover, his “little lover”—and felt the sweet flattery steal over her when she thrilled to it as the earth to a beam of the sun. Ravished by the thought of what he had to his hand, he pressed her, and bent over her where she crouched. “Mary,” he whispered as he stooped. “No, no,” she said, and put up her lips. That was the way of it, the saying and doing not without a pathetic simplicity, relished by him to the full.

Exquisite little triumph! which he was too wise to repeat. He spent another twenty minutes discoursing of himself, his works, and plans. Believing her to be interested—as he was himself—he became extremely kind, forgot to be jealous of John Germain’s notice, forgot to require or exact anything from her, forgot even to be rude. Really, he parted from her with more politeness than he would have shown to one of his own class—say, to Miss de Speyne. He sought no more favours. “I shall see you in the distance to-morrow, perhaps. I play cricket for Soames—I think he wants me. I don’t forget the book, you may be sure. Good night.”

It was nine o’clock before he reached his mother’s house, and by that time Miss Middleham’s person and his pleasure in it were absorbed into the vague physical comfort which a healthy young man feels in changing his clothes. They gave a zest to his bath and clean linen, quickened his brains, and strung him to activity of a sort. He sketched out an article for the weekly review which helped to support him, chaffed Soames, and comfortably dressed himself for the Rectory. There, as we know, he prevaricated, but there also he received some impressions which caused the image of Mary Middleham to visit him in the watches of the night.

He played with the thought of her, as she now appeared to him. A hint was enough; she was no saint, he had told her; and he knew that, for his purposes, she was all the better for that. Old Germain was clearly a victim—old Germain, of all men possible! How she attracted men—with her pallor, and heavy lids, and those peering, looming, speaking eyes beneath them. What did she want of them? Love, love, and more love—insatiable, was she—and unappeasable? A small, secret, pale, and careworn little huntress; hunting to be hunted, never caught and never catching. Strange! But there were women like that, nympholepts—and wherein lay their charm for men? Oh, well, he knew. He ought to know. And Germain—old Germain—great Heaven! A little Venus—Venus toute entière . . . and raised in a suburb, earning her bread as a nursery-governess! Stuff for a sonnet here! He laughed, and sketched it by the open window.

The thought was good. It pleased, excited him, kept him wakeful. A cigar into the still dark seemed reasonable.

She was charming. Her transparency was charming, which made it so easy to see her little shifts and designs; the casting of her home-made nets, and setting of her primitive snares. She betrayed her need so simply. When once you had her confidence there were no more drawbacks, no reticences. By George, she was as simply pagan as a South Sea Islander; not a stitch on her—and a scarlet flower between her teeth. One might drown one’s self in love—for a season—if one were a fool. But one was not, you see. This simple creature, this little Suburban Venus, showed such extraordinary aptitude for the rarer thing, was so susceptible to the finer shades of the business, that one would need be a tearing fool if he—No, and it would be a shame. He would never do that. Better on all accounts to be free—better not commit one’s self. She would always be there, could be counted upon. He knew women, he told himself.

They will wait for you—wait for ever, helped on by a little kindness. It’s not love they want from you—they have more than enough of that themselves; it’s tenderness, once the imagination is really struck. She! Oh, there was no doubt about her. She was his for all time, sensitive, flushing, and paling creature, alternately too bold and too coy. Bold when she ought not—coy when she need not; these were flaws, but he protested that they charmed him. Flaws there must be; it was not reasonable to suppose himself pioneer in that little thicket; and, while the knowledge must cheapen, yet it endeared her to him. Some subtle excitation of sense was stirred by that. What now?

He probed, but gave over the analysis. “Damn it, I’m too curious,” he said. “Sonnets don’t come this way. I must compose her, not dissect.”

But there was to be no more composition of sonnets. He had warped his mood, so threw away his cigar, and went to bed.

IV
A MISS AND A CATCH

As for Mr. Germain, whatever his nightly meditations or dreams may have been, he was as good as his word, and stoutly took the field on the morrow when Misperton Brand, having lost the toss, spread itself over the greensward under Mr. Soames’s eye and imperative hand. Mr. Soames was a bowler and desperately in earnest; to see him marshal his field was a study in statesmanship. Knowledge of men went to it. “Can you throw?” he had asked the stately gentleman who had somehow to be accounted for; and when Mr. Germain replied that he would do his best to oblige him—“Verbum sap,” he said afterwards to Duplessis, “I knew what that meant all right, and put him cover. He only missed two catches, you know, and one of ’em was old Blacklock who simply has to make a run. I don’t call that so bad!”

The game was played in the Rectory field, where the tent and trestle-tables, and in truth some of the baked meats of a recent festival did duty for to-day. Behind the railings, as before, sat Mrs. James and her Cantacutes. Miss de Speyne was not there, but Mrs. Duplessis was—a carefully preserved lady, handsome and fatigued. On the further side of the field were benches, and here also spectators clustered—farmers’ ladies, the doctor and his wife, Mr. Nunn, the retired solicitor, who lived at The Sanctuary and employed Miss Middleham to look after his children; young Perivale, the auctioneer’s son, from Townham, the Misses Finch, of Stockfield Peverel, the Misses Wake; and Mary Middleham was undoubtedly there, with white sunshade, her young charges about her, or running from her to papa and back as needs might be. And to Miss Middleham it undoubtedly was that Mr. Germain, on an occasion of attempting to retrieve a slashing cut by the butcher’s man—and fruitlessly, seeing he was outpaced by the second gardener from the Rectory—paid the distinction of a salute before he returned leisurely to the fray.

She had been standing with a group of acquaintances, of whom Miss Kitty Wake, Miss Sally Wake, and Miss Letty Wake—all of Whiteacre Farm—formed three, and young Perivale a fourth. Upon these young people the courtesy smote like a puff of wind. Perivale blinked, and “Gracious! Who’s that?” escaped Miss Sally, and was caught and expounded by her sister Kitty. “Stupid. It’s Mr. Germain, the Rector’s brother.”

“Then he bowed to you, Mary,” said Miss Sally, and, as Mary blushed, young Perivale ground his heel into a dandelion.

“I don’t wonder,” said this youth, whose complaint was not hard to diagnose; but the compliment was ignored by the Misses Wake.

“Whatever makes him play village cricket? Why, his lordship never does, nor the Rector—and Mr. Germain could buy up the pair of them, I hear. Don’t you call it singular, Mr. Perivale? I do.”

“Doesn’t make much of it, does he?” says Perivale, drily.

“No, certainly not. Why should he? An old gentleman like that!”

Friendship required a protest, and so Miss Kitty cried, “Oh, Sally, he’s not a bit old!” Mary’s corroboration being called for, she said that she should not call him old.

“Well, whatever he is, he’s very polite. That bow of his! My dear, you might have been Miss de Speyne! However did he know it was you, at this distance?”

“Perhaps he took his hat off to you, Sally,” Mary said, but Miss Sally would have none of that.

“He looks straight at you, as if he knew you by heart, and then stiffens himself, and off with his hat. Cricket! He’s no cricketer—but he’s a gentleman.”

So much all must admit. Mary, mildly elated, had no objection to further inquiries. The former encounter, Mr. Germain’s deliberate advance into the school-treat: these wonders were revealed, rolled on the tongue, absorbed. Young Mr. Perivale took a stroll and fiercely, in the course of it, asked a small boy what he was looking at, hey? But more wonders were to come. Mr. Germain refreshed himself with the players, during the tea interval, introduced himself to Mr. Nunn, of The Sanctuary, patted the heads of his brood, and meeting Miss Middleham by the trestle-table, shook hands with her and held her in talk. He deprecated his cricket with simplicity. “I reflect that it is five-and-twenty years since I chased a cricket ball; but you may see the force of your example, Miss Middleham. Had you not inspired me to effort the other day I should hardly have embarked upon to-day’s adventure.”

She was prettily confused—her friends’ eyes upon her; but he ambled on in his kindly way.

“I put myself in the hands of my friend Mr. Soames. I was sure of his charitable discretion. Therefore, when he asked me whether I could do this or that, I did not tell him the facts, because I did not know them and was so confident that he did. I said that I should be happy to serve him, which was perfectly true. I based myself upon a famous French exemplar. You know the anecdote? A gentleman of that nation was asked whether he could take the violin part in a quartette. He said that he did not know, but that he would try. One may admire his courage.”

Miss Middleham was in this difficulty, that she did not know whether the anecdote was amusing or not. “I suppose that he was not sure of the part,” she said.

“No,” Mr. Germain corrected her; “he meant that he did not know how to play the violin.” Then she laughed, more to cover her confusion than because she was tickled.

“I like his attitude of mind, I must say,” Mr. Germain continued, talking in the air. “The sonata doubtless mattered as little as this cricket match, but neighbourliness is the great thing. We have too little of that in England. We segregate too willingly I fear. I have no notion of—I beg your pardon. While I have no notions, you have no tea. Pray allow me to get you some.”

He was a long time on this errand—for short sight and a complete absence of assertion do not help one to tea in a crowd; but nobody dare engage Miss Middleham while she stood there, so to speak, ear-marked for the great man’s. Mr. Nunn, her employer, kept his flock carefully about him; Duplessis was over the railings in the Rectory garden; Mr. Soames was exercising the hospitalities due from a captain to his rival. The Perivales, Wakes, Finches, could but look on respectfully. That they did.

Her cup of tea, her plate of bread and butter were handed to her with another fine bow; but even then her cavalier did not consider himself discharged. He stood to his post, tall, unperturbed, using his pince-nez to observe with gentle interest the audience which stood about, not for a single moment realizing that it was an audience indeed. But as he talked his amiable commonplaces, he was very conscious of the young woman, object of his attentions; little escaped him there. It was evident to him that she was pleased, softly, quietly thrilled by them; and it gratified him extremely to feel that he could confer pleasure upon her while he took his own. Pleasure, you see, costs nothing, therefore it is priceless. It cannot be bought, and yet can only be got by giving. The distinction seemed to him material, but he could not remember to have remarked it until the other day, when Lady Cantacute—a kind woman—by a trivial remark had made this child forget her wariness and smile enchantingly.

Since that moment he had pursued the thought, and verified it. He was verifying it now; there was no possible doubt that he was giving and taking pleasure. Had there been any—of this you may be sure—he would have known it; he was sensitive in such matters. He would have retired with a fine bow, and resumed his isolation and his dreams, the nursing of his secret fire. I shall have described Mr. Germain ill if I do not make it plain that he was perfectly honest, simple, very solemn, rather dull, a gentleman from the bone outwards. Miss Sally was quite right there. It was, I am sure, rather his education than his breeding which made him look upon his world, his village, native land, the continent he happened to be visiting as either in his employment (like his valet) or a negligible quantity. The same straightness of categories, with an offensive twist, has been observed in Mr. Duplessis and is common to gentlemen by inheritance. Mr. Germain had that sickness mildly, but unmistakably. Take the weather. If the day was fine, he was not insensible to that: he wore white spats and took abroad a silver-headed cane; he snuffed the genial gale, said Ha! and perhaps gave sixpence to a little boy. All was as it should be; he was excellently served. But if the morn broke stormily, with a wailing, wet, west wind, with scudding rain or whirling snow, all that escaped his lips was “Provoking!” He ordered the brougham. And you may think that, in effect, these things are what any gentleman may do, and yet not be exactly right. Other gentlemen may damn the rain; but Mr. Germain, more in sorrow than in anger, gave nature a month’s warning. If there is offence to Miss Mary Middleham in likening her to the weather, I am sorry for it. There’s no doubt that that is how she stood in Mr. Germain’s regard, though he would have gone to the stake denying it.

No misgiving, therefore, disturbed his serenity while he talked to her of the art of teaching, which he understood she practised. It was truly, he thought, one of the great arts, to give it no prouder title. What more wonderful material could be put under the hands of any artist than humanity? More plastic than paint, more durable than the potter’s clay or the builder’s stone, more subtly responsive than the vibrations with which the musician must cope. He had been reading the other day a very excellent Life of Vittorino da Feltre, a great Italian educationist. He should be happy to send it to Miss Middleham. The man was as proud as a prince; and to the credit of the princes of Italy it must be said that he was treated as their peer. A remarkable career, full of suggestion.

A certain scare, faintly discernible in Miss Middleham’s open eyes, recalled him from so wide a cast. He told her that he had been renewing acquaintance with Mr. Nunn—“a worthy friend of some years’ standing”—and had received that gentleman’s testimony to her value, to the affection which all his children had for her. He had a great respect for Mr. Nunn—a widower with six young children. “I,” said he, “am a widower—but yet I can envy Mr. Nunn. I am childless and much alone. You are fond of children, Miss Middleham?”

She owned to that gladly. “I was sure of it,” he said. “You betrayed yourself at the school-treat. Not so much by what you did—though you worked nobly—as by what was done to you. I watched the children; they could not let you alone. They must touch you—children express themselves by their antennæ. Again I envy you, Miss Middleham.”

At this point Mr. Soames most happily, if abruptly, intervened. We were to go in. Mr. Germain started, ha’d for his mental balance, poised so for an uncertain moment, and then broke away as desired. “My stout commander! Ha, yes. I am ready. Lead, leader, and I follow.” He bowed to his late captive, left her rosily confused, and bent himself to his duty in the field.

He faced the bowling of the lower end, with carefully adjusted glasses and a resolute chin. He out-lived four balls, and actually hit two of them, but forgot to run the first—to the discomfiture of Wilcox, the saddler, who did run for it, and lost his wicket. The second he ran when he should not, though Soames’s hand and “No! No!” pealed coming disaster; and then he walked back to the tent, and thence to the Rectory garden, while Duplessis, joining Soames, made vigourous practice of the Cromberton bowling. His enthusiasm held out to the end; he marked every ball, cheered every notch. He was impartial—the fall of Soames’s wicket received his plaudits, the hundred on the telegraph got no more. For so sedate a personage he was in great spirits; he rallied the Rector on his timidity, urged Lord Cantacute to put James to the blush. He went so far, even, as to congratulate Duplessis upon his 76 not out; and when all was over reverted more than once during a leisurely stroll among the box-edged walks to the pleasures of village life. He deplored his “great, shut-up Southover.” We were too fond of our fenced enclosures. According to Tacitus the trick must be inveterate, but just now there were signs of its losing hold. Our American kindred would have none of it—a park-pale, even a garden hedge was an offence against public conscience over there. The convenience of appartements was gaining upon London, and in the country allotments were recalling the old days of the common fields. Well, he was good Liberal enough to welcome the breaking down of our grudging defences. Why should an Englishman’s house be his castle, while England, surrounded by its briny moat, was sufficient castle for us all? Merry England! England might be merry enough if Englishmen could forget themselves, and remember each other. Mrs. James did not agree with him, and shortly said so, but Lord Cantacute, who may have seen further than she cared to look, said it would never do. “It’s been tried over and over again, you know. You can’t mix people up, because they won’t meet you. If you go and make a fuss with a fellow, you’ll gratify him, you know; but what will he do? Will he make a fuss with his next-door neighbour? Not he! He’ll kick him. You’ve made him feel that he’s somebody, d’you see? So he can afford himself the luxury. No, no, Germain. I wish you were right—you ought to be—but you’re not.”

“There’s a queer kind of fellow,” his lordship went on, while Mr. Germain seemed to be holding his opinion firmly in his clasped hands behind his back, “who lives in a tilt-cart and mends kettles when the fancy takes him. Paints a good picture, too, and has plenty to say for himself. Hertha found him at that the other day, out riding—but the kettles were not far off, and the sawder bubbling in a pot on a fire. From what she says, he’s come as near to your standard as any one. No hedges there. And he’s a gentleman, mind you. Hertha says that’s clear. But look at the difference. He steps down you see. You are for pulling ’em up. That don’t do, as I say.”

Mr. Germain explained himself. “I deny the imputation; I cannot admit the possibility. Pulling up, my dear Cantacute! How can you pull up, when there is no eminence? I spoke of enclosures, of artificial barriers—a very different matter.”

“Same thing,” said my lord. “We didn’t plant ’em. They grew.”

“I met to-day again,” said Mr. Germain, pointedly to his sister-in-law, “your Miss Middleham—a charming girl—with whom I gave myself the pleasure of some little talk during the interval allowed me by my stalwart friend Soames. I became a hedge-breaker, my dear Constantia, deliberately”—Lord Cantacute’s shrewd eye being upon him, he turned to the attack—“and I can assure you that I found her in every respect worthy of my homage, in every respect. We discussed her art——”

“What’s that?” asked the lord.

“The art of teaching, my dear friend. I maintained that it was the finest art—and Miss Middleham quite agreed with me.”

Mrs. James asked him tartly what else Mary Middleham could have done, or been supposed to do. Lord Cantacute contented himself by saying that he believed she was a nice young woman.

“There are, at any rate, no hedges about her,” said Mrs. James.

V
HOW TO BREAK A HEDGE

Mr. John Germain, of Southover House, in Berkshire—since it is time to be particular about him—was five years older than his brother—a man of fifty, of habits as settled as his income, and like his income, too, mostly in land. Yet he had literary tastes, a fine library, for instance, of which the nucleus only had been inherited, and the rest selected, bound, and mostly read by himself. He was said to have corresponded with the late Mr. Herbert Spencer, and when he was in town invariably to lunch at the Athenæum, sometimes in the company of that philosopher. In person he was tall, distinguished, very erect, very lean, near-sighted, impassive, and leisurely in his movements. One could not well imagine him running for a train—and indeed the appointments of his household service must have precluded the possibility. His coachman had been with him five-and-twenty years, his butler thirty, and the rest to correspond. I believe there was not an upper servant in his employ who had not either seen him grow up or been so seen by himself. He lived mostly in the country, upon his estate, and there fulfilled its duties as he conceived them to be—was Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Deputy-Lieutenant, had been Sheriff, was Chairman of the Board of Guardians. At these things he worked, to lesser incumbencies he stooped, to meet them halfway and no more—as if he deprecated the fashion which insisted on them. Thus he was patron of sport rather than sportsman, subscribed liberally to the hounds, but never hunted, offered excellent shooting to his county, but never handled a gun. A very dignified man—with his high, fastidious face—you had to look hard to discern the character he was. He masked his features as he subdued his movements to express deliberately measured advance; and yet, in his own way and within his own limits, he had never failed of having what he wanted, as he wanted it. And if he had to pay, as we mostly do, he paid without turning a visible hair. I say that with the remembrance of his marriage to Lady Di Wymondesley in my mind.

That had, at first, seemed a stroke of Fortune with which he was not to cope. He had married her—when she was the fashion of the day, the day’s last expression—early in life, so soon as he had gone down from Cambridge and entered upon his inheritance. She had brought him little money—but he wanted none of her money; he wanted her, as every enthusiast for the ideal then did. A beautiful, haggard, swift, violent creature, tearing life to tatters that she might find some excitement in the lining, there came a year when Clytemnestra threatened to be her proper name—that year when her husband returned from a solitary tour in Palestine, Syria, and the Trojan plain, and when Ægisthus, they say, had not been wanting, to make the trio of them. But he, this immovable, triple-armoured man of thirty—he was no more—had shown what his fibre was when he had lived Ægisthus down, lived him out of Berks, out of his clubs, out of London, out of England, and then had set himself to work to live the devil out of his Clytemnestra. What he suffered will never be known, for he took good care of that; and what she may have suffered can hardly be guessed, for she talked too much and too bitterly to be believed. There’s no doubt that these were terrible years; there were fifteen of them, and of every one you would have sworn it must be the last. Providence finally justified that wonderful grit in the man—that panoply of esteem which no sword could bite on—by breaking Lady Di’s back in the hunting-field.

He had been forty when that crowning mercy came to him, and had spent the ten following years in getting his affairs into order. Changing outwardly none of his habits, such as his yearly visit to London, his yearly visit to Misperton Rectory, he was none the less conscious of a departed zest; his panoply was frayed if not rent; and wherever he was during those ten orderly years carried his hope about with him—a treasured, if dim, a real, if undefined, presence. He called it Hestia, and wrote verses about it in secret; he had a positive taste for certain forms of poetry—the Court pastoral, the shepherd-in-satin, beribboned lamb sort of poetry—but not a soul knew that, not even his butler. Hestia was not a woman—at least, she had no members; she appeared in his verses unwooing and unwooed. She was, rather, the vision of an Influence; she was an Aura, a rhythm, a tone. She involved, implied, a domestic calm which had never been his, though Southover’s walls were fair and many; she was a melodious beat added to his ordered goings; at her touch the clockwork of Southover chimed silvern instead of steely. The hope of this Hestia, if I may say so, he carried always about with him at the half-cock. It was the secret of his life. You would never have suspected him of a musical ear; yet there it was. You would have said that any spring of poetry in him would have been sealed at the fount by that panoply which could turn a sword-edge—but no! The eye of such a man may never betray its content and his heart be incapable of voicing its desire. But what heart covets eye will hold, and ear strain after. The man will burn within and make no sign—to fellow man.

And now, the stateliest hedge-breaker that ever, surely, wrought in Somerset, Mr. Germain proceeded on his declared purpose with an absence of parade which, while it robbed it of all sting, must also have threatened its value. Unless you shout Liberty as you trample barriers down, the prisoners may well remain within their pinfolds. There was no shouting in Misperton Brand. It was Mr. Germain’s habit to take breakfast in his own room and keep a solitary morning. He was not visible to the Rectory party until luncheon time; after tea he was accustomed also to withdraw himself until dinner. During these times of seclusion, as I collect, he devoted himself to the emancipation of Miss Middleham.

Sobered as such a young lady could not fail to be by the unimpeachable testimony of Thursday’s school treat and Saturday’s cricket, it was on the Monday following that a series of encounters began, which struck, excited, and ended by enthralling her. Walking to her work in the mornings, she must needs overtake him, returning late in the evenings, behold him strolling a few yards in front of her. This may be done once and be a transient glory, twice and be for remembrance—a comfort when things go awry; let it happen three times, and you will be frightened. After that it may colour each day beforehand as it comes. Miss Middleham had reached the stage where her heart began to beat as she approached the corner of Love-lane, at the end of which stood The Sanctuary behind its defences of laurela, white gates and laurustinus—when another shock was given her, one of those shocks which you get when you put two and two together, as the saying is. It did not take her a second to do the sum—but it had to be done.

On this occasion lessons had been rolling for an hour—long enough to discover how hot it was and how interesting a bee in a window could make himself; more than long enough for Tommy to yawn and squeak his slate-pencil, for Elsie to sigh and look appealingly at Miss Middleham—when the door opened and papa appeared, and behind papa, tall and benevolent, Mr. Germain, the great gentleman from the Rectory.

At this sudden invasion of her sanctuary, Miss Middleham rose startled in her place, and her hand unconsciously sought her side. As Dian surprised with her nymphs might have covered her unveiled breast, so she her heart. At least, so the visitor interpreted the act. If the children stared clear-eyed, Miss Middleham’s fine eyes were misty. Altogether a pretty commotion without and within.

Mr. Nunn—Mr. T. Albert Nunn, as he was pleased to sign himself—was a hale, elderly, and plump gentleman, in colouring rather like a greenhouse plant, so vividly white and feathery was he in the whiskers, so fleshily pink in the cheeks. He now showed considerable elation, though modesty rode it, as it were, on the curb.

“Miss Middleham—pray let me not disturb you. Mr. Germain, Sir, our preceptress, Miss Middleham—who is so kind as to take charge of my nestlings—ha, Sir! my motherless babes—” As he waved them into acquaintance with each other Miss Middleham became deeply suffused, but Mr. Germain was ready to help her.

“Miss Middleham and I are old acquaintances,” he said. “Indeed, I presume upon that at the moment.” He turned to her, excusing himself. “Mr. Nunn assured me that we should not disturb you, and I hope you will support him. You know my interest in educational matters——”

“Yes, Mr. Germain,” she said, faintly. “You have spoken of it.”

“I thought it due to you, when I learned what an honourable charge you profess, that you should know me an admirer of it from afar—unfortunately from afar. Your little pupils, too, I have met—” Mr. Nunn, who had a good ear for sentiment, had his cue.

“My motherless—! Ha, Miss Middleham, what can we show Mr. Germain—what have we of interest? My Gertrude, now, writes a good essay—I have heard you say so. Hey?”

“Very good, indeed, Mr. Nunn,” said Miss Middleham, while Miss Gertrude swallowed hard.

“I should enjoy a sight of it of all things,” said Mr. Germain; so the essay was produced—in all its round and becapitalled script, with Miss Middleham’s corrections in red ink. “The Character of John Lackland, King of England.”

Mr. Germain read between the lines, studied the corrections, and mused as he read. At the end, it happened there was a model essay in the teacher’s hand, not hard to discover as the teacher’s composition. He read this, too, and interpreted it in the light of his vision of the girl. He read into it her confident, natural voice, saw behind it her trim figure, her expressive eyes and softly rich colour. The entire absence of anything remarkable in itself gave him no dismay. He was not looking for that, but for confirmation of his emotions, for a reasoned basis to them. It was clear to him in a moment that the Kings of England were counters in a game—a game, to the teacher, only a shade less dreary, because much more familiar, than to her pupils. This was what he wanted to find. It corroborated his first vision: the vision held. Had she shown talent, to say nothing of genius, for her profession, he would have been greatly disconcerted. Handing the book back, he patted Miss Gertrude on the head for a quick little pupil, and her beaming parent on the back, in a manner of speaking, for possessing her. “You are happy, Mr. Nunn,” he said, “in your children’s promise, and I am sure that their instructress may be satisfied with their performance.”

“You are very good, Sir,” replied Mr. Nunn. “It is naturally gratifying to me—highly gratifying—when a gentleman in your position takes notice of my little brood. Ha! my little seed-plots, as I may truly say. Miss Middleham reports favourably of progress—steady progress. I hear that little Margaret’s sewing is somewhat remarkable——”

But Mr. Germain did not pursue his researches, having no need.

Heaven and Earth! he thought, as he had intended all along to think, were ever labours more jejune compelled upon a fresh and budding young life? Was ever yoke more galling laid upon yearling shoulders? To set a being so delicate at liberty, there can be no hammer and pick laid to the barrier; nay, it must be rather by enlarging from within. The butterfly lies so in a prison house, his iris wings close-folded to his sides. Break into the shell, you either crash the filmy thing, or usher it untimely into a chill world. No, no. Breathe tenderness, shed warmth about the lovely prisoner; it grows in grace and strength to free itself. Then be at hand to see the dawning of life, share in the contemplative ecstasy of a God, rejoice with Him in a fair work—behold it very good!

“What is exquisite here,” he told himself as he thought of Mary standing at her work, “is the bending to the yoke, and the resiliency, the strain for release which is irrepressible in so ardent and strong a nature. I remember the proud youths in the Panathenaic frieze, the noble maidens bearing baskets on their heads. Obedience, willingness, patience on the curb—can anything be more beautiful? You ride a perfect horse; he throbs under your hand. A touch will guide him, but brutality will make a mad thing of him. The gentle hand, the gentle hand! He who is privileged enough to have that in his gift, within his faculty, is surely blessed above his fellows!

“And does not that quality of beauty, indeed, depend upon the curb? Can it exist, as such, without it? No: the head cannot bow so meekly without the burden laid, the neck cannot spring until it has been bent. Ah, but the curb is wielded by the hand, and must never be in unwise or brutal employ. Here there is not brutality, but a stupidity beyond belief, something horrible to me, and deeply touching, that one so young, so highly graced, so little advantaged, should be drudging to prepare for others a lot no better than her own—drudging without aptitude, without reason, without hope to realize or ambition to gratify—desiring merely to live and grow and be happy! Horrible, most horrible. Surely so fair a spirit should be more thriftily expended! Transplant that sweet humour, that really beautiful submissiveness into a room more gracious, an atmosphere more appreciative, and how could it fail to thrive, to bear flower and fruit?”

Flower and fruit—ah, me! There leapt up in his heart an answering fire, and he cried to himself, “Hestia! The Hearth!”

VI
MISS MIDDLEHAM IS INVITED TO CONFIRM A VISION

The object of these sentimental and persistent excursions—circular tours, in fact, since, however far they wandered, whether to the Parthenon or to the shrouded Hestia of the Hearth, they always returned to their starting place—by no means filled the scene at Misperton Brand, which, when she crossed it at all, approved or disapproved according to taste and opportunity. Lady Cantacute had no doubt but she was a good little soul, and young Perivale would confidently wager her a girl with whom you could have fun. Her pupils adored her, Miss de Speyne had not yet realized her existence. Tristram Duplessis believed her waiting for him. The Rector had once called her a sun child, it appears; and that sounds like a compliment, but her good looks were denied. Yet “sun child” is apt, from a friendly tongue. Her colour was quick to come and go; no doubt she was burnt becomingly by the weather. She had—he might have said—a dewy freshness upon her, rather the appearance of having been newly kissed. No doubt, she had a figure, no doubt, the hot, full eyes of the South. Here her soul, if she had one, spoke to those who could hear. Excitement made her eyes to shine like large stars, apprehension opened them like a hare’s. Reproach made them loom upon you all black. If you interested her, they peered. They filled readily with tears, and could laugh like wavelets in the sun. But you can’t build a beauty upon eyes alone, and a beauty she had no claim to be. And yet she was well finished off—with small hands and feet, pointed fingers, small ears, quick nostrils, a smooth throat, running from dusk to ivory as the sun held or fainted in his chase. Then she had “pretty ways”—admitted—and there’s enough title for your sun child.

But the Rector, you see, liked her, while his wife disapproved of her fundamentally. Pretty ways, forsooth! “She’s a flirt, James, and I have no patience with Mr. Soames. The Eastward position is perfectly harmless, of course. Many clergymen adopt it—Lord Victor for one. But it was never done here, as you know very well, until Mr. Soames discovered that he could see the Sunday-school benches that way.”

The Rector shrugged with his eyebrows. “Scandalum magnatum, my dear, and dire nonsense at that. Soames is a good fellow with a conscience, and may say his creed in my church to whatever wall he finds helpful.”

Mrs. James retorted that a magnet was quite out of place in a church, and set him gently chuckling. That, as she knew, was final for the day; but she kept her eye steadily upon Miss Middleham, and had her small rewards. What was not discoverable could be guessed at by what was. She lighted by chance upon one crowning episode when, on a Sunday afternoon, she found her cousin Tristram declaiming Shelley’s Prometheus under the apple tree in the garden of Mary’s lodging—not to the apples and birds of the bough, but to the young person herself, snug in an easy chair, her Sunday pleats neatly disposed, no ankle showing, to speak of, but—and this did stamp a fatal air of domesticity upon the whole exhibition—but without a hat. This, if you come to think of it, means the worst kind of behaviour, a perverted mind. Shelley was an atheist, and his Prometheus was probably subversive of every kind of decency—but that is nothing beside the point of the hat, which might be missed by any man, but by no woman. For consider. If a little nursery governess were to be read to by the cousin of a person of good family—a young man who might be engaged to a peer’s daughter by a nod of the head—one might think little of it, had there been evidence of its being an event. But there had been none—far from that. Mrs. James knew her Misperton Brand very well; events there were hailed by young persons in their best hats. Here, nothing of the kind. On the contrary, there was an every-day air about it which showed that the girl was at home with Tristram, Tristram much at home with the girl. That Tristram should be at ease was nothing; it would have been ridiculous had he not been—a nursery governess! But was it not disastrous flippancy—to say no harsher thing—in Mary that she, too, could be at ease; hatless, in a rocking chair; not rocking herself—no, not that! but able to rock at any moment! The enormity was reported, and the Rector said that so long as young women wore their hats in his church he cared nothing what they did with them elsewhere. He threatened to chuckle, so no more could be said; but to Mrs. James, what had been dark surmise before was now garishly plain. The girl was——

But all this takes us far from the schoolroom where Miss Middleham was blamelessly expounding the Plantagenet Kings of England, or from the shady lime-tree walk where Mr. Germain was rhapsodizing upon yokes, submissiveness, and young necks resilient.

He met her, as had now become his habit, on the next morning, and the next. The same bewildering, gentle monologues were delivered—or he paced by her side without speaking, without constraint or any sign that betrayed he was not doing an every-day thing. He was doing a thing which held her spellbound; but shortly afterwards he did another which made her brain spin. He proposed “a little walk” in the course of that afternoon—“Let us say, at six o’clock, if that would be perfectly agreeable to you.” An appointment! It must needs be agreeable; perhaps it was. He called for her at her woodbine-covered lodging, asked for her by name, and stood uncovered in the porch until she appeared; and then they walked by field-ways some couple of miles in the direction of Stockfield Peverel.

Upon this occasion she was invited, if not directed, to talk. It was a little catechism. Mr. Germain asked her of her family and prospects, and she replied readily enough. There was neither disguise, nor pretence about what she had to tell him. She was what Mrs. James would have thought—and did think—frankly canaille. Her father was cashier in the London and Suburban Bank at Blackheath, and her mother was alive. This Mary was the second child of a family of six—all girls. Jane—“We call her Jinny”—was the eldest, and a typewriter in a City office: “We shall never be anything more than we are now, because we aren’t clever, and are quite poor.” Jinny was seven-and-twenty; then came herself, Mary Susan, twenty-four years ago. A hiatus represented two boys who had died in infancy—“they mean more than all of us to Mother”—and then in succession four more girls, the eldest sixteen and “finishing.” “Ready to go out in the world, just as I did.” She knew nothing of her father’s father; but had heard that he had come from the West Country, Gloucestershire, she thought. Her mother’s maiden name had been Unthank. Really, that was all—except that she had been much what she was now—a nursery governess—since she was seventeen. “Seven years—yes, a long time; but one gets accustomed to it.” He tried, but could get no more out of her concerning herself; and he remarked upon it that, so surely as she began to talk of her own affairs, she compared them with Jinny’s and allowed them to fade out in Jinny’s favour. He judged that, as a child, she had been overshadowed. Jinny’s beauty, accomplishments, audacity were much upon Mary’s tongue. Jinny knew French, and could sing French songs. She was tall—“a head taller than me”—not engaged to be married, but able to be so whenever she chose. Not easy to please, however. “Father thinks a great deal of Jinny. We are all proud of her. Perhaps you might not admire her style. Everybody looks at her in Blackheath.” Mr. Germain thought to himself that in that case, he should not admire her style.

It is not to be denied that these details had to be digested under protest. They were perfectly innocent, but they did not help the ideal. She was much more attractive when she was fluttered and whirled off her feet, rather breathless, with a good deal of colour, rather scared—as she had been at first. Now, however, she was at ease, tripping by his side, full of the charms of a dashing Jinny at Blackheath—and it came into his mind with a pang that, at this rate, she—the ideal, first-seen She—might disappear altogether behind that young lady’s whisking skirts. This he could not afford: his inquiries became more personal, and she immediately more coy. There came almost naturally into his attitude towards her an air of patronage—tender, diffident, very respectful patronage, under which she soon showed him that his interest in her was moving her pleasantly. A man of more experience than he—who had none—would have seen in a moment that the attention of the other sex was indeed her supreme interest, the mainspring of her being; would have noticed that every filament in her young frame was sensitive to that. A man of gallantry and expertise could have played upon her as on a harp. Mr. Germain could not do this, but his feelings were strongly attracted. So young, so simple, so ardent a creature! he said to himself, and—“God be good to all of us!—living, breathing delicately, exquisitely, daintily indeed before my eyes upon sixty-five pounds a year!”

This fact had truly taken his breath away. Sixty-five pounds a year—mere wages—for the hire of a girl like a flower. “It was a great rise for me,” she had said. “I had never expected to earn more than £45—Jinny herself only gets a pound a week, and French is required in her office. But Mr. Nunn said that he would pay me £15 more than his usual allowance for governesses because it would not be convenient to have me in the house, and I must therefore pay for a lodging in the village. So I must think myself a very fortunate girl, to have my evenings to myself, and £15 a year into the bargain.”

Mr. Germain, reflecting upon the wages of his butler, valet, cook, head-housemaid, head-gardener, head-keeper, head-coachman, felt himself—though he did not know it—knocked off his feet. This comes of mingling interests under glamour. The beglamoured would wiselier postpone practical inquiries.

But as it was, his interest in the young girl was quickened by admiration and pity to a dangerous height. He more than admired, he respected her. To make so gallant, so enchanting a figure on sixty-five pounds a year! And oh, the scheming and shifts that the effort must involve. His fine lips twitched, his fine, benevolent eyes grew dim; he blinked and raised his brows. Summer lightning seemed to play incessantly over his pale face. “My poor child, my poor, brave child!” he murmured to himself: but aloud he said,

“You interest me extremely—I am greatly touched, somewhat moved. Believe me, I value the confidence you have shown me. I do believe I shall not be unworthy of it. I must think—I must take time to consider—a little time, to see whether I cannot—whether I might presume—Sixty-five pounds a year—God bless me, it is astounding!”

Then, to complete the enchantment, she looked quickly up at him, gave him a full quiver from those deep homes of wonder, her unsearchable eyes. “It’s wonderful to me,” she said, simply, without any pretence, “that you should interest yourself in me. I cannot understand it.”

He schooled himself to smile, to be the patron again. “What do you find so wonderful in that, my dear?”

“That you should find time—that you should care—take notice—oh, I don’t know how to say it. I’m only a poor girl, you know, a nursery governess and a dunce. I was so terrified when you came into lessons that morning—I couldn’t tell you, really. My knees knocked.”

He felt more at his ease. “That was very foolish of your knees, my dear. I was greatly interested. And pray do not think me inquisitive: that is not one of my vices. It is far from my wish to—to patronize one for whom I have so high a respect. Your poverty is as it may be—at any rate, you earn your bread; and in that you are a head and shoulders above myself. And if you are a dunce, which I cannot admit—well, that can be mended, you know. Are we not all dunces? I remember a very wise man saying once that we know nothing until we know that we know nothing. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I think so. But even then—Oh, no! It is very wonderful, I think.” And then, as he looked down at her smiling, he received again her full-orbed attack, and she said in a low voice, “Thank you for being so kind to me.” He had to turn away his head lest he should betray himself, and wreck what was to him a moment of ridiculous happiness. He could not trust himself to speak.

At the turnstile between the smithy and the Rising Sun beershop their ways should have diverged; but, although he had fallen entirely silent, he accompanied her to Orient Cottage, where she lodged. At the gate he held her hand for a minute while he somewhat breathlessly committed himself. “Let us, if you will be so good, repeat our little walk the day after to-morrow—that is, on Saturday. I leave this place on Monday, and should value another conversation with you. On Saturday you will be free, I think? Shall we then say the morning, at eleven?”

She would not allow him to see her eyes now. She murmured her “Yes—thank you,” and he went on.

“It is very kind of you. I may have something to say—but, be that as it may, to an old fogy of my sort the companionship of a young lady is flattering. I hope I may believe that I have not wearied you, since you are willing to indulge me again.”

“No, indeed, Mr. Germain. I shall be proud to come.” And then he let her hand go, and she slipped through the gate. As she entered her door she looked over her shoulder a shy good-night; he saluted her and paced slowly back to the Rectory. Combustible matter had been handled; had she been less simple or he more sure, there’s no saying what might not have been ablaze. As it was he betrayed by no outward sign at all how stirred he was, though he was not very talkative at the dinner-table. The Rectory people dined at the Park. Tristram, it was told, was off again. He had gone to Pau, at a moment’s notice, with young Lord Branleigh.

VII
MISS MIDDLEHAM HAS VISIONS OF HER OWN

As for Mary Middleham, it behoved her to cool her hot cheeks and quench the fires in her eyes as soon as she might, for within a few minutes of Mr. Germain’s departure she must set out again. She had been bidden to the Wakes for supper, and the Wakes lived five miles away. Without changing her dress, she mounted her bicycle and was off. She rode fast, but her thoughts outstripped her. She tried to look cool, but the fire throbbed and gleamed. It was not possible but she must recall every stage in the journey of the week that was passing—a week in which there had not been a day without some signal mark of Mr. Germain’s attention.

He had “noticed” her; he had “noticed” her and her peddling affairs every day since the school-treat. His interest had increased, and was increasing; she could not credit it, but still less could doubt it. What in the world did the good gentleman mean? What did he see in her, what want of such as she was? Things of the sort had happened before; Mr. Duplessis was a gentleman, but he was different, quite different. He was, to say the least of it, a younger gentleman, and age was a leveller. “Fun” was to be expected from such as he; but no more. Her conscience had to be put to sleep where Mr. Duplessis was concerned. But Mr. Germain was good and great, wise and—well, middle-aged—a landlord, almost a nobleman. There was no question of “fun” there, or of conscience either—it was all wild surmise. Could he mean anything? One answer to that only: he must. Then, what under Heaven could he mean but one thing? And that was flat absurdity—impossible of belief. And yet—! So her little careful mind, scared out of its bearings, beat and boxed the compass as her heart drove it.

She had a shrewd eye for that form of flattery which girls call “attentions”; for the education of her world cultivates the fibres of sense, and she had been upon it from her seventeenth to this her four-and-twentieth year. Never a year of the seven but her wits had been strung by some affair or another, scarcely one but she had supposed herself within hail of that hour of moment, had seen before her a point beyond which there was no seeing. “If he asks me, I must answer him. And how?” Mostly he had not; and, after a drowning interval, she had presently discovered herself heart-whole, conscience-clean, with no wounds visible, no weals or bruises to ache their reminders. Then it had all begun again—da capo.

She was very woman to the extremities. Nothing more feminine than she had ever been taken from the side of man, or been more strongly inclined to go back again. Nothing else in life really interested her but the attitude of men—of this man or that man—towards her. That was why work was task-work, and daily intercourse (without an implication) like meat without salt. Instinct had swallowed her up; her mind was a slave, her heart not yet born. She knew nothing whatever of passion; nobody had ever evoked that. She had been touched, interested, flattered, excited, but never in love in her whole life. Love, indeed, in its real sense, was a sealed book; but curiosity absorbed her, and she was as responsive to the flatteries of attention as a looking-glass to breath. Though she was what we call a coquette by nature, she had no vanities, no vulgar delight in flaunting her conquests before the envious. On the contrary, she was secretive, hoarded her love-affairs, preferred to be wooed in the dark. Her philosophy was really very simple and, I say, perfectly innocent. She loved to be loved, sought out, desired. If she was pretty, it was good to be claimed; if she was not, it was better. So all was for the best.

Sitting erect in her saddle, with squared shoulders, open-breasted to the fanning airs, it was clear that she was pleased, and that throbbing heart and coursing blood became her. She had never looked so well or so modest. Her lips were parted, but her eyes were veiled by those heavy lids and deep lashes which to Duplessis spoke strongly of desire, and to Mr. Germain of virgin bashfulness. A smile lay lurking at the corners of her mouth, ready to flash and dart as her thought was stirred. She was not thinking—perhaps she was incapable of it—she was playing with thought. What had he been doing with her to-day? What was he going to do with her the day after to-morrow? It was all very extraordinary. He liked her, he tried to please her—and so far well; but he was not like Mr. Duplessis, never looked at you as he did, as if he was angry that you were not a morsel. It wasn’t that at all: well then, what was it? The milestones flew by between Misperton and Whiteacre; she was received by the buxom Miss Wakes with kisses and smiles; but her questions were not solved, and her excitement must vent itself in sallies.

So it did. Young Mr. Perivale, the auctioneer’s son, was dumb before her, went down like a stricken steer. She teased him, dazzled him, inflamed his face and tied his tongue. She chattered, sang snatches of songs, scribbled on the piano, flashed and loomed, dared greatly to a point, and then turned to fly. She sat on Sally’s lap and ate apples, allowed Letty to whisper secrets in a corner and quarrel with Kitty who should have her next; sedately conscious of her good looks, she sat downcast all of a sudden and let herself be adored—and then of the suddenest she fled them all and went with Mr. Wake to visit a sick mare, to pity and to serve, to hold the twitch for him while he administered a ball. The end of such flights may be imagined; a pursuit, a capture in the shrubbery, her waist a prisoner, and a panting declaration from young Perivale of the state of his feelings.

She seemed heartless to him. She escaped his arm, and, “Oh, no, Mr. Perivale, I really couldn’t,” she told him, when he asked, “Could she care for him?” and looked to snatch a kiss. Which did she mean—that she couldn’t? Both, it seemed. She handled him lightly; but she thoroughly understood the game, and her ease was that of a skilled practitioner. Mr. Perivale was hurt, and, it may be, forgot himself. He told her fairly that her head had been turned. “That’s what it is,” he said, with hot eyes and a sore tongue, “we’re not good enough for you now. The great folks have taken you up. You think they mean something—and perhaps they do. But it’s not what you think it is.”

“I think nothing about it, I assure you,” she cried, with her head high.

“You think nothing of Mr. Germain in the cricket-field—like a codfish on a bank? Nothing of Mr. Duplessis glaring at you fit to break you? You think these very fine attentions? You’ll excuse me, Miss Middleham, but I know the world.”

“Oh, you may believe what you please of me,” said she, flushing up; “but I hope you’ll believe what I’ve told you just now.”

“I’ll accept it, whether or no—,” said Mr. Perivale, and bade her good-night. Left to herself, in the shrubbery, she shed some tears: spretæ injuria formæ. The result of the scene was a supper eaten in subdued silence and the prospect of five miles home, unescorted. She disliked being about in the dark; imagination pictured beauty defenceless and man ranging hungrily. There was a moon, which made it worse. You can only see how dark it is on a moonlight night. No question, however, but she must go.

She made her farewells and set out, her spirits quelled, her little joys all dashed by the quarter-hour’s strife, and a victory which seemed not worth the having. The wind had died down; it was a perfectly still night, close and hot. The very moon seemed hot—heavy, full and burnt yellow—midway up its path. Soon she too was hot, and walking up Faraway Hill got hotter. Her hair loosened and sagged on her neck; her thin muslin gown clung about her knees; she felt tumbled and blowsed, was as near cross as she could ever be, and had spirits like lead—no elation to be got out of the wonderful week, no high-heart hopes for the day after to-morrow, no wild surmises. Atop of the great hill she stopped for breath, fanned herself with her handkerchief, and put up her hair again. Then she mounted and began the short descent to Cubbingdean.

She had not gone a hundred yards before she felt the dull shock and gritty strain which betokens a punctured wheel. This seemed too much, but, dismounting, she found it too true. Disaster on the heels of discomfort; here she was with four fine miles to walk, alone, in the dark, the scorn and reproof of a young Perivale! And part of her way led over Mere Common, where gipsies often encamped, and lay abroad at this season of the year, sleeping, lurking with dogs, doing wickedness in couples. Her heart began to beat at the thought of all this—and what wickedness they might do, and how the dogs would scuffle and tear; but there was no help for it. She had passed this way but three hours ago—and how gay it had looked in the golden sunlight of the late afternoon! Ah, but then her thoughts had been golden, and music in her heart. A snatch came back of the song which had been on her lips; stale jingle it seemed to her now. There had been no gipsies, though, on the Common; comfort in that.

After Cubbingdean, where a little river runs over the road, you climb again between hedgerows and orchards; then comes a piece of woodland on either side, and beyond that you are on Mere Common, which is more than a mile across and half as much again in length. Mary tiptoed through the wood with a knocking heart and, taking breath, addressed herself to the proof before her. She had not, so far, met a living soul, unless pheasants have souls, and hares. These light-foot beasts had made her jump more than enough, and set the pulses at her temples beating like kettle-drums. Her mind was beset by terrors; she had to bite her lip sharply to keep herself to her task.

The wooded road opened, the trees thinned out; now she was on the Common, indeed, and saw the ghostly lumps of furze—each in its shroud—on either hand, with the mist irradiate upon them. She saw the ribbon of white road tapering to a point—and midway of that, beside it, dead in her way, a bright and steady light. At this apparition she stopped short, gazing in panic, her eyes wide, lips apart. Somebody was there! somebody was there—and what could she do?

She had plenty of spirit for the ordinary encounters of daylight. Over-confident young Mr. Perivale, impudent Sunday scholars, young men who took liberties, found their level; Mrs. James herself would not care to go too far. But in the dark her imagination rode her; she then became what indeed she seemed to one at least of her admirers—the hunted nymph cowering in covert, appealing only for the mercy of men. So now, before this terrible light, glimmering there steady and on the watch, her knees began to shake, her eyes to grow dim. She dared not pass it—so much she confessed; she must make a wide cast, and slip by it through the furze.

She plunged desperately in and struck out to the left of the road. Almost immediately the furze was level with her head, often over it; and she had but one arm free to fend it off. It scratched her cheeks, tore her frock, pulled her hair all about her shoulders; she felt the hairpins part and fall. As for the accursed bicycle, it seemed to be battling on its own account like a mad thing, contesting every inch of ground, clinging to every root, sticking in every hollow. Her breath went, and her strength after it, but still she fought and panted. Amazing contrast between what she had been at seven o’clock, and was now at half-past ten! Impossibly fair seemed the spent day, impossibly serene her panic heart. Bitter regret for what was so lovely and so far away started the tears again; she bit her lip, forced herself on; but at last, pushing with all her might between two ragged clumps, she was caught up sharp, felt a stinging pain on her shin, her ankle gripped by something which cut to the bone. She tottered and fell forward upon her bicycle, and as she went down the ring of fire holding her ankle bit and burned—and Mary shrieked.

She had done herself no service by her détour, for she heard a man cry, “Hulloa—I’m coming,” and resigned herself to utter fate. God send him kind!—what were these terrible teeth at her ankle? She felt out to reach it—a wire! She was in a hare-wire, set, no doubt by this ruffian who was coming to her now. She heard him labouring through the bushes, and held her breath; and then again he called—“Where are you? Don’t be afraid.” That was a good voice surely! That was a young man’s voice—not a gipsy’s. Comforted, perhaps interested, she crouched, holding her caught ankle, and waited.

VIII
FRIENDSHIP’S GARLAND

The beam of a lantern enveloped her and her gossamered surroundings; presently it blazed full upon her, discovered her flushed and reproachful face, curtained in hair. She saw a tall person, bareheaded, in what seemed to be white clothes, and, by a chance ray, that he was sallow, black-haired, smiling, and had black eyes. A young man! She had no fears left; she was on her own ground again.

“What under the sky are you doing here?” he said. She almost laughed.

“I’m caught in a hare-wire. It hurts very much.”

“It would, you know. Let me look.” He knelt beside her, and then his quick fingers searched for the wire. As they touched hers she felt them cool and nervous. “I’ve got it. I say! it’s nearly through your stocking. No wonder you cried—but now you know why a hare cries. Quiet now—I’ll have it off in a minute.” He dived for a knife, talking all the time. “I dare say you think that I set that wire for a hare, and caught you. You’re quite wrong. I don’t kill hares, and I don’t eat ’em; too nearly related to us, I believe. One minute more—” and he nipped the wire. “There—you are free. You can leap and you can run. Perhaps you’d care to tell me why you battle in these brakes, tearing your frock to ribbons and scratching your eyes out, when you might walk that road like a Christian lady. Just as you please—why, good Lord, you’ve got a bike! It beats cock-fighting. But don’t tell me unless you care to; perhaps it’s a secret.”

She stiffened her shoulders for the fray. “I wish to tell you because I’m ashamed of myself now. Of course, it’s not a secret. I have punctured my bicycle, and have to walk home—three miles more. And I saw your light in front of me, and was frightened.”

His eyes were as bright as her own, but much more mischievous. “Frightened?” he said. “What, of the light?”

“No, no, of course not. But some one must have lit it.”

“Do you mean to say that you were frightened of me? The most harmless creature on God’s earth?”

She laughed. “How could I know how harmless you were? I thought you were gipsies.”

“I couldn’t be gipsies. Perhaps I am a gipsy—I’m not sure that I know what I am. My father might, poor man—and he’s an alderman. That light, let me tell you, was going to cook my supper; and now it shall cook yours, if you’ll have some.”

An invitation suggested in that way can only have one answer from a young woman. “No, thank you. I must go on if I can. It’s dreadfully late.” He reflected.

“It’s late, but it’s not dreadful at all. These summer nights are made to live in. Look at the moon on those misty bushes! Nothing lovelier can be dreamed of by poets than the hours from now to dawn. Sightseers always go for daylight—and in July everything’s blotted up in sap green. There’s no drawing in July—I say, you might get up, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I might.” She tried, and sat down again with a wry face. “It hurts awfully.” He had watched the performance.

“I guessed it would. Well, look here. I’ll help you.” He put out his two hands, met hers, and pulled her gently up by the wrists. “Lean on my shoulder—lean as hard as you like.” So she did, because she must.

She limped by his side through the brake, and he talked on. It seemed to her afterwards that she had never heard so much talk in her life. Singular talk too—as if to himself—no hint of her in it—no affected gallantry or solicitude—no consciousness of her presence, not even of her contact; and yet, when she stumbled and clung to his shoulder, he took her round the waist and supported her whole weight with his arm, and so held her until he had her safely by his fire.

He made her sit down upon his rug, took off her shoe and told her to take her stocking off while he got a rag. She obeyed without question, and presently had her ankle in a bandage, which smelt aromatic and stung her, but gave strength and was pleasant. She was very grateful, and entirely at her ease. “I think I’m glad that I was afraid of you,” she told him. “Do you know that I’ve never been so taken care of in my life?” He was putting her shoe on at the moment, pulling tight the laces. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You are the sort that was made to be taken care of—abominably feminine. The odds are that you’ll put my picture out of my head for at least three days—so I shall have to stop here until it comes back again.”

“Then I’m very sorry—” she began, but stopped, as if puzzled.

“You need not be. I shall be perfectly happy. And it will give you a chance of biking out here to report yourself.”

Was this an invitation? Did he—? No; it was never done in that tone.

“I shall certainly come,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll show me the picture. Are you an artist?”

He nodded, busy preparing a dish for the fire, a little silver dish, into which he was breaking eggs. “I’m going to make an omelette; you are to eat half of it. I’m an artist in omelettes, I do believe. Yes, I’m a sort of artist; a bad one, you know. But we’re all bad unless we’re the best of all—and there’s only one best. However, it’s all the same. You have your fun.”

“But—” She was looking about her with animation—“But where do you—? I mean, do you—?”

He chuckled, but mostly with his black eyes. “I know what you mean. Everybody asks the same questions, and breaks them off at the same point. I’ll tell you. I live here, at this moment. I do travel in that cart—and this is my tent—and that ghost over there is my white horse—and hulloa! you’ve woken Bingo.” A lithe grey dog came delicately forward into the light, with lowly head and lowly wagging tail. He was like a terrier, with hound’s ears, soft and sleek and silver grey. He sniffed at Mary’s dress and feet, sneezed over the bandage, and, edging up, put a cool nose against her neck, and then a warm tongue.

“Oh, what a darling!” she cried softly, and made much of him.

“He’s a Bedlington,” said his owner, above the sizzling eggs, “a beauty and a devil. He likes you evidently—and reasonably. He won’t curl up like that on every lady’s skirts, I assure you. Don’t talk though, or I can’t beat up this thing. Talk to Bingo; he’s my friend.”

This friendly, cool-tempered young man was, she thought, very odd to look at—long in the body and thin in the leg. He was quite new to her experience. Gentlefolk she knew, and other folk, her own, and all the infinite gradations between—county, clergy, professional, retired military, down to commercial and even lower. This was a gentleman certainly—and yet—well, there was Mr. Duplessis, for instance, with whom you were never to forget that he was a gentleman and you were village. Mr. Duplessis was very easy, until you were easy too—then he got stiff directly, and back you must go. But this strange gentleman didn’t seem to notice such things; he seemed too full of what he was thinking about, or doing—and if he looked at you by chance, as often as not he didn’t seem to see you; and when you looked at him, he never noticed it at all. She adjudged him “foreign,” and to be sure, he had a narrow, foreign face, very swarthy, with a pair of piercing black eyes, a baffling smile, and quick, sudden ways of turning both against you, as if he had that moment found you out, and was amused. At other times, as she came to learn, those eyes of his could be fathomless and vacant, could stare through you as if you were a winter hedge. His hair was jet-black, and straight, and his moustache followed his mouth and curled up when he smiled. She had never seen a man so deft with his fingers or so light and springy on his feet. Those long, eager fingers—she could still feel them at her ankle and marvel at their strength and gentleness as they sought about and plucked free the biting wire. His dress too was extraordinary—a long white sweater with a rolling collar, a pair of flannel trousers; no socks, but sandals on his feet. Long and bony feet they were, beautifully made, she said. Whatever he was or was not, certainly he was kind and interesting; and perhaps the most baffling quality about him was his effect upon herself—that she was entirely at home in his company, and had no care to know what he thought about her.

He served her with omelette hot and poured her out a glass of pale wine, which smelt like flowers, and was stronger, she found, than it seemed. A picnic at midnight! It was great fun! She glanced at her host, and was answered by a gleam. He was enjoying it, too. “Do you know what I’m going to do next?” he asked her, breaking the first silence he had kept since the encounter. “I shall catch that absorbed ghost, which is really a horse, and take you your three miles in my cart. Before that I shall mend your puncture for you.”

She wouldn’t allow that. “Please, not. I can mend it quite well to-morrow, and won’t have you spoil your supper. I have had mine, you must remember and if I am to have another, I insist upon your company.” He laughed “All right,” and fell to again.

Perhaps her wine made her talkative; but I think that she had leisure of mind to be interested. At any rate, she volleyed him a string of questions about himself, at all of which he laughed—but she found out mostly what she wanted to know. As thus—That cart contained his whole worldly property. “It’s my house, or my bed, or both; it’s my carriage and pair, my bank, studio, library, forcing-house, potting-shed, bath-room, bed-room, as I choose it. When it’s wet I can be dry in there; when it’s fine, I leave it alone. It’s all I have, and it’s more than enough. I’ve pared it down to the irreducible minimum, and yield now to one man only—the tramp. Him I believe to be the wisest son of man, for he has nothing at all. Now, you know, the less you have of your own, the more you have of everybody’s. The whole world is the tramp’s; but it can’t be mine, because of that shell on wheels. I am as the snail to the hare—but what are you, pray, and the rest of your shackled generation? . . .

“There’s a tent in that cart, which will go up in ten minutes—anywhere. And the materials of my trades are there—I’ve several. I scratch poetry—and paint in water-colours—and ain’t bad at tinkering.” At this she gazed with all her eyes; but he assured her, “I’ll mend you a kettle as soon as your bike. I learnt sawdering from a drunken old Welshman under the shadow of Plinlimmon. He died in my arms presently, and left me his tools as well as his carcase. . . . You need not be shocked. I do it because I like it—I don’t say that I should be ruined, mind you, if I gave it up . . . but one can’t paint against the mood, still less write. . . .

“I’ve done this sort of thing—and gardening (I’m a bit of a gardener, too)—for nine years or more, and shall never do anything else. Why should I? I’m perfectly happy, quite harmless, and (I do believe) useful in my small way. I could maintain that, I think, before a judge and jury.”

He had no need, certainly, to maintain it at length before his present hearer, who was very ready to believe him; but he seemed to feel in the vein to justify himself.

“You see, I’m self-sufficient. I renounced my patrimony on deliberation, and support myself and a little bit over. Tinkering don’t go far, I own—sometimes I do it for love, too. But I sell a picture now and then to a confiding poor devil who only asks to buy ’em, and do very well. I destroy most of ’em, because they don’t come off; if I had the nerve to sell those I should have more money for plants.”

She stopped him here. “Plants!” she said, puzzled, “but——”

He quizzed her. “You look for my conservatory? My herbaceous border? I defy you. You’ll never find them. If you could the game would be up. All the same, all my superfluous pence find their way to the nurserymen—nurserymen of sorts. . . .”

As she did not press him he resumed his monologue. “Mind you, I say that I have the best time of any man on this earth. But you’re judging me, I know. The women are always the worst. They think it such shameful waste of time, when one might be dressing one’s person, or looking at theirs.”

She wasn’t judging him at all; she was drinking him up—him and his wisdom. For the first time in her life she was really interested in something in a man which did not reside in his sex, or which, it is perhaps kinder to say, had no relation to her own. So absorbed was she that his cut at her kind did not affect her, if she heard it; but she noticed at once that he had stopped.

“Please go on—please tell me more about yourself—about your way of life, I mean. Oh, I think you are extraordinary!”

She had completely forgotten herself. Her eyes had not for a moment left searching his face; her hands cupped her cheeks, her knees supported her elbows; and all about her arms and shoulders her loose hair streamed and rippled. Her face was hot, her eyes like wet stars; she had never looked so pretty, perhaps because she neither knew nor cared anything about it, whether she looked well or whether he thought so. It was plain that he had other things to think of—and one thing is plainer, that if she had not, her hair would have been up long ago.

He laughed at her wonderment. “Oh, I don’t know that I’m extraordinary at all—on the contrary, everybody else seems extraordinary to me. It’s so simple. I don’t doubt but I could make you see what a great life I lead—that’s my business as an artist. But it would do you no sort of good—and I’m not a proselytizer. The thing is to get your fun out of what you’re obliged to do—or, if you prefer it, to make it your business to do what you like. The Socialists say so, and so do I. After that we differ. We differ as to ways and means. They say that people can only be made happy by dynamite. Dynamite first, Act of Parliament afterwards. Mr. Wells tones down the dynamite; talks about a comet. It’s dynamite he means. That’s where he’s wrong. You can shred people’s morals by blowing their neighbours up—but not their characters. Their morals will go to pieces because character remains. You don’t want that at all. Morals will always follow character, and that’s what you must get at, but not by dynamite. Well, how are you going to develop character? I say by Poverty. Pride’s Purge! There’s my nostrum for the world-sickness—Poverty, Poverty, Poverty! In fact, I’m a Franciscan—by temperament and opinion, and not because I’m in love with the Virgin Mary. I have nothing, and possess all things; I’m rich because I’m destitute; I’m always filling myself because I’m always empty. Do you see?”

She looked doubtfully, frowned a little, then took her eyes from him. “No, I don’t see. I don’t understand you. I know that you are not laughing at me; but I think you will now. Never mind; you’ve been very nice to me.”

“My dear young lady,” he said, his glass in mid-career, “I assure you that I’m not laughing at all. I’m telling you what I believe to be literal truth. Perhaps one of these days you will be really poor, and then you’ll agree with me. How can you fill yourself if you’re full already? and where do you find any pleasure in life except in wanting a thing, and getting it? Can’t you distinguish between having and using? Can’t you see that to possess this Common, fenced and guarded by keepers and varlets of sorts, would be exactly the same as to use it as I do now, with all the hamper of the stake in the county added on to it?”

She looked at her toes, frowned, tried to think—then raised her eyes. “Yes, yes, perhaps I see that. But you must know that I am quite poor. And yet——”

“Ah,” he said, “you’re not poor enough. You can’t allow yourself to be. It isn’t pence that you must hoard, but opinion, my friend, the sound opinion of your neighbours—and of yourself, too. Look here: apply what I’ve been saying about this Common to every blessed thing—from God to groundsel, from the Kingdom of Heaven to your villa at Putney—apply it to religion, to rank, to marriage, to murder, and blazes—and you’ll see. But you shall work it out at home, for I’m going to take you to bed.” He rose here and stretched himself, his hands deep in his pockets. Her eyes pleaded.

“Please, let me think of something first.”

“Think away. We’ll talk presently, but now I’m going to raise the ghost.” He went lightly after his cropping horse, and Mary sat by the fire.

How all this tilted her balances! He little guessed what deeps he had stirred within her simple soul. Deeps! Why, what fisherman had ever yet dropped his hook below the pretty surface? What evidence had she, or any one, that deeps there were? Oh, the great views at his will and pleasure—this gentleman-tinker’s, who made omelettes in the middle of the night, and talked like a ruler of men, putting down and setting up with unfaltering voice, altering respects, changing relationships like a lawgiver. Poverty—destitution—to go beggared of opinion as well as pence, and to be the richer for it? She might well pout her lips and wrinkle her little nose as she applied all this to her own concerns. Her heart sank to view her own belittling. Gossip, flirtation, little quarrels, and harsh judgments, a nod from Mrs. James, a smile from Miss de Speyne, dresses, a new blouse, young Perivale, Mr. Duplessis, Mr. ——. No, no, not Mr. Germain! Even now there was a faint throb of the heart as she thought of the day after to-morrow, and hugged the comfort of an excitement to come.

“Ready, if you are,” she heard, and rose to join her host. The gentleman-tinker was in the road with his horse and cart, passing the reins along. Bingo, snorting and stretching his hind legs, was very ready for the frolic.

“How’s the ankle?”

“Much better. Too much better.”

“Nonsense. That’s one of the things we must have. I don’t preach abstinence from limbs.”

She laughed. “No, of course not. But I think that I should have liked to be kept in for a day—or two. And I know that I can’t be.”

“You’re better out, I suspect.”

“I’m not sure now—since you have been talking. You have made me think.”

“You’ll find it hard work. Meantime you had better get up—it’s gone midnight.” That sent her up with a little shocked cry. He lifted in the bicycle, and mounted beside her. “Now—where are we going?”

She told him. Misperton Brand was the first village he came to.

“Oh, I know it,” he said. “I had adventures there, ages ago. I encamped in a park—Lord Somebody’s park—and they turned me out. But I met that lord afterwards, and he proved to be rather a good sort of man.”

“He’s Lord Cantacute. Do you know the Rector, Mr. Germain?”

“No. I don’t get on with rectors. They seem to think that I should go to their churches, but I never do. I don’t ask them to mine; why should they ask me to theirs? There’s an obliquity about Christianity which beats me. What’s his name? Germain? Any relation of Lord George’s, I wonder? celebrated man, to whom the Americans ought to put up a statue. He gave them their country, I believe. Gave it away to them, you might put it.”

She knew nothing of Lord George. “There’s a Mr. John Germain,” she said, not quite ingenuously, “who is head of the family.”

He considered Mr. John Germain. “I believe I’ve come against him, too, somewhere. Germain—Germain—Shotaway—Shotover? That’s it—Shotover House—big red and white place, with a pediment and a park. Near Reading. Yes, I was turned out of that, too. Solemn old boy, thin, with glasses.”

She flushed up in the dark. “He’s very nice. He’s staying here. I know him. He’s kind.”

Her companion looked round. “Do you mean that he’s kind to you, or kind all round? He wasn’t very kind to me. He said that I fostered contempt for my class. I admitted it, and he got angry. Why shouldn’t I, if I believe it contemptible?”

“He’s very kind to me,” she replied seriously. “He’s a gentleman, you know, and——”

“And you’re a lady. Well, that’s not necessarily kind—to you.”

“But,” she said, “you don’t let me finish. I am not a lady, you know—not of—well, not of his class. That’s why I think him kind.”

“I’m sure I hope you are right,” her friend said. “How does his kindness show itself?” She made haste to justify Mr. Germain.

“Well, to begin with, in his being interested in me at all. He talks to me—he asks about my work.”

“What is your work?” she was shortly asked.

Teaching, she told him; she was a governess.

He looked at her now, strange man, with real interest. “Are you, though? By Heaven, then there’s a chance for you yet. You’re above us all. He may well be kind, with the next generation depending entirely on you. Teachers and mothers—no parson can beat that. Is Germain a schoolmaster?”

She began in a shocked voice, “Oh, no! He’s a gen—” but was drowned in laughter. He threw his head up and laughed to the sky.

“You’re a wonder, I must say. I beg him ten thousand pardons—I forgot. Of course, he’s a gentleman.”

Mary was piqued. “That’s not very kind of you,” she said, with reproach in her tones, and he humbled himself at once.

“I’m very sorry, but I’ll confess the whole. The fact is, you’ve jumped into a little pit which I had dug for you—headlong. Upon my word, I beg your pardon. But don’t you know that these class-boxes into which you plump every mother’s son of us, and are at such pains to keep guarded, lest one of us should step out, are the very things I’m vowed to destroy? Why, God be good to us, what are we to do in our boxes—with all this going on?” He stretched his arm out—“This dappled earth, singing, and spinning like a great dusty ball through star-space! Oh, I must talk to you again about all this—you, with children in your two hands to be made into men and women! But not now—it’s too serious. When are you coming to report your ankle, and tell me that I’m forgiven?”

She smiled upon him. “I’ve quite forgiven you. It was I who was foolish. I am sure you must be right. May I come on Sunday? That’s my free day. I should like to talk to you—about lots of things.”

“Delighted to see you,” he said. “Come by daylight this time, and come by road. Here’s your village opening.”

He set her down at the top of the street, since she would not allow him further. Prepared to thank him with her prettiest, the words died on her tongue. “Not a bit, not a bit,” he cut them down. “I love company. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely, orating away. You’re a rare listener; you seem as if you had never heard it before. Good-night.”

She held him up her hand—he touched it—turned the horse, and was gone.

When she had lighted her candle the first thing she did with it was to hold it up that she might look in the glass. Her hot eyes and burning cheeks were ignored for more serious disorders. “My hair!” And then she laughed. “He would not know whether I had any hair!”

Late as it was, and tired as she was, sleep was long in coming.

IX
THE WELDING OF THE BOLT

Poetry, Lord Cantacute was saying at dinner, is like a wind-egg—aberration in the producer, useless for consumption. You don’t attempt to eat a wind-egg. It is remarkable, perhaps; but, once gaped at, you had best leave it to the parent fowl that will be glad of it. “You encourage cannibalism?” asked the Rector, with a lifting eyebrow. Really, Lord Cantacute saw nothing against it. Perhaps it was a matter of taste—but so was poetry. And who else could thrive upon the stuff? Since all this was apropos of the absent Tristram, whose talents and fluency were admitted while their trend was deplored, Mrs. James could not fail to remember a thriving consumer of his wares. Had she not caught him administering wind-egg by spoonfuls to a hatless young lady? The excursion was closed with a flash by Miss Hertha de Speyne, who, from her golden throne, said that poetry was very well if the mortal poet did not practise what he sang. No other art, she thought, had that grain of vice in it. Now, we were not ready to practise poetry.

Mr. Germain contributed nothing to the game, but ate his dinner, or gazed solemnly at one speaker after another. This was unusual; he was fond of abstract discussion, and had his ideas about poetry. He had his favourite practitioners, too—Virgil, Pope, Gray; poetry, for him, must be elegant above all things. Elegant, fastidious, deliberately designed. Dante he could not admire. Petrarch and Tasso were the Italians, their conceits not conceited, for him. He had even—but this was a profound secret—pitched a slender pipe of his own, and was now resuming the exercise. His vein was the courtly-pastoral. The nymph Mero, let us say, was sought by the God Sylvanus, who wooed her in a well-watered vale. Or a young shepherdess—call her Marina—was the dear desire of Cratylus the mature, who offered her with touching diffidence, the well-found hearth, the stored garners, the cellar, for whose ripe antiquity (alas!) he himself could vouch. The maid was not cold; it was himself who doubted whether he were not frigid. He besought her not to despise his silvering beard, the furrow on his brow. Boys, urged he, are hot and prone; but the wood-fire leaps and dies, while the steady glow of the well-pressed peats endures until the morning, and a little breath revives all its force. Thus Cratylus to Marina in his heart.

The inexpert poet is not content with numbers; as Miss de Speyne had said, he is apt to probe what he expounds. Also, by a merciful provision of our mother, no man is permitted to think himself ridiculous, nor indeed is necessarily so. The poets are right there. The intentions of mature Cratylus may be as honourable, his raptures as true, his sighs as deeply fetched as any of beardless Corydon’s. Only, when desire fades in us, o’ God’s name let us die. Our friend here cried in his heart that his had never bloomed before. Spell-bound to a beautiful vision, he walked enraptured in the light of it, travelling up the path of its beam, sighing, not that it should be so long, but that his steps should lag so short of his urgency. And to the lips of his heart—as it were—recurred and recurred the dear, familiar phrases, true once and true now to who so love. The well-found hearth, and One beside it: surely, happily there! Denied him for so long; now in full sight! The buffeting, windy world outside, the good door barred, the ruddy fire, the welcoming arms, the low glad voice! Happy, studious evenings—an arm within an arm, a petition implied, and a promise—a held-out hand, a little hand caught within it—a prayer, an exchange of vows, a secret shared—a secret, a wonderful hope! Happy Cratylus, happy poet! Nay, it was not too late for that—not too late, please God!

In his now exalted mood, every faculty shared the high tension. His reasoning was exalted, and told him that his deep distrust of his own class proceeded from deep experience. The fierce, querulous, and dead beauty of Lady Diana passed over the scene; palely and feverishly she hunted her pleasures; and Ægisthus stalked behind, attentive, to whisper in her ear at the offered moment. No hopes could be justified under the white light of that torturing memory. He knew very well, he told himself, that no woman of his daily acquaintance could give him what he longed for. In her degree each and every one must be for him a Diana Wymondesley—with her friendships, connexions, thousand calls this way, that way, every way, any way; with her flying, restless crowded life, winters in Cairo, summers in Cowes, Scottish autumns, Sicilian springs. When could she be at home? And he, with his longings for the hearth, that infinitely holy place, must stand, be courteous, play the great gentleman, flog himself to Cairo, Biarritz, Algiers, and feel behind the mask he wore the taloned bird rake at his vitals. Never, never more! Life is to be lived once, and to each his appointed way; appointed if you must, chosen if you can. Ah, me, if choice were his at this late hour! His heart was beating high as he rose in his place for the ladies to leave the dining-room. Miss de Speyne, presuming on familiar use or her prerogative, sailed out first, a very Juno; Mrs. James lingered for a parting shot at her Rector.

“You may be right, James—it is not for me to contradict you. But Tristram is better at Pau than here; and I have good reasons for saying so.” The Rector bowed to his wife, and for once approved Hertha’s easy manners.

Returned to the Rectory, when the Rector had gone to smoke his cigar, Mr. Germain had a little conversation with Mrs. James. If he did not deliberately seek, he deliberately provoked the turn it took. But it began innocently enough.

She asked him his time of departure on Monday, supposing that he must go, and tailed off into to-morrow’s engagements. It was now that his face went a thought greyer, and that a shade more stiffening thrilled his spine. A visit to certain Manwarings was proposed for the afternoon. “Your morning you claim, I imagine?” she had said.

“No,” he replied, “I gladly make it yours. To-morrow’s, that is,” and there he paused, and she waited.

He took up his tale greatly. “On Saturday my morning is arranged for. I have, as you know, taken upon myself to be interested in the concerns of your Miss Middleham”—he marked, but chose not to remark, the flash in the lady’s eyes. Her Miss Middleham! “To-morrow I am to be allowed yet further into them; matters of moment, perhaps—I know not. That is for Saturday, at eleven.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. James—and the vowel held a volume, held it tightly. “Really she ought to be very much obliged to you.”

“Not at all. The obligation, in my view, is quite the other way. At my time of life, my dear Constantia, we are apt to plume ourselves upon the confidences of the young. I should not venture——”

“The confidences of that particular young person,” said Mrs. James with point—a dry point—“are likely to be modified on this occasion. But if she should happen to be unreserved, I could wish you would use your influence for her good.”

“Doubtless,” he agreed, “that is my sincere desire. If you could suggest to me any direction in which my services——”

Mrs. James looked at him, and he, while meeting her gaze, must needs remark upon her hard-rimmed eyes. It was as if they had been set in metal. “We spoke of Tristram at dinner—I don’t know whether you heard. I said that he was better even at Pau with poor Lord Bramleigh just now, than here. You may not have heard me.”

Mr. Germain blinked. “I am not sure that I should have conceived you, had I overheard the remark. You paint Misperton in dark colours, if what I have heard of young Bramleigh be true. And—to resume the first subject of our conversation——”

“Unfortunately the subjects are connected,” said Mrs. James, and saw him flinch. “Tristram is old enough to look after himself; but surely you will agree that his companionship is not the best for a girl in her position.”

He had not for nothing worn a mask some twenty years of his life. Wearers of these defences become very expert by use, and can turn them against themselves at will. Mrs. James got no joy out of her revelation, and he little pain; he gave her a stately bow.

“I entirely agree,” he said.

“Of course, of course.” She accepted him, but went on; “we cannot but regret it, those of us who take an interest. Unfortunately I can hardly speak to her upon such a subject, since I have no authority over her—and James will not. He is pleased to be diverted at what I have to tell him—you know his way. I don’t know how far your kindly inquiries——”

“We have hardly reached her matrimonial projects,” said Mr. Germain, so simply that Mrs. James lost her head.

“Matrimony! A nursery governess! My dear John, pray don’t misunderstand me.” He continued to blink urbanely at her, master now of the position.

“I wish to avoid precisely that. Little claim as I have to discuss such matters with Miss Middleham, I should certainly ask her to pause if I believed that she could accept the addresses of a young man like Tristram. Perhaps I am prejudiced—but——”

“Tristram,” said Mrs. James tartly, “is as likely to marry Mary Middleham as you are.”

“Is he, though?” he said, with a little jocularity. But he blinked again.

From the chamber of the beglamoured Cratylus I may pass to that of his Mero—or Marina, if you prefer it—who (with no Manwarings in prospect to afford distraction) had a day of routine to go through before the interview could be reached. There was little in this to fix her mind or woo it back from straying into the vague. It is not surprising, therefore, to find her on the morrow of her midnight adventure—a note of apology and excuse despatched to The Sanctuary—snug in her bed at an unwonted hour, nursing her cheek and remembrances together, as much alive to the fact that she had been interested yesterday as to those which promised her that she was to be absorbed to-morrow.

And then, as she lay wide-eyed, dreaming, wondering, softly-smiling, quick-breathing, her wide horizons opened up to her by flashes, or were clouded up suddenly, enfolded in the rosy mists of conscious pursuit. To know, as she must, that her company was desired, courted, deeply considered by a considerable gentleman could not but give a tinge of rose to her dream-senses. The warm fleeces enwrapped her, hugged her; they could be felt, they made her cheeks tingle as her blood coursed free. Against this passive ecstasy—this rapture of the chase—there rose in strife a new feeling, a dawning sense of power to judge and weigh, a discretion imparted, a dignity of choice. And as this prevailed and her mind leapt back to her friend of the night, see the mists thin and part and grow pallid; see her caught breath and brightening eyes as she strained to watch the far-stretching plains of life, the distant seas, blue hills—wonderful vistas, beholding which she seemed to lay her hand upon the pivot of the world. The battle raged over her form supine. Like a dormouse in her nest she lay, but within her breast, within her mind, the armies engaged swept forward and back.

A day of this must not be, and could not. She must have stimulant, she must have excitants, must do something or go mad. She recollected with a thumping heart that she might see her friend again. She was to report herself and her ankle; he had asked her and she had promised to come. There was an appointment. True, it had been for Sunday—but what were Sundays to him? It might be to-day. As she dressed she dallied with the temptation, and before she had finished she knew that she had fallen.

Early in the afternoon she sprang into her saddle, eager for the encounter. Her ankle was forgotten; she felt strong and, exulting in her strength, cleared the miles with that sense of delighted effort which a bicycle only can give—because it replies so readily. Her heart beat high as from Chidiocks, that suburb of Misperton, she saw the white hill atop of which the Common began. She walked it deliberately, holding herself back that she might play with the pleasure promised—a pleasure none the worse, mind you, for being perfectly lawful. This man was her friend, and she had never had a man for a friend before. She felt good, and very strong.

There, then, was the white peak of the tent. There, too, was the tilt-cart! So he was waiting for her promise to be kept! There again was the back of the prowling Ghost. Bingo ran on three legs across the road—dear Bingo! And there was her friend! Yes, but he was not alone. She was dismayed—had not expected that. A horseman talked to him from the road—a horseman? Ah, no, it was a horsewoman; and her friend (if she might continue to think him so) stood there in an animated discussion, and declaimed upon a paper in his hand. Her heart fell far, but she pressed on. Nothing in the world—neither tact, nor delicacy, nor fear of detection—could have stopped her. She must know more at any cost.

She went as far as she dared by the road, and then, dismounting, moved on to the turf and dropped her bicycle. Screened by furze-bushes she got to within fifty, thirty, twenty yards, and there stopped, knelt down, and watched with intensely bright eyes. The mounted lady was Miss de Speyne, the Honourable Hertha de Speyne, proud daughter of the Cantacutes, a personage so far out of her reach that her least act was acceptable as a stroke of great Fate—a sunstroke or a thunderbolt. Alas, for her joys!

But her friend, no less easy by day than by night, in one company than another, held in his hand a drawing—as she guessed—and talked vehemently of it. She could hear his words—“It’s not bad—it’s not at all bad—I admit it; and thanks very much for allowing me. But if you say that of a drawing, you say the cruellest, worst—unless you call it clever. It wants breadth, it wants maîtrise; it wants, as all half-art wants, the disdainful ease of Nature, to produce what Nature can never produce. There’s a fine line in Baudelaire—well, never mind that. No—I’ve done better than this. I did some Savernake things which pleased me—trees and glades, evening things. We had some yellow skies, shot green—wonderful, wonderful! I got some poetry into them. But this”—he gave it a flick of the fingers—“this is rather smug, you know.”

“I don’t think it smug,” said Miss de Speyne, with her great air of finality. “I like it.”

“Glad of that, anyhow,” was the artist’s thanksgiving. “Your praise is worth having.”

“I’ve worked very hard,” the lady said; “but I’m afraid I can talk better than I paint.”

“Ah, we all do that.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s the worst of it.” They paused: she patted her horse, he looked with narrowed eyes into the weather. Presently she said, “I suppose you couldn’t come and see my things—and bring some of your own—could you, do you think? My people would be delighted.” He looked at her, considering.

“So should I be—charmed. Yes, I’ll come if you mean it. When?”

“Of course I mean it,” Miss de Speyne rejoined. “Could you come to luncheon, the day after to-morrow? That’s Sunday.”

“I know it is,” he said with a laugh. “What a heathen you think me! Yes, I’ll certainly come. But—where are you, exactly?”

“Misperton Brand—Misperton Park. You go through the village, and a little way beyond the Rectory you come to a lodge.”

“Oh, I know it!” Then he laughed at his memories. “I’ll tell you afterwards—after luncheon. Thanks, I’ll come. But I must be back pretty early in the afternoon.”

“Your own time, of course.” She gathered up her reins. “Till Sunday,” she said with a nod. He bowed—hatless as before. Miss de Speyne pushed homeward; and Mary Middleham, with hot splashes of colour in her cheeks, returned to her fallen bicycle, and never looked behind.

How much the grave benevolence of Mr. Germain may have gained by this little contretemps we may guess. Broad vistas, after all, are very well indeed for the robust; they are bracing and tonic. But if I am to be snug, give me rosy mists.

X
CRATYLUS WITH MARINA: THE INCREDIBLE WORD

Upon the day designed by highest Heaven—as we are led to suppose—they took the way of Misperton Park, the enamoured gentleman and the lady. They sat under the famous Royal Oak—a shade with which she was, we know, familiar—Cratylus talked, Marina sat modestly listening. If he saw her the spirit of the tree—the peering Dryad Mero caught and held to his words, it’s all one. Her simple allure, her dainty reserves had ravished his senses; the tinge of sunburn in her cheeks, the glint of conscious pride in her eyes, beat back like blown flame upon his blood. That fired his brain. In a word, he loved, therefore he believed.

He spoke of himself to-day, of his youth and marriage. Lady Diana was not named, but her knife under the cloak was implied. Sadly, yet without complaint, he related the ossifying of all his generous hopes. “This,” he said, “was long ago, but the dead cannot all at once be hidden under the turf. I have been ten years long at a burying, and now have done. What remain to me of years, I know not truly; but they will be the more precious if they are to be few. I believe that I am very capable of happiness—perhaps even of bestowing it. My affairs are in good order; I have been fortunate, as you know, in worldly respects. A childless widower, I pick up my life again at fifty where I left it at five-and-twenty. And I tell myself—I have told myself but newly—that I may not be too late.”

To this sort of soliloquy, to the grave voice that rehearsed it, she had nothing to say. He found that he must import her bodily into his conversation.

“For one thing,” he continued, after a pause of exploration, “I now have leisure, as you have seen, to interest myself in my neighbours, and have derived so much pleasure from it that I am deeply grateful to those who have indulged me. You are one. I think that you must have remarked what happiness your society and your confidence have been to me.” Her shamefastness, which tied her tongue, compelled him to probe. “Have you not seen that?”

She murmured that he had been very kind, that she was grateful. “Not so, my dear,” said he, “but the persons must be transposed. The kindness is yours, the obligation upon me. Come! Can you not tell me that you have understood me? Can you not let me be satisfied that you realize your own benevolence? If you cannot, I must withhold what I was about to say to you. I should want for courage. I must ask for your assurance. You will not refuse it?”

Exciting, mystifying talk! She dared not look up—but she asked him, What it was that she was to tell him?

He luxuriated in her bashfulness. “Why, my dearest child,” he said, very near to her, “I want to know whether you believe me happy in your company?”

She would not look at him, but she said “I hope that you like me—I do hope that.”

Then he took her hand and held it in both of his own. He gazed tenderly down upon her hanging head—not one meek beauty of her escaped him, neither of burning cheek, curved lashes, of heavy eyelids, rising breast. “Then, dear child, I will tell you plainly that I love you most sincerely; that you have my heart, such as it is, in your little hands—just as certainly as one of those hands is here in mine. I have told you the truth about myself—what I hoped to be, what I was, what I am become. And now, if you can repay that confidence with a confidence, I shall be satisfied indeed. But I must ask you again, Can you value the love of a man twice your age? Remember, I shall not be hurt if you tell me that you cannot. I shall respect your confidence, whatever it may be; and shall never trouble you again. . . . What do you tell me now, Mary?”

She had started visibly at the word “love,” and had been revealed to him for a flash, which gave him the value of her wide eyes, and of the flying colour, which now left her very pale, then lapped her in flame again, and showed her like a red rose. A flash only; for immediately after she had bowed her head so deeply that her chin nearly touched her bosom, and she could have smelt the knot of carnations fastened there. Her hand was still his prisoner but she would have freed it if she could; for now she was startled indeed. Though she had been forewarned, her armour was not on. This word was a dart, and stabbed her deep. The incredible thing had come to pass.

She had been prepared for unbounded sentiment, for tenderness, for the captured hand; she had foreseen a breathless moment or so, a stoop, and a kiss. Such a string of episodes—just that string of them—would not have been strange to her by any means, and would have satisfied her anticipations perfectly. She would have been elated, would have made much of it in her mind, might possibly, after some interval, in some tender hour, have confided it to a bosom friend. On many dull days it would have shone like a lamp, assuring her of substantial things, of honour done, of a positive achievement of hers—to have won such condescension from a great gentleman. Here had been—you may say—a creditable triumph for the Middlehams. But a declaration in so many words—love offered and asked again; what could this mean but one astounding thing? She was frightened, and that’s a fact; frightened out of her wits. The averting of her head, which so enchanted Mr. Germain, was of a piece with ostrich strategy. If she could have run and hidden underground she would have done it. For what can that word love from such a man mean but marriage? I beg the lady’s pardon for leaving her hand in so embarrassing a case, her head so downcast, her breath so troublesome—but her difficulties must be faced.

Marriage, as she had been taught this world’s economy, is the be-all and end-all for women here. It is almost a disgrace, and quite a disaster for a girl to slip into womanhood and not be wedded. The enormous seriousness, then, of the affair! All men talk to women of love, and a girl had need be quick to discern which kind is the staple, which kind is aimed at lip-service, which at life-service. There will be both to reckon with; the two rarely coincide. Many a young man will seek the flower of a girl’s lips, sup of it at ease, and content himself—ah, and content her, too; whereas your serious wooer, with his eye upon comfort, a foothold, a mother for his children and a stay for himself, may well have other things to think of—a promotion, a partnership, a chance abroad, a legacy, a desirable corner house. Care will tighten his lips too hard for kissing. The future will be all that he reads after in your eyes. If he kisses, it will be by custom as likely as not; don’t I say that he will have other things to think of? Now, Mr. Germain had not kissed Mary, though, to be sure, he had spoken of his love. And yet—and yet—yes, he wanted to marry her. Frightened? Yes, she was frightened; but she was full of thought, too.

She knew very well that her ways were not those of the world above her, the world of the upper air, where Honourable Mrs. Germains, Cantacutes, Duplessis, and the like talked familiarly together of parties and public affairs. There, as she saw the heights the women were so obviously desirable that there was nothing for them to do but pick up their happiness as they chose, and as their due. There could surely be no anxiety there, no whispered debates over what he meant, or had looked, or was thinking. Their lives were full to brimming point from girlhood up; everything fell into their laps, or could be had for money. Nothing surprised her more in the lives of her betters than the frequency with which they bought—except the case of the transaction. One even paid for work, if one happened to be in the mood to work—as when Miss de Speyne, desiring to paint, hired an artist to go about with her, open a white umbrella here and there, and paint beside her. Grey, grey and hard seemed her outlook beside theirs, when (as now) she was driven to compare them. And here—O wonderful fate!—was this brimming, crowded life opening to her; to her, Mary Middleham, who had worked for pence a year, and fended for herself, and had adventures from her seventeenth to this her twenty-fifth summer. Terrible, wonderful thing! She had neither a word to say, nor a connected thought. She wanted to hide her burning cheeks, felt that she must never look up again—and all this while Mr. Germain held her cold hand. It felt dead to her: and what must he be thinking of her?

He was very patient. “Well, my dear, well!” was the note he harped upon, and (how he could read you!) “Poor child! So I have terrified you.” This idea seemed in some way to please him, for he expressed it several times; and, as he held her hand in one of his, patted it with the other—hoping, it would seem, to make her as comfortable as he was himself.

“Am I to be answered, Mary? Have you nothing to say to me?” She had not, for her life; she must have time. This she forced herself to explain.

“I don’t know what to say to you—I don’t, indeed.” But he seemed to find this quite as it should be.

He leaned a little towards her. “Shall I leave you?” he asked. “Would you wish to think it over? I will do all I can to make it easy for you.”

“Yes, please—no, I mustn’t trouble you. I mean—Oh, Mr. Germain, what ought I to say?” The russet wonder of her eyes was upon him, filled his being. He saw her quivering lip, wet from biting.

“Dearest child,” he urged her, “dearest child, consult your heart. If you think that you can be content with me—if you can believe what I tell you——”

She looked at him now as though he had hurt her. “I mustn’t believe you—I ought not—I know I ought not. I am not fit for you—not good enough—” She stammered, reproached him with her great eyes for a beating second—and then the storm broke and swept away her little defences.

She cried in his arms, for he took her there; he tasted her tears, for he began to kiss them away. At first she tried to disengage herself, but soon gave over the struggle, not daring to prolong a losing game. And it was a comfort, too, you see, to have strife done with. She hid her face, however, in his arm. He kissed her hair.

When she was quieted he talked to her—if you can call that talk which a man might use to a pretty dog, a leveret, or (if he were with it alone) to a baby; foolish, affectionate, happy nonsense, it was, charged full with pity for a creature so young and so simple. He soothed and touched her both; never had she dreamed of such kindness as this, nor of the comfort of it. So presently she lay still, looking wistfully out upon the green curves of the park, the dark masses of the summer trees, the tall deep bracken, and, afar a herd of deer feeding, twinkling their scuts as they moved slowly across the sunlit turf. Above her head she heard the murmur of his kind voice, hardly distinguished the words he used, but judged them generally to be all love and gentleness. What misgivings she may have had fell from her, as this peace claimed its rights. She thought that she could have stayed like this for ever; she thought that thus indeed it was to be. This, this was love, this how gentlemen loved. What a life was to be hers!

She sighed and snuggled more deeply into her luxury; his heart beat to feel the pressure of her. To doubt himself—whether he would fail of utter love and devotion for a confidence so exquisite as this—would have been a blasphemy. “My darling girl, my darling love, my Mary—” and, as she looked timidly up and shyly smiled her trust into his face, he bent over her transported, met and kissed her lips. She thrilled responsive and, smiling still, closed her eyes. “God helping me,” he said with a sob, “you shall never regret this day. . . .”

For their loitered progress homewards he put her hand into his arm, and it lay there so long as they were safe within the park. She hardly spoke, and only looked at him for seconds at a time. Her responses, when he called her by fond names or breathed some assurance of his love and happiness, were little pressures of the arm, flutterings of the eyelids, ghosts of smiles scarcely to be seen; but he was perfectly satisfied, the good man, sailing along upon his clouds, which were rosy and golden at the edges. He took her stoutly to her own door and left her there—would not venture himself within the sacred threshold. “I shall see you again before I go, my dearest. To-morrow I will come—ah, but you have given me wonderful to-morrows! You have made me happier than I ever dared hope to be. I will write to you, of course, from London—and do you write me again. Write me fully—confide in me—have no anxieties which I may not share. I call upon your parents in the course of the week. Dearest, will you not love me?”

She was now much moved; he might have seen her struggle to express herself—her bosom heaved in tumult and distress—a cry escaped her, “Oh, you are good, you are good! How can I help liking—how can I like you enough?” Love, she dared not say.

Respect for her held him in check; he must content himself with her hand, which, bare-headed, he kissed. “I am more than happy—I am exalted. Adieu, my love, adieu! Thank God, your days of servitude are over. Bid me good-bye now, and I will go.”

She hung her head, bashful again. He had to invite her once more, to draw her nearer, to stoop and to whisper her name. Blushing and glowing she swayed, caught by the hand, and then, as a sudden surge of gratitude swept over her, she put her hand upon his shoulder and leaned to him, looking up.

“I shall try to be good. I am sure that I love you—” she faltered; and he, swept out of propriety by her emotion and his own in confluence, took her in his arms and kissed her. At first she clung to him, and gave him kiss for kiss; but suddenly she stiffened and tried violently to get free. He felt that and released her at once, instantly himself again. In a flash she vanished. He kept his hat in his hand until he was beyond the wicket-gate, then walked back slowly to the Rectory luncheon. He had had no eyes for the passing of a tall, loosely clad young man, whose black, straight hair was uncovered, and his black eyes sideways upon everything, like a faun’s. He had had other things to do with his eyes—besides, he was near-sighted. But Mary had noticed, indeed, and was now standing in her little dark parlour, in a stare, her finger at her lip, her heart in full and open riot. He had seen her, he must have seen her—kissing, being kissed! Whatever happened, he must hear her explanation.

XI
COOL COMFORT

Saturday’s wonders, Sunday thrills—with her declared lover monumentally in the Rectory pew and his relatives all unconscious that they were soon to be hers (hers, Mary Middleham’s: O altitudo!)—did not release her, in her own mind, from the promise of Sunday afternoon. Not only had she promised, not only had she something to tell him, a solid base for her feet from which to regard him, and a sanctuary in which to hide, from which to emerge at will, ready for any encounter; not only so, but she must put herself right with him. He had seen her, must have seen her, in a delicate situation—nothing to him, of course, but somehow everything to her. She could not, she said, afford that he should deem her a girl of the sort—to be kissed in a doorway by anybody, gentleman or no gentleman. There were reasons—special reasons for it; and since, as the fact was, these reasons did not now seem as cogent as they had yesterday, there was nothing for it but to cry them over and over to herself. “Engaged to be married—engaged to be married—to Mr. Germain—to Mr. Germain of Southover House. And he loves me dearly—and I love him.” So she pedalled and sang.

Racing with her thoughts, the bicycle took her to the common of Mere that blazing Sunday afternoon. His eyes looked up from their work, twinkled and laughed at her. “So it’s you, then! I thought you wouldn’t come.” He was mending the sole of a shoe, and resumed his cheerful tap-tapping directly he had greeted her.

She stood leaning on her bicycle, watching his work. Her new estate sat in full possession of her eyes.

“Yes, I’ve come. I couldn’t come earlier.”

He paused, hammer in air. “It was as well you didn’t. I’ve been out lunching.”

She knew that very well, and with any other man would have pretended that she did not. Some pretty fishing would have followed—with him out of the question.

“At the Park?” she said—turning up the statement into a question by habit.

“Precisely there,” said he, and returned to his shoe. No fishing in such waters as his—but he looked up again presently with a laugh in his eyes. “I met your Mr. Germain,” he told her—and she flamed.

“I wanted to tell you—I felt that I must. I am—I was with him when you——”

He nodded over his shoe leather. “So I supposed.”

“That was Mr. Germain—you know——”

“I know. I recognized him. I had been to reconnoitre the Park——”

She could not, perhaps, have accounted to herself for her next question. “Do you like Miss de Speyne?”

He frankly considered it for a while, looking at the questioner without discomfort—to himself at least. “Yes. Yes, I think I do. She’s a fine young woman and she’s simple. She’s herself. Yes, I like her very much. She can paint flowers—nothing else. But she paints flowers well.” So much for the Honourable Hertha de Speyne.

“May I sit down?” Mary was quite at her ease again. He jumped up with apologies, and brought her cushions. Bingo came up, wagging his back, and, being caressed, sat up stiffly beneath her hand. She watched her friend fill his pipe and collected herself for her affair. Then she lowered her eyes, and began, hardening her voice.

“I came because I wanted your opinion, as I hoped—I mean as I thought I possibly might. You remember that I said I should like to talk to you? Well, I didn’t know then—for certain—what I should have to say. But—” She stopped there.

“But now you do? Is that it?”

“Yes. Shall you think it strange of me?”

“I don’t know—but it’s very unlikely. If I do I’ll tell you. Go on.”

“It’s about Mr. Germain. Do you remember that I told you—he’d been kind to me?”

His eyes were narrow, but upon her, critically upon her. He smoked slowly, as if he enjoyed every fibre of the weed on fire.

“Yes, I remember.”

“He was so kind—he went so out of his way to be kind that I was puzzled. I could not help fancying——”

“Naturally. Well?”

She plunged. “He has asked me to marry him.”

Her friend took his pipe out of his mouth, looked long at it, and put it back again.

“I saw that he had—yesterday.” He might have seen pride shine in her eyes at that compliment. But, instead of looking for that, he asked, “And is he going to?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, pondering.

“But does he think he is?”

She fondled Bingo, who threw up his head, eyed her gratefully and accepted the compliment. Then she answered him.

“Yes—I believe he does.” During the ensuing pause their eyes met for a moment.

“He’s very much in love with the idea,” said the gentleman-tinker. “He was highly uplifted to-day—anybody could have guessed.” He added, as if to himself, “It may do. It sometimes does.”

She considered this, then threw up her head and was eloquent. “It won’t do—it can’t. That makes me unhappy, instead of happy. I know that it is not right—whatever you may say of—of there being no classes. I feel that there are classes, more than enough, perhaps; but there they are and we can’t help them. Whatever you may say about specimens in boxes, Mr. Germain is a gentleman, and my father is not; and his first wife was a lady—a Lady Diana Something—and his second, if it’s me, won’t be—but just a little ignorant person who has worked for her living since she was sixteen, and seen all sorts of people—and—and—done all sorts of things. No, no, it can’t be right—for him, at any rate. How am I to satisfy him, try as I will? Why, there’s Mrs. James at the Rectory—she terrifies me. I feel like a lump of earth beside her—and she likes me to—she looks and looks down at me until I do. And I fight against it—I try to meet her—I try to be myself, and to feel that I am as good as she is—and all the time I know I’m not. And yet—he’s extremely kind—nobody could have spoken more gently than he did. He made me cry—he did, you know. I couldn’t help it—and I had no answer for him and so—and so he thinks that I shall marry him. But I don’t know whether I dare—I promise you I don’t.”

He watched her gravely, nodding his head from time to time; and at the end he smiled doubtfully.

“Well,” he said, “and I don’t know whether you dare. I don’t know, you know, but I should say that you could dare most things you had set your heart on.”

Her eyes quickened. “My heart is not set on it. I was very excited yesterday—any girl in my position would be—oh, most wonderful! But—if I could—if I dared, I should run away. I promise you.”

He regarded her kindly. “Well, then,” he said, “Run.” She stared—their eyes met—hers fell first. “No, no. I mustn’t. He expects me now—besides, he has—No, I belong to him now—if he wants me.”

The gentleman-tinker got up—appeared to be annoyed. He took a stride or two up and down the road. “This is against conscience—good God, it’s against Nature. It’s why I loathe marriage, why I would never marry. It’s all feudal—it’s the law of Real Property. You are in a market—he buys you with a kind word and a—Look here now—” and he faced her, frowning. “Will nothing teach you your value—will nothing give you respect for yourself?” He turned away abruptly. “I beg your pardon. I’ve no right to talk to you like this.”

She forgot to be involved—forgot that she was involved—in his condemnation. “Please talk to me—please to make me understand,” she said, but he wanted a good deal of persuasion. No, no. It has nothing to do with him; he should only make mischief—had made too much already; and, said he, finally, “I can’t afford it. I am rather prone, I believe, to get interested in other people’s affairs—and it interrupts my own confoundedly.”

“I’m very sorry,” she said, prettily contrite. He bit his cheek. “Not your fault, of course—all mine. I got interested in you when I found you in the wire—highly romantic that sort of thing. And—and—so it’s gone on. Well—” He looked at her anxiously. “Well, I shall do harm, I’m certain; but I’ll tell you what I think if you insist on it.” She clapped her hands, glowed and sparkled like a diamond. She looked bewitchingly pretty.

“Please, please! I won’t speak a word until you’ve done.”

He sat, and began slowly.

“I stick to my opinion of classes, of course. You aren’t in a position to judge; you’ve never had a ghost of a chance. As far as men go, there are only two classes—men who can behave and men who can’t. My father taught me when I was a boy to call all men men, and all women ladies. There was the man who swept the crossing, and the man who sat on the Bench; but I remember that I got into a row for talking about the ‘woman’ who sold matches. ‘All women are ladies unless you know to the contrary,’ said my father. ‘Don’t you ever forget that!’ And I never did. If you’ll forgive me, there’s nothing in what you say about your own unworthiness and Germain’s magnanimity except one thing—and that is, that you, who have everything to gain, are the last person to admit what is so obviously true. And you are not quite honest. You don’t fear yourself really—you are confident in your inmost heart that you can learn what you suppose to be solemn duties. But—” He collected himself for his But, while she hung her detected head.

“But he, mind you, is persuaded—and it’s you who are helping him to believe—that he is a superior person doing you an enormous honour. He calls it kindness, of course, and so do you—oh, so do you! and that’s what he’s in love with mostly—the idea of exalting you, putting you on a pedestal, kneeling, making sacrifice, burning incense. He’s full of it—he was trembling with it to-day—and he’ll do it, I’m certain, and then retire into his inner chamber and beat his breast and cry to his soul, ‘How lovely she is—how sensitive to these wonderful honours! I put her there, O God! I did it—under Thee! Lord, I thank Thee for this glorious work which is mine.’ I suppose you think I’m a maniac. I’m frightfully sane. . . .”

“He’ll be as happy as a king, like his betters before him, Cophetua I., Cophetua II.—the whole dynasty. That’s his point of view, you know, and it’s not a bad one. It’s very artistic. Old Tennyson saw that. But before you lend yourself to it—a girl like—well, any girl you please—I do think you should ask yourself where you come in. How much worship can you stand? How long can you be sensitive to benefits and honours? How long before they become matters of course? How long before you want the real thing? Because I need not tell you that there is a real thing——”

Had he not broken off here she would not have met his eyes—nor he hers. The saying would have been merged in the general drift of his harangue, which was serious enough. But she caught at the break, caught at the words, caught at the sense, looked at him seriously, looked at him full. His eyes, being upon her, met hers, and held them. She was confounded. That moment of interconsciousness was fully charged: it is much to his credit that he slipped out without abruptness.

He took a turn up and down the road before he went on.

“A man will go through life possessed with an idea, and be absolutely happy with it. Don’t have any fears on his account. It is all that he wants: the woman’s only business is to lend herself to it. But we’re considering the woman—and there’s this great difference. They don’t like ideas at all. They like things—that they can touch, stroke, handle, nurse, wash and dress. If you find such things, you are all right. But if you don’t——”

And then he stopped—in spite of her. She tried him with a “Well, what then?” but could get nothing more from him.

“Oh, I hope you will. Let’s hope so,” was all he would say.

She nursed her chin with her hand; he, at his length beside her, plucked at the turf. Too many confidences had passed for her to be reticent now. “You say you will never marry,” she began.

“Never,” he said. “The state’s impossible, wrong from the beginning. It puts the woman hopelessly in the wrong. It’s monstrous.”

“Then you think—Yes, I believe you are right. At any rate, I mustn’t let Mr. Germain——”

He sat up. “Look here,” he said. “Germain will make you a very good husband. He’s a true man.”

She was busy with Bingo, to Bingo’s quiet satisfaction. “Yes, I’m sure of that. But——”

Her tongue was tied, and so now was his. The ensuing silence was not comfortable to either, and the instinct of a good girl made her end it at any price. Rising sedately, she held out her hand.

“Good-bye—and thank you very much. You have made me think.”

He laughed as he shook hands. “You have made me think, too. Good-bye. All happiness.”

She did not reply to that, but said, “We meet again, I hope.”

“Sure to,” he said. “This is an island.” Then she must needs go.

Of the two of them the man was the more perturbed—but he had his remedy. After a frowning quarter-hour he was up and packing his tent. Within the hour he was on the road.

With her, no revolt against what was to be. There is no revolt visible under the sun for the poor. When Mr. Germain called the next morning to bid her farewell she received him with all the virginal airs of the consciously possessed. He measured her fourth finger. A pretty ceremony.

XII
ALARUMS

Revolt is, as it always has been, within easy reach of the great; but a Rector’s wife should attend upon her lord. The Hon. Mrs. Germain watched her James’s eyebrow, waiting for the lift. It came, and her cry broke from her. “James, James, this cannot be possible!” She saw her fair realm in earthquake and eclipse.

The Rector, no less disturbed, could not for the life of him avoid his humour. “Alas, my dear”—one eyebrow made a hoop in his forehead—“all things are possible to amorous man.”

“Amorous!” she whistled the word. “John—and that minx! You use horrible words.”

“Hardly so, my dear. Not horrible in a man’s regard for his wife. The state is sanctioned.”

She was beyond his quibbles. “What are we to do? Heavens and earth, what can we do?”

He eyed his brother’s letter ruefully. “Upon my word,” he said, “this is a facer. I could have believed anything of any man sooner than this of him. Old John! Exactly double her age—and she a quiet little mouse of a girl out of a cottage. Woodbine Cottage, eh? That’s it, you know. Woodbine Cottage and white muslin have done it. Do you remember the valentines of our youth—gauffred edges, a pathway to a porch—the linked couple, and the little god in the air, pink as a shell? White muslin—fatal wear! He sees her so to all eternity; enskied and sainted, in muslin and a sash! Confound it, Constantia, I feel old.”

She was beyond his whimsies. “You may be thankful that you do. This appears to me disgusting. Have we used him so ill that he should slap our faces?”

The Rector indulged his eyebrows again. “Diana!” he said.

She did not defend that dead lady, but even another Lady Diana seemed more tolerable to Mrs. James. Pecca fortiter, she could have said, had she had a head for tags. Lady Diana, sinning de race, would have been intelligible, say, to the Cantacutes. But here was no sin, but merely a squalid enchantment. A doting gentleman, a peering little nobody in muslin—How should this be put, say, to the Cantacutes? Aberration? Chivalry? Romance? Never Romance, precisely because that was just what it was—pitiful romance. James had hit it off exactly; it was the washy, facile romance of a sixpenny valentine, of a thing that housemaids drink with their eyes. Saponaceous—Heavens and earth! Mrs. James lifted her hands, and let them fall to her lap. “I simply cannot hold up my head in the village,” she said. “James think of the Cantacutes.”

“Why on earth should I think of the Cantacutes?” He was testy under his trouble. “I have my brother to think of. He’s been hasty over this—which is most unlike him—and secret as well. I had no notion any such thing was going on, not the least in the world.”

It was Mrs. James’s duty to confess that some notion ought to have been hers. And she did confess. “It so happens that I was speaking to him of this girl the night we dined at the Park. He told me that he was interesting himself in her and I asked him to say something about Tristram.”

“About Tristram?” says the Rector sharply. “What about Tristram, pray?”

She could not but remember former warnings. “I think you will do me the justice, James. You have been told that Tristram has chosen to amuse himself with her. Who has not? I remember telling you about it, when, as usual, you laughed at me. I begged John to influence the girl—to induce her to respect herself—and with this result!” The Rector pushed his chair away.

“You speak more truly than you know,” he said, rose and took a turn about the room. “Now I understand the haste. He had been hovering, poor, foolish fellow—singeing his grey wings; but it was you, Constantia, drove him to plunge. Take my word for it. Dear, dear, dear, this is really a great bore. I don’t know what to do, upon my word I don’t.”

“I shall speak to the girl, of course,” said Mrs. James, gathering up letters and keys. It is doubtful if her husband heard her. He had stepped through the window into the garden before she had risen. “The Rector’s Walk,” a pleached alley of nut trees, received him; for more than an hour he might have been observed pacing it, with lowered head and hands behind his back. But Mrs. Germain went about her duties of the day with tight lips and eyes aglitter. At intervals her anguish betrayed itself in cries. “Monstrous! Monstrous!”

To her it was monstrous, for she saw the girl without glamour, standing amid the wreckage of a fair realm—a little governess, wickedly demure. The Germain banner was rent, the Germain character blotted; that carefully contrived dual empire which she shared with the Cantacutes was threatened; her authority as a county lady, as Rector’s wife, toppling, her throne wanting a leg. She saw herself pitied, her husband’s family the object of lifted brows. And she had been a loyal wife, and knew it, because she had honestly admired the marks of race in the Germains. Herself a Telfer, she was of that famous Norman house which lost first blood at Hastings; and she never forgot it, least of all when she had married into the Germains, who were county and good blood, but not noble. She remembered, she always remembered that—but she was a loyal wife. Without and within, he and she were a strong contrast—he frosty, dry, and deliberate, she fiery, impulsive, storm-driven, not above the aid of tears; he lean and pale, she a plump woman and a pink. His instinct was to approve at first blush, hers to disapprove. They were good friends, and had never been more; there were no children. That had been a grievance of hers until she got into the way of saying that the Germains were a dwindling race, and—“look at poor John Germain!” I wish the reader to note the subtle change from complaint to complacency in Mrs. James’s outlook. It marks her character. To be a barren wife through no fault of your own and to take comfort in saying that your husband comes of a dwindling stock shows that you have an eye for outline in a family. It is rather like excusing your Black Wyandottes, which give you no breakfast eggs—“Yes, but that’s the mark of the breed.” So here—“either I have children, or my husband is no Germain.” Here was strong character exhibited; and all may be forgiven to strength. But weakness—mere dotage—mere desire; a landed gentleman of fifty and a girl in muslin—“Monstrous! Monstrous!” cried Mrs. James in her bitterness.

When Mary, home from The Sanctuary, heard the click of the wicket, and the swish of a silk petticoat over the flagstones, she knew what was coming upon her. Her colour fled, and returned redoubled, and a scare showed in her quick eyes. In a moment she called up her defences—her more than one letter—she had received a third that morning. “I shall see your father,” that said, “an hour after you receive this, my Mary. If I know anything of his daughter he will not fail to confirm the signal trust which she has shown me.” She had not been very sure what he meant by “signal trust”; it must certainly be something which any girl might be proud to have. And she had something more wonderful than a letter—a ring, the most splendid she had ever seen—a great sapphire set in a lake of brilliants. She glanced at it now as, hearing the lady at the door, she slipped it off and put it in her pocket. Mrs. James knocked, like a postman; and with a wild heart Mary went to meet her enemy in the gate.

“Ah, good-evening, Mary. May I come in? Thank you.” She preceded her dependant into the little parlour, sat in the chair which had most the similitude of a throne, and began at once upon her subject.

“I have called to see you in consequence of a letter which the Rector received this morning from Mr. Germain. May I inquire if you guess—? No, indeed, I see that I need not.” The girl’s face told the tale; her eyes were cast down; inquiry of the sort was absurd. “I think, Mary, that you have strange ideas; I do, indeed; and am sorry to have to add that I know where you have obtained them.” But Mary had spirit, it seemed.

“I obtained them from Mr. Germain,” she said, with a certain defiance which may have been very natural, but had been better away. “I obtained them from him. They were not mine, I assure you.”

Mrs. Germain opened her mouth and shut it with a snap. She opened it again a little way to say, “The thing is impossible,” and another snap followed.

“So I told Mr. Germain,” said Mary.

“My impression is very strong,” continued Mrs. James, ignoring interruption, “that you have misunderstood Mr. Germain’s kindness, and strangely so. That being the case—” Mary’s eyes flashed.

“I beg pardon, Mrs. Germain, but that is not the case. Mr. Germain has gone to see my parents to-day. He writes me word——”

“You will kindly allow me to finish. I believe that you misunderstood something Mr. Germain may have said to you—some advice, or inquiry, or offer of help; that he may have seen your error and regretted it while he was too chivalrous to undeceive you. I consider that you may be preparing a great unhappiness for yourself and for him, and I am in a position to say——”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Germain,” said Mary, “but nobody is in a position to say anything to me of this but Mr. Germain himself.”

Now this was so obviously true that even Mrs. James accepted it. She had been too hasty, and while she was swallowing her chagrin Mary took her opportunity.

“I must tell you, please, that you cannot be more surprised than I was when Mr. Germain spoke to me as he did. I had never dreamed of such a thing; it is not likely that I should. He had been all that’s kind to me ever since the school-treat—even now I can hardly believe that any one could be so kind; but when he—when he spoke to me—asked me if I could care for him—in that way—I vow to you I could not answer him. I was most stupid—I was confused and could not collect my thoughts. And I never did collect them,” she cried with a sudden burst of confession, “and never answered him at all—except by crying, which any girl would have done, I think; and then he—well, then he k——”

Mrs. James shut her eyes tight. “I know what you are going to say. No! no! Be silent, I beg.”

Mary put her hand to her throat, as if she was being choked. Her eyes shone like jet. “I hope that you will be just to me, Mrs. Germain, I do hope so. I know that you put all the blame on me, but it is unfair to do that. What could I do? If he spoke to me kindly, must I not answer kindly? If he came to see me, how could I refuse to see him? If he invited me to walk with him, what could I say, or do? And then—when he asked me, Did I care for him—and—and—oh, I must say it!—kissed——”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Germain, with a spasm. “Oh, wicked, wicked!”

Mary flamed. “I am not wicked, Mrs. Germain, and I must ask you not to call me so. Mr. Germain would not like it at all. You cannot believe him to be wicked; and if he did what he did he had good reason. And now I will tell you that I never answered his question, and have not known how to answer it.”

“Answer it, girl! You prevaricate. Answer it—in the face of his letter to my husband!”

“Mr. Germain has been more than kind,” said Mary, losing ground, “and—and——”

“And Mr. Duplessis has been more than kind, I believe,” said Mrs. James—and her words were knives. The girl quailed. “Pray, how much more kindness is my family to show you?”

Mary was now very cold. “One member of it,” she said, “will show me none—will not show me even justice. Mr. Duplessis has no claim——”

“Claim!” cried the great lady, red as fire, “what claim should he wish to make? I think you have lost your senses.” She may well have lost patience, courage, and a good sense. She stamped her foot.

“I wish you would leave me alone, Mrs. Germain. You are cruel to me, and unjust. I have done you no harm—no, but always my duty, and you know that very well. You drive me into corners—you make me say things—I am very unhappy—please leave me.” She covered her eyes to hide the tears which pricked her.

Mrs. James was not to be melted by such a device. “If you are to be impertinent, I shall certainly leave you,” she said. “This matter, however, cannot be left as it is. The Rector must see you about it. Good-evening.”

But when the unaccountable Rector received the report from his wife he was pleased to show temper. “I think you have acted foolishly, Constantia, and more—I think you have acted with great want of consideration, I had almost said with want of respect for my brother. You have read his letter; you know how he stands towards Mary; and you rate her as if she were a servant caught in a fault. Really, that won’t do. I must make amends. Preposterous! That my brother’s affianced wife should be treated like a kitchenmaid! You have no right—no earthly right—to say to her what you would not dream of saying to my brother. Heavens! to John Germain! head of one of the best families in England! Tst, tst! I am very vexed.”

He must have been, for he went early to the cottage and asked for Mary. When she appeared before him, flushed and with all her defences out, he held out his hand to her, drew her towards him and kissed her. “So we are to know you in a new capacity, my dear,” he said. “I shall be very ready for that.” Her tears gathered; one brimmed over and fell, but did not scald.

“Oh, Mr. Germain—” she began—and ended there with a choke.

“My dear, I’ll tell you this—you have won a true man. I know my brother better than you do, at present, and you may take my word for that.”

“Thank you, thank you,” was all that she could say.

“One thing more: you will be welcome at the Rectory. You mustn’t take anything that has been said to you amiss. You know that when we are taken aback sometimes we don’t always—well, I’ll ask you. Has anybody ever made you jump? Eh? Somebody has? Very well, weren’t you rather cross for a minute? Confess that you were. My dear, we all are; but it don’t mean anything.”

“No, no, indeed. Oh, Mr. Germain, I don’t know what to do about all this!”

“Your duty, my dear, to God and man. It’ll be before you every day: all you have to do is to take it up.”

“Yes, yes, I know. But—Mr. Germain, I’m frightened—really. I’m ignorant and stupid—and of course I’m different from——”

“You’ve a pretty way of confessing it, at any rate,” said the Rector. “It will all come right, I hope. You are very quick, I can tell—you’ll learn your lesson in no time. I know you are a charming young lady, and believe a good one. There’s not much more than that in any one that I’ve ever seen in these parts. Now don’t be offended with me if I say that you are going to have a good husband, and ask you to deserve him.”

“Oh, Mr. Germain!”—her tears fell freely—“I do want to be good—I do mean to try!”

“Bless you, my dear, I’m quite sure of that,” said he, and gave her another kiss.

He told his wife that evening definitely that they must make the best of it, and gave her to understand that John’s wife must be taken at John’s valuation. If John chose to marry a kitchenmaid, that kitchenmaid was ipso facto on the Germain level; so also if John had selected an archduchess. A Germain could pick up or pull down, said the Rector in effect. But he also announced that he should go to town on the morrow—which weakened his decree.

So he did, and was away two days—an interval of time during which Mary went grimly about her duties and Mrs. Germain faced the problem of the Cantacutes. This lady may be pitied, who felt her crown slipping and throne rocking on its degrees. Her loyalty to the family into which she had been married was sapped; she did not see how Germain character was to be admired if it betrayed a Germain into such a vagary. Her husband, her temperate, frosty James, was involved; for the first time in her life she was tempted to work against him. She could do that, mind you; she had the weapon to her hand, a double-edged tool—Tristram. A hint to Tristram at Pau and he would be here—and once here, should he look upon Mary as she believed he would, as the lion on a lamb printed by his paw, why, what chance had John Germain against him? That villainy she could practise if she chose; but she knew it was a villainy, and that she was no villain. Then there was another way, not villainous—nay, was it not a duty? She could tell John Germain what she knew of Tristram and hint at more than she knew. A Germain would shiver at such a tarnish on his ideal—she could see John shut his eyes as the spasm passed over him; but there was this difficulty about it, that she could not write to him without her husband’s knowledge—nay, without his approbation—whereas, what more natural than that she should deplore with her cousin Laura Duplessis this miserable state of affairs? Mrs. James was no villain; she was merely a proud woman touched on a raw. Her security, her comfort, her authority, her self-esteem were all threatened by an act of dotage; what else was this infatuation of John Germain’s, pray? And there are sophistries to help the very best of us. Had there been nothing between Tristram and Mary, Mrs. Duplessis would have been invited to sympathize; and there was nothing, after all. Tristram, with his high connexions, his talents, and his superb air—and a little sly teacher! The thing was absurd! Fully convinced of its absurdity, Mrs. James marched down to the Cottage, and found her cousin Duplessis arranged on a sofa with a white lace mantilla over her head; her hand-bell in easy call, and a smelling-bottle attached to her wrist by a little chain.

Mrs. Duplessis had been handsome, and remembered it. Everything about her person reminded her of that—her languor, her elegance, her thin hands, her fine complexion, her tall son. “How I survived the birth of that great boy passes my comprehension. My nerves, you know! My dear Hector, all fire as he was, had the tact of a woman. ‘M’amie,’ he said, ‘never again; or I accuse myself of murder. Hence-forward I am a monk.’ He kept his word, but it killed him. Do not men die for women? My poor, brave Hector!” Apart from these tender reminiscences, she had her poverty to cherish, to tinge with dignity, to show burnished—with a lovely patina like old lacquer. “We live wretchedly, as you can see, my dear soul; but we pay our way and hold our heads up. We only owe to ourselves, and are indulgent creditors. Tristram, I suppose will marry: il doit se ranger, vraiment. But he says that we can afford leisure—our only luxury! The good Cantacutes are most kind, and Hertha a really charming girl. . . . Why is it that young men cannot see where their fortune lies? Cynicism? Arrogance? Ingratitude? I ask myself these questions.”

She was enormously interested in the news, and gratified. “My poor soul, what a blow! John Germain, of all humdrum persons in the world—and the girl not even pretty, you say. Clever, though. Have you broken it to Emily Cantacute? I don’t envy you that task.”

“It’s not done yet,” said Mrs. James grimly.

“Oh, my dear, but it is,” her cousin replied acutely. “John Germain is just the man to be in opposition. Pride, you know. We all have that. He would call it chivalry.”

“Do you know how far Tristram might be concerned in this?” Mrs. James inquired shortly; Mrs. Duplessis narrowed her eyes and slowly shut them.

“Tristram never gives confidences,” she said, in a carefully fatigued voice. “On such a matter I had rather he did not.”

Mrs. James would have none of this.

“My dear Laura, we are alone. I think I know Tristram well enough to say that he has interested himself in the girl. No doubt he has flattered her; I think she has been grateful. It would not be surprising if he were unprepared for such a change of affairs.”

“On the contrary,” said Mrs. Duplessis, “judging by what you seem to think of her, I should imagine that he might be prepared for anything. To be sure, there is John Germain——”

“John Germain and Tristram are not good friends; I happen to know.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Duplessis, “that throws some light.”

“Perhaps it does,” Mrs. James returned; “but I should not like to say where it throws it.” She had a shrewd suspicion that she and her cousin might be in the beam. There was a taint in all this.

The Rector came back that night greatly bothered. More than once in the course of the evening he threw up his hands. “My poor, good brother! Heaven help us all!”

“I found him inalterably fixed,” he told his wife, “and perfectly complacent. His serenity confounded me, put me to shame. He sees his happiness as clearly before him as you see his misery. He loves the child for the very things which you dislike in her. You say that she is common, and I cannot contradict you. He says that simplicity can grace any station. Ignorant we call her—he says, It shall be my privilege to teach. You call her sly; he protests. But so is the hunted hare. He says that the thought of a young girl struggling single-handed with a world of satyrs from her sixteenth year freezes his blood. You class her with them: all satyrs together, you say. Constantia, I tell you that his folly is more noble than our wisdom. I boast myself a Christian, but what am I in truth if not a very Pharisee? ‘Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as one of these’! Is this Christian?”

“It seems to me common gratitude,” said his wife. “Pray, did you tell him that the girl was compromised?” The Rector frowned.

“Naturally, I did not, since I neither knew it, nor believed it. Compromised, Constantia! That is a dangerous word to use. That involves a good name.”

“It does indeed, James. It involves ours. I tell you that the girl is stale.” She might as well have shot him—she had never done herself more fatal mischief.

He seemed hardly able to look at her, nor did she know him when he did. “Do you dare speak so of any woman born? To the brother of this girl’s—do you dare? You have shocked me beyond expression.”

She was certainly frightened—but she had her duty to do. “I am sorry to have displeased you. I spoke advisedly. I hope that I always do that.”

His pride was stinging him. He spoke now as if he were her enemy—coldly, as if he hardly knew the woman.

“If, as I am bound to believe, you are speaking with knowledge which I do not possess, I must ask you to let me share it. This is a very serious matter both to John and to Mary. With whom do you say she is compromised?”

Two and two make four, of course—but two shadows and two cannot make four plump facts. Mrs. James knew that she had gone too far. She had little but suspicion behind her. “I think that Tristram has made love to her,” she said, and rehearsed the scene of the garden. As she put it now, the Rector made a wry face.

“This, at its worst, is discreditable to Tristram. I see your point now. Mary, you suggest, has had experiences. All girls have them, I suppose, and certainly are not always the worse for them. You must have something worse than this to excuse your strong words.”

Mrs. James had. She poured out all the garner of a year’s eye-harvest, this young man and that young man—a moonlight encounter—God knows what not. And—“Mrs. Seacox told me,” she said, “that Mary used to be a great deal in the company of young Rudd. She had seen them kissing.” A sudden flood of disgust engulfed the Rector of Misperton Brand. He turned shortly on his heel and paced the carpet. Midway back he stopped.

“I can’t tell you how I sicken at all this gossip—this traffic of nods and winks. It amounts to little at its worst. I will have no more of it. It is my duty to believe the best of my neighbours; I have not the eyes of Mrs. Seacox, nor, I hope, her understanding. I believe Mary to be a modest and virtuous young woman, and you have told me nothing to vary that opinion. Such matters—Matters! they are nothing but nasty surmises—are intensely distasteful to me; I will hear no more.” He went into his study and shut the door. All the Germains were squeamish.

Rather hard on Mrs. James. And so was felt to be the result of her elaborate disclosure to the Cantacutes. This was that Hertha de Speyne went down in person and invited the girl to tea—and that Lady Cantacute called her “a nice little thing.”

XIII
WHAT THEY SAID AT HOME

In obedience to one of those traditions before which the British parent lies prone, the moment that Mary Middleham was asked for and granted, the utmost care was taken that she should see as little as possible of the man with whom she was to spend her life. Spotless must she be brought out by the contractors, spotless be transferred to the purchaser. She was sent for from home, and home she went after a month of clearing up. There had been much to do; good-byes to say, some to avoid saying, if so it might be. Mr. Nunn, making her a presentation and a speech before his assembled seed-plots, also made her cry; but Mrs. James Germain, in the course of an icy tea-party, whereat the girl was present, unexplained, unaccounted for, and ignored, until the late entry of the Rector on the scene very nearly made her defiant. She had a spirit of her own—and there are ways of showing “persons their place” which spirited persons may not endure. At that tea-party—under Mrs. James’s politeness and the chill insolence of Mrs. Duplessis—the prosperity of Mr. John Germain’s love was like that of a bubble on a tobacco pipe—its iris globe throbbed towards inward collapse. His brother saved it to soar; he was charming—easy, homely, cool, and obviously glad to have her there. Touched profoundly, she became at once buoyant—as all young people must be if they are to live—and meek. When the company was gone he had her into his library, and discussed her affair as a settled, happily settled, thing—ending, rectorwise, with a little homily, in which he delicately but unmistakably showed her that she was going into a very new world and had better go in clean raiment. “Let there be no drawbacks to your future happiness, my dear, of your own providing. Marriage is the happiest of all states so long as it is a clear bargain. That is not always possible; with two people of an age much may be taken for granted. You are young, and your husband is not. He is wiser than you are and asks nothing better than to help you. Make him your friend before he makes you his wife; you will never regret it. And you may begin, I believe, by making a friend of his brother.”

She replied brokenly, lamely, but she was deeply grateful—and he knew it. Atop of that came Miss de Speyne—the Honourable Hertha de Speyne—in a fast dog-cart to her cottage door, with an invitation to tea at the Park. She went—and had the sense to go in her simplest. Dress, manner, and looks appealed—Here am I, the girl as he found me, as I pleased him. Make what you please of me—if you please. Lady Cantacute could make no mistake in a matter of the sort—her manners were as fine as her instincts. His lordship, even more finely, varied nothing from his habits; and his daughter could not. There was no company, and all went well; after tea, better. Miss de Speyne invited her to walk; they sat in the rose-garden. By-and-by came a question. “I think you know a friend of mine—Mr. Senhouse?” This had to be explained. Mr. Senhouse, it appeared, was the gentleman-tinker of Mere Common. Mary sparkled as she admitted her acquaintance, and after that all was well indeed. His acts and opinions were debated. Miss de Speyne thought him cynical, and hinted at some unhealed wound; Miss Middleham could not admit that. She believed him sound, if not spear-proof.

“He spoke to me of my engagement, but not as anybody else would have done.”

“Did he like it?”

Mary blushed. “I could hardly say. He spoke very highly of Mr. Germain. He had met him here, he told me.”

“Yes. I wanted them to meet,” Miss de Speyne said—and Mary wondered.

“He told me, in the course of conversation, that he should never marry”—she said, presently; but Miss de Speyne, older than her new friend, held her peace.

At parting, the tall, splendid young woman clasped hands with her warmly. “Good-bye. It was nice of you to come. I wish I had known you before—but we’re such fools in the country.”

Mary said, “I hope you won’t forget me after I’m—” She felt delicate about this astounding marriage. But Miss Hertha reassured her. “When you’ve settled down, ask me and I shall come and see you. Of course, you’ll be asked here—but you needn’t come unless you like.” This was bracing; she began to believe in herself, to say that she had nothing to fear, and to believe it. But she found out her mistake within a little, when, in mid-August, she left Misperton Brand, crossed London, and found her sister Jinny awaiting her on the Blackheath platform.

Jinny, the tall, the pert, the very fair, strikingly attired, despising all mankind and ignoring all womankind, sailed to meet her, intending to be patroness still. It was soon to be seen that her claim was not disputed. “Well, Molly, so here you are. Hand out your traps. And, for Heaven’s sake, child, put your hat straight. Do you want all the world to know that you’re engaged?”

Mary laughed, her hands to her hat. “It’s all right, my dear,” she said. “I’ve come down alone.”

“If you’d come down with your Mr. Germain I should never have accused him of it, I assure you.” Miss Jinny tossed her head. “Too much the gentleman by half. Is that all you have? The rest in the van, I suppose. Well, child, you look well enough, I must say. So he agrees with you?” They kissed each other on both cheeks.

In the fly, Jinny enlarged upon the recent visit of Mr. Germain. “My dear! he fairly scared poor father. It was, ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘no, sir,’ from him all the time—and ‘any arrangements you wish, sir.’ I don’t see that sort of talk myself—but father was always a worm. What he made of me I really can’t say—you know my way with gentlemen—take me or leave me alone, is my rule. Well, he left me alone, and I managed to get over that, as you see. I’m still the same height in my stockings. So you mean to be ‘an old man’s darling,’ Molly? Every one to her taste, I suppose.”

“Oh, Jinny, he’s not old.”

“He could be your father, my dear—easily.”

“He’s not going to be, I assure you.”

“Well, we’ll see. I should hope not, of course. One thing’s as plain as my nose; your people won’t see much of you when you’re boxed up with that old——”

“Jinny, please!”

“Oh, if you want me to tell falsehoods, my dear, I’ll do my best to oblige you. I’ll call him young to myself until it comes easy. Practice makes perfect, they say. Why, here we are! This horse must have the glanders or something. Perhaps he thought Mr. Germain was after you. There’s a lot of sense in brute beasts.” All this, which shows the rights of elder, was meekly received.

Home-coming was nevertheless a sort of triumph. The younger girls—all tidied up—allowed her to kiss them as if she had become an aunt; father and mother made much of her; she must see in their faces a sort of anxious wonder—Can this be our Mary then? Can I have begotten this young lady? Can these breasts have nourished a Mrs. Germain? She was to have tea in her hat, which Jinny refused to do; but elaborately removed it and administered the kettle, the muffins, the slices of bread, the jam-pot. Blushing and successful as she showed, Mary would have put an end to this splendid isolation if she could. It was not possible until tea was over; but then, when her father made her a kind of speech—clearing his throat and frowning at one of the girls, who was speaking the deaf and dumb language to another under the table—then indeed Mary upset all ceremonial, by jumping up, and knocking down her chair, by throwing herself upon her mother’s lap, her arms around her mother’s neck, by hiding her face upon her mother’s breast and anointing that dear cradle with tears. Mr. Middleham’s little speech ended in a choking fit; the girls looked all their misery; and Jinny sniffed and hardened her heart. Mary had unbent, but she was made to see that all her people knew that it was a condescension.

The sisters slept together as of old, and Jinny must be wooed. For natural reasons Mary must have Jinny’s approbation, must coax and kiss and strain for it. Jinny was not easily won, but after a passionate while allowed the back of her mind to be seen. She sat up in bed and asked a series of questions. They were answered in low murmurs by a hiding Molly.

“Molly, how did you get off from Misperton?”

“Quite well.”

“H’m. Glad to hear it. No scenes?”

“Mrs. Germain was rather awful. She always hated me. The Rector was sweet to me. And oh! there was Miss de Speyne—I can’t tell you how kind she was. Certainly, we had a friend in common . . . but——”

“That’s not what I mean. You can manage them, I should hope. I know that I could. The Rectory, indeed—and you to go out before her! Molly, did you see him before you went?”

“Who do you mean?” said a suddenly sobered Molly.

“You know quite well who I mean.”

“John Rudd, I suppose. There’s nothing between us—now.”

“John Rudd! John Germain! There’s not only Johns in the world. There’s an Ambrose—you know.”

“Mr. Perivale! Oh, Jinny, that’s ridiculous. Why, he only——”

“I know what he only—as you call it. I don’t mean that at all—or him either. I asked you, Did you see him before you went?” There was no answer for a minute or more—and then a defiant answer.

“No, I didn’t. He’s away—abroad.”

“Ah. Well, you’ll have to, you know. Have you told old—Mr. Germain?”

“No—at least—I was going to. But that was when he—kissed me—and so I couldn’t.”

“That was when he kissed you? Do you mean to tell me——?”

“No, of course not. But he kisses my hand mostly.”

“Well, I’m—” Miss Jinny did not say what she considered herself to be.

“Gentlemen are like that, Jinny—real gentlemen.”

“Gentlemen! Do you mean to tell me that Tr—that he is not a gentleman?”

“That was quite different. He meant nothing but—it was all nonsense.”

“I advise you to find out whether Mr. Germain thinks it nonsense.”

“Of course, I shall tell him everything. I don’t want ever to see Mr. Dup—him again. That was all foolishness.” Mary sat up in bed and clasped her knees. Her eyes, staring at the bright light, were stored with knowledge—as if the soul within were shining through them at last. “I have a friend—a real, wise friend—who has told me this much—that there is a real thing. I believe that, I do indeed.”

Jinny stared, then yawned. “I’m sleepy. That’s real enough for me just now. What do you mean, child?”

“I mean that one might give up everything—risk everything—if one were sure, quite sure. But if one isn’t—if one knows that one is a trifle, a plaything, to a—to a person, and that, to another person, one may be much more—then—oh, Jinny, Jinny, please!” Mary’s arms were now about Jinny’s neck, and Jinny allowed herself to be pulled down. Mary snuggled and put up her lips. After an instant she whispered, “Darling old Jinny, will you do something for me?”

“What is it?”

“Promise.”

“What is it?”

“If Tr—if he comes here—will you see him for me? Oh, please, please——”

“Why can’t you——?”

“No, no, I can’t, you know I can’t. Why, he looks at me as if I belonged to him—as if he had a right—! And when he does that, when he frowns and looks through you, and waits—and says nothing—I know what he means; and if he said one word, or moved towards me, or beckoned”—She shivered and hid her face. “I simply mustn’t—I daren’t. Oh, Jinny darling, please!”

After a time Jinny promised—but Mary’s peace was broken up. A shadow haunted her outdoors and in.

Mr. Germain drove down to Blackheath to greet his bride. Her shy welcome, with gladness behind, to make it real, charmed him altogether. The family, after a respectful interval, left him the parlour, for which he was grateful. It would have, no doubt, to be explained that in marrying Mary he had no intention of taking charge of her people. Admittedly they were impossible, but it is very odd that he loved the girl of his selection the more for being simply and unaffectedly one of them. He respected her for it, but there was more than that. At the bottom of his heart he knew that if she were to lose sight of her origin, his love would suffer. It was absolutely necessary—he felt it—that she must masquerade for life, be a sweet little bourgeoise playing county lady; but playing it with sincerity, and obediently, doing her best because she was told. The unvoiced conviction lay behind what he now had to say to her. He told her, for instance, that he hoped she would see as much of her family as she pleased, after she was married, though, of course, she would have the duties of her new station to consider and to reconcile with others. He did not suppose, he told her, that it would be reasonable, or even true kindness, to ask them often to Southover. “I esteem your father highly, my dearest. He is in all respects what I should have expected your father to be. Your mother, too, is, I am sure, worthy of your love and gratitude; your sisters seem to me happy and affectionate girls. I doubt, however, if they would be comfortable among our friends at Southover—” Mary here said at once that she was sure they would not.

“They are different from you—quite different. We are quite poor people—you would call us middle-class people, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose that I should,” he admitted; “but would that hurt you, my love?”

“No, no, not at all. There is no harm in that; and we can’t help it—but——”

He leaned, put his arm round her waist and drew her to him. “Well, my darling, well—? Tell me of what you are thinking.”

“I was wondering—if you can see that they wouldn’t do at Southover, what made you think that I should do there, either?” He held her closer.

“I’ll tell you, my love. It was because I knew what I should feel if you were ever to be there. It was because my heart was full of you, so that I could never look on any scene that I loved without seeing you in it, and loving it the more for your presence there. When I thought of Southover, I saw you its little sovereign lady, and myself waiting upon you, showing you all the things about it which have been so dear to me in spite of—much unhappiness; and my heart beat high. I said to myself, You must be a miserable and lonely man, my friend, unless you can promise yourself this joy of service. Does my Mary understand me?” He stooped his head to hers, and asked her again, Did she understand? Yes, yes, she said, but she sighed, and turned her face away. Then he must needs kiss her.

Then she did try to speak, meaning, if possible, to lead herself up to a confession. She told him that she feared to disappoint him, that he rated her too highly. “I can tell you truthfully that your love has made me very proud and very happy; I must assure you that I shall do everything in my power to prove to you how proud I am. I will do my duty faithfully—you must tell me of the least thing which is not just as you like. I can’t do more than that, can I?”

“Nobody in the world could do more than that,” he told her.

“But there’s something else. Mrs. Germain at Misperton doesn’t like me at all——”

He nodded sadly. “I know, my dear, I know. She is a foolish, arrogant woman, but there are excuses——”

“Oh, of course there are!” She sat upon his knee. “I expect that she is right and that you are wrong—in a way.” Then her eyes opened widely upon him: the hour had come. “But she thinks—she says that I am—bad.” He turned grey. “Oh, no, my love, you misjudge her! Good Heavens—bad!”

She held her face back from him that she might look at him seriously. “She does, you know—but she makes no allowances. I have always tried to be a good girl—I assure you. Please believe that.” He held her to his heart.

“My dearest, my dearest, you distress me. Good! Who is good if you are not? Purest of the pure—my Mary.” But she shook herself free in a hurry.

“No, no, indeed, you mustn’t say that. That’s absurd. I am just an ordinary girl, who likes to be happy, and to be admired, and to have fun when I can——”

“Of course, of course. Oh, my beloved, do not reproach yourself.” Then she turned in his arms, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked gravely and imploringly into his face.

“Promise me one thing,” she said, “one thing only. I will ask you nothing more than that.” She could not have been resisted by the Assessing Angel.

“Speak, my adored one.”

“Whatever you hear of me—against me—ask me what I have to say before you condemn me. Promise me that.”

“My love and my life,” he said fervently; and she pouted her lips for a kiss. Thus she justified herself in this regard, and by a sophistry of her sex came in time to feel that she had made him a full confession. She told Jinny as much.

We were now in late August; the wedding was to be quietly at Blackheath at the end of September, and the exciting business of the trousseau must be undertaken. Mrs. James, it seems, had so far reconciled herself to the inevitable as to have consented to come to town and “see to things” which the child must have. Her own people being out of the question, Mary was to stay with her in Hill-street, which was one day to be her own house, and do her shopping. A liberal sum was in Mrs. James’s hands for the purpose. There was to be no white satin; but Jinny was to be allowed to walk as bridesmaid. There was no way out of this. Her dress was to be chosen for her, and then she must come to London to be fitted; but she was not to be asked to Hill-street.

XIV
THE NEWS REACHES THE PYRENEES

Pau, in August, being what no man could be expected to stand, Duplessis and his friend Lord Bramleigh went into Spain, and lounged at San Sebastian. Here on a blazing noon of mid-September, as they were breakfasting at leisure, a budget of letters was delivered.

Lord Bramleigh, cheerful, wholesome, and round-faced, chirped over his, according to his wont. He read most of them aloud, with comments. “Old Gosperton’s shoot—will I go? I’ll see him damned. Why should I go and see old Gosperton shoot beaters? Not if I know it. Who’s this? Mary St. Chad, by the Lord! Now what does she want? . . . ‘I suppose you know that Bob Longford is . . .’ I’ll be shot if I know anything of the sort. I know he wants to all right; but you can’t marry a chap’s wife—at least I don’t think you can. . . . Oh, sorry! Fellow’s dead. . . . I say, Tristram, do you hear that? Old Bland-Mainways is dead, and Bob Longford’s married his relic—married her in a week, my boy. What do you say to that? You marry a man’s remains almost as soon as he’s remains himself. Pretty manners, what? . . .”

Duplessis took no heed; the babbler ran on. . . . “This is my mater—wonder what she’s got to say? I rather funk the Dowager. . . . Hulloa! By Gad, that’s rum. I say, Duplessis, did you know a chap called Senhouse at Cambridge? Pembroke, was he? Or King’s? King’s, I think . . . it was King’s. Did you know him? Jack Senhouse—John Senhouse—rum chap.”

“Eh? Senhouse? Oh, yes, I knew him. Used to see him about.” Duplessis resumed his letters; one, especially, made him frown—then stare out of the window. He read others but returned to that.

Lord Bramleigh went on. “I want to tell you about this chap Senhouse. Of course, I never knew him at the Varsity—ages before me, he was. Good footer—player—ran with the beagles—ran like the devil; rowed a bit, painted a bit, sang a damned good song: Jack Senhouse. Well, he’s mad. Rich chap—at least, his father was rich—alderman somewhere, I b’lieve—say, Birmingham . . . one of those sort of places. Well, Jack Senhouse chucked all that—took to painting, scribbling, God knows what. His governor gets cross—sends him round the world on the chance he’ll settle down by’n by. Not he! Gets up to all sorts of unlawful games—cuts the ship and starts off on his own across Morocco; gets hung up at Fez—row with a Shereef about his wife or wives. Foreign Office has to get to work—makes it all right. Senhouse goes? Not he. Stays there all the same—to learn the language, I’ll ask you. Language and plants. He collects plants in the Atlas. So he goes on. Then he gets back home. ‘Hope you’ll settle down to the office, my boy,’ says his governor. ‘No, thank ye,’ says Jack, and doesn’t. He was off again on the tramp somewhere—turns up in Russia—if Warsaw’s in Russia—anyhow he turns up where Warsaw is—talking to the Poles about Revolution. Still collects plants. They put him over the frontier. He goes to Siberia after plants and politics. More rows. Well, anyhow, he came back a year ago, and said he was a tinker. He’d learned tinkerin’ somewhere round, sawderin’ and all that—and I’m damned if he didn’t set up a cart and horse and go about with a tent. He paints, he scribbles, he tinkers, he sawders—just as he dam’ pleases. And he turns England into a garden, and plants his plants. He’s got plants out all over the country. I tell you—the rummiest chap. Up in the Lakes somewhere he’s got a lot—growin’ wild, free and easy—says he don’t want hedges round his things. ‘Let ’em go as they please,’ he says. So he turns the Land’s End into a rockery and stuffs the cracks with things from the Alps. He’s made me promise him things from the Pyrenees, confound him—you’ll have to help me with ’em. And irises on Dartmoor—from the Caucasus! And peonies growin’ wild in South Wales—oh, he’s mad! You never saw such a chap. And so dam’ reasonable about it. I like the chap. He’s all right, you know. He’s been turned out of every village in England pretty well, ’cause he will talk and will camp out, and plant his plants in other men’s land. I met him once bein’ kicked out of Dicky Clavering’s place—regular procession—and old Jack sittin’ up in his cart talkin’ to the policeman like an old friend. Admirin’ crowd, of course—the gels all love him, he’s so devilish agreeable, is Jack. I tell you, he learnt more than one sort of sawderin’. And as for his flowers—well, you know there’s a language of ’em. Well, now, what do you think? I’ve heard from the Dowager, and I’ll be shot if she hasn’t just turned old Jack out of my place! Found him campin’ in the park, with one of the maids boilin’ his kettle, and another cuttin’ bread and butter for him. Plantin’ peonies he was—in my park! Dam’ funny business; but the end’s funnier still. The Dowager, out driving, comes home—sees Master Jack waiting for his tea. Stops the carriage—sends the footman to order him off. Jack says he’ll go after tea. This won’t suit the Dowager by any means—so there’s a row. Jack comes up to explain; makes himself so infernally agreeable that I’ll be jiggered if the Dowager don’t ask him to dinner, and up he turns in evenin’ togs, just like you or me. After dinner—‘Good-night, my lady,’ says Jack. ‘I must be off early, as I’ve some saucepan bottoms waiting for me—and I’ve promised ’em for to-morrow sharp’—says Jack. Now—I say, I don’t believe you’ve heard a word of all this.”

Duplessis, I think, had not. He had been frowning at the glare outside, biting his cheek; in his hand was a crumpled-up letter.

“Look here, Bramleigh, I must get out of this,” he said. “I want to go home.” Lord Bramleigh, never to be surprised, emptied his tumbler.

Then he asked, “What’s up? No trouble, I hope?”

He had a gloomy stare for his first answer, and for second—“No, I don’t say that. I don’t know. That’s why I am off—to see.”

A man’s pleasure is a matter of course to your Bramleighs: the moral and social order must accommodate itself to that.

“That’s all right,” said Lord Bramleigh, therefore. “When do you go? To-morrow?”

“I go this evening.” The effect of this was to raise Lord Bramleigh’s scalp a shade higher.

“We swore we’d go to Madame Sop’s to-night, you know.” Madame Sop was a Madame Sopwith, a lady of uncertain age and Oriental appearance, who gave card-parties.

Duplessis said, “You must make my excuses—if she wants ’em. I’m going.”

“A woman, of course,” said Bramleigh, tapping a cigarette—but had no answer. Duplessis caught the Sun express, and, travelling straight through, reached Misperton Brand in less than two days.

On the afternoon of the third day he was at the door of the little house, Heath View, in Blackheath. The door was open, and within the frame of it stood a tall young woman with hair elaborately puffed over the ears and a complexion heightened by excitement.

“Good-afternoon,” says Duplessis. “Miss Middleham at home?”

“Yes,” says Jinny, “she is. Will you come in?”

He followed her into the parlour and was offered a chair. “Thanks very much,” he said, but did not take it. He stood by the window, and Jinny Middleham stood by the door.

Presently Jinny said, “I am Miss Middleham, you know. Or perhaps you didn’t know it.” Duplessis stared, then recovered.

“I beg your pardon. No, I didn’t grasp that. But you’re not my Miss Middleham.”

“I didn’t know that you had one,” said Jinny. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

He laughed. “You’ll think me very rude in a minute; but I’ll explain to you. It was your sister I wanted to see. She is—a friend of mine. My name is Duplessis. She may have told you.” Jinny was as stiff as a poker.

“I have heard my sister speak of you, certainly. I understood that you were—an acquaintance.”

Duplessis nodded easily. “Put it at that. I suppose I may see her?”

“She’s away,” said Jinny. “She’s staying in London—with the Honourable Mrs. Germain.”

He began to bite his cheek. “Can you give me Mrs. Germain’s address? It’s not Hill-street, I suppose?”

Jinny was very happy just now. “I suppose that a letter to Mrs. Germain at Misperton would find her. You are related to her, I believe?”

“My dear Miss Middleham,” said Duplessis candidly, “let’s keep to the point. It seems to me that you don’t want me to see your sister.”

“Oh,” says Jinny, “it don’t matter at all to me.” He knit his brows.

“Then you mean——?”

“I mean,” said Jinny, “that my sister is going to be married to Mr. Germain. That’s what it comes to.”

Duplessis bowed. “I see. Thank you very much. Than I think, if you’ll allow me—” He bowed again and went towards the door. The scene was to be over. Jinny put her hand upon the latch. “Where are you going?” she said, very short of breath. There was a thrill yet to be got out of this.

What was sport to her mortified him to death. “Really, I don’t know that I need trouble you any more,” he said. “You will give my kind regards to your sister, I hope.” But Jinny kept the door-handle in possession.

“Mr. Duplessis,” she said, “I ought to tell you that my sister would rather be excused from seeing you. At least, she says so. She said so to me. You best know why that may be.”

He ill concealed his mortification. “We won’t talk of your sister’s affairs, I think. I am happy to have made your acquaintance——”

Jinny tossed her head up. “My acquaintance, as you call it, is for them that want it. My sister’s is her own business. I tell you fairly, Mr. Duplessis, that she may be very unhappy.”

He flashed her a savage look. “Good Heavens, I believe that. Why, the thing’s monstrous! You might as well marry her to a nunnery. The fellow’s frozen—stark cold.” Jinny steadfastly regarded him.

“You know very well that you never meant to marry her,” she said. He grew cold instantly.

“Once for all, I must tell you that I decline to discuss your sister’s affairs with any one but herself. And since you tell me that I am not to see her, I will ask you to let me bid you good-afternoon. I am very sorry to have given you so much trouble.”

It was over; there was but one treatment for such a cavalier in Jinny’s code of manners. She opened the door wide. “Good-afternoon,” she said. He bowed and went out with no more ceremony.

He felt spotted, and was furious that such a squalid drama should have engaged him. A fluffed shop-girl—and Tristram Duplessis! Filthy, filthy business! But he went directly to Hill-street—whither a telegram had preceded him, terse and significant according to Jinny’s sense of the theatre. “Look out,” it said.

That sent the colour flying from Mary’s lips, and lighted panic in her eyes. She crushed it into a ball and dropped it; then she went directly to Mrs. James and asked leave to go home for a few days. She shook as she spoke. She said she was feeling very tired and unlike herself; she wanted her mother, she said simply, and as her lip quivered at the pathetic sound of that, her eyes also filled. Mrs. James, not an unkind woman by any means, was really sympathetic. “My dear child, I quite understand. Go home, of course, and get strong and well. Although you may hardly believe me, I care very much for your happiness—and John would wish it. If he could have been here I know he would have taken you. You shall have the carriage. Now, when would you like to——?”

“At once, please, Mrs. Germain—at once.” Mrs. Germain rang the bell and ordered the carriage. Mary could hardly wait for it; she spent the lagging moments pacing her room, and before it was fairly at the door she was on the doorstep. She took no luggage. Crouched in one corner of the hatefully dawdling thing, she stared quivering out of the window. At the corner of the square by Lansdowne House she gasped and cowered. A cab passed her, in which sat, scowling and great, Tristram Duplessis, his arms folded over the apron. Did he—? No, no, thank God, he had not seen her. She was safe in the ladies’ waiting-room; but the traverse of the platform was full of peril. Not until the train moved did she feel herself safe. She hungered for Jinny’s arms as never in her life before. The brave, the capable, the dauntless Jinny—Mercy of Heaven, to have given her such a sister in whom to confide!

But Mrs. James—the sweeping eye having lighted upon the ball of paper—Mrs. James wrote to her brother-in-law that night:—

“My dear John,—In case you may be hurrying back to town, I think I should tell you that Mary has gone to her people for a few days; she will write me the day and hour of her return. There is nothing serious; but she complained of being overtired—not to be wondered at. Even young ladies may find the pleasures of shopping a tax. It is possible, I think, that family matters, of which I know nothing—as I am not in her confidence—may have called her home. She left this telegram here. ‘Blackheath’ is on the stamp, you will notice. Mary spoke of her mother to me when she said that she must go, and seemed unhappy. I put this down to her being overwrought—and no doubt you will hear from her by the post which brings you this. Most of my work is done here, I am happy to say. I hope you will be pleased with Mary’s things. I must say that she looks charming in her wedding gown. But Ninon may be trusted for style. James is getting restive without me. Soames is no doubt at his tricks again. I shall be glad to be at my post. Your affecte. sister,

“Constantia Germain.”

“P.S.—Tristram is back from San Sebastian. I had a visit from him this afternoon, some three minutes after Mary left. He asked after her. You know that they were old acquaintances. Lord Bramleigh remains in Spain. He seems in no hurry to greet his bride. She is staying with the Gospertons at Brenchmore. They expect him there from day to day.”

Next day Mr. Germain presented himself in Hill-street, nothing varied in his deliberate urbanity. He had not heard from Mary, he said, in reply to a question; there had been no time for a letter to reach Southover, and the absence of a telegram was reassuring. He intended to go to Blackheath in the course of the afternoon. No doubt she had overtired herself. He applied himself to other topics and said nothing of Duplessis nor of the Blackheath message until luncheon was over. Then, as Mrs. James went by him through the door which he held open for her, he said, “I had forgotten: you have Tristram back? If he should happen to call, pray tell him that I should be glad to see him if he could spare me a moment.”

Mrs. James stopped in her rustling career. “But I don’t think it at all likely he will call—again,” she said.

“No? Very well. Perhaps I shall encounter him somewhere. Or I could write.”

“Quite so,” said Mrs. James. “It is easy to write.” Then she shimmered away up the stairs. He went into the library, and, after some pacing of the floor, sat down at his desk, wrote, signed, and sealed a paper. He rang the bell.

“I wish you and Gutteridge to witness a paper for me, Jennings,” he said to the man. “Fetch him in here, please.” The two functionaries signed the sheet as he directed them. “Sign there, if you please, Jennings. And Gutteridge below your name. . . . That will do. Thank you.” He put the paper and a crumpled telegram together in a long envelope, sealed it, and wrote shortly on the outside. He locked it in his desk, then resumed his pacing of the room. As he walked his lips moved to frame words—“Impossible! Purity’s self. . . Her eyes ray innocence. . . .”

But he knew Tristram, and could not get his leisurely image away. And Tristram had been much at Misperton; and had a way of—his lips moved again—“My darling from the lions! From the power of the dog!” He went back to his desk, took out the envelope he had sealed, and would have torn it across—but did not. Instead, he put it in his breast-pocket, and left the house.

In the little parlour of Heath View he stood presently awaiting her. Jinny had seemed relieved to see him when she opened the door. Mary had been lying down, she said, and would come when she was tidy. He smiled and said he would wait. He was noticeably white and lined in the face.

She came into the room presently, flushed and very bright-eyed. He thought that she stood there like a mouse sensing the air for alarms, prompt to dart at a pinfall. His heart beat to see the youth and charm of her; his pain was swallowed up in longing for his treasured bliss. He almost sobbed as he held out his arms. “Mary—my child—my love;—” and when she ran in and clung to him with all her force, he clasped her in a frenzy. Whatever darksome fears his honest mind may have harboured, whatever beasts he may have fought, there were none after such a greeting as this. He poured out his love like water upon her, kissed her wet cheeks and shining eyes, and with, “There, my little lamb, there, my pretty one, be at rest, be at peace with me,” he soothed her, and felt the panic of her heart to die down. Then, sitting, he drew her to his knees and let her lie awhile with her head on his shoulder.

She whispered in his ear, “Oh, it was sweet of you to come! I wanted you dreadfully—you don’t know.”

“No, my precious one, I don’t indeed. But I am well content that you should have needed me. I pray that you always will, and that I may never fail you.”

She lifted her head back to look at him; she smiled like an April day. “You fail me! Oh, no, you’ll never do that.” And of her own accord she kissed him. The good man simply adored her.

“Now will you tell me what upset you so much?” he asked her, but she shook her head roguishly and said that she didn’t know. “It was my stupidity—I was frightened—suddenly frightened of all the grandeur—the great rooms, the butler and footmen—the people in carriages who called—” She stopped here, her large eyes full upon his own. She breathed very fast. Then she said, “That’s partly the truth—but there’s more.”

He could not bear it. He could not face what she had to say. He knew that he was a coward, but he could not; despised himself, but could not.

He clasped her close. “Tell me nothing more, darling child. You will reproach yourself, and I cannot bear it.”

She struggled to be free. “Oh, listen, listen to me, please!”

He kissed her with passion. “My life is yours; would you rob me of it? I cannot listen to you——”

She gave over, and lay with hidden face until she dared to look up again. Then, when both were calmer, she showed her serious face. Playing with his eyeglasses, she did relieve her mind of one of her fears. “Do you know,” she said, “unless you are with me—always—I am sure that I shall do something mad, or bad. Run away from it all—hide myself.” She nodded her head sadly. “Yes, I’m quite sure.” He could afford to look at the future, not the past.

“Why, then, my love, I shall be with you always—night and day. Do you hear me? Night and day! How will you like that?” She hung her head, peered up at him for a second, and hung her head again. He could do nothing but kiss her after that.

He stayed to tea, which she prepared with her own quick hands. She and Jinny entertained him, and he had never liked that pronounced young woman so well. It was her birthday, Jinny’s birthday, he was told. “A few days only from mine,” he said, with a fine smile to Mary, which made her understand him, and blush. “Twenty-nine to-day,” said Jinny candidly, cutting cake. “This is my cake, Mr. Germain. I suppose you’ll give Mary a better one.”

“I shall give her the best I can, Miss Jinny, you may be sure,” he said heartily, and she nodded to him her confidence in his love. He treated her with grave politeness, which lost all its distance by the evident interest he took in her affairs. She gave herself no airs or graces, was neither pert nor sniffing for offence, nor airy, nor merely odious. Germain’s own manners were so fine, so based upon candour and honesty that one could not fail to respond. Even Jinny Middleham forgot herself; and as for Mary, she sat quietly on the watch, really happy, really at ease about the dread future—and whatever terrors she may have owed to Tristram she had none now. Yet she was to have one more chance. At parting she clung to him again, and begged him not to leave her for long. “I’m safe with you—I feel that. Oh, how did you make me like you?”

“By liking you myself, I expect, little witch.”

“I’m not a witch. I’m a dunce, and you know that I am. But listen——”

“I listen, dearest.”

“I am going to be the best girl in the world. I’m going to do everything that you tell me—always.”

“Beloved, I am sure.”

“Wait. You haven’t forgotten what you promised me?”

“What was that?”

“You have forgotten! Oh, but you must never forget it. It is important—to me.”

“Tell me again.”

“It was—always to ask me before you believe anything against me. That was it—and you promised.” He took her face between his hands and looked long into her eyes.

“My dearest heart,” he said, “I’ll promise you better. Not only shall I never believe anything against you—but I shall never even ask you of the fact. Never, never.”

She searched his face—her eyes wandered over it, doubting, judging, considering.

“I had rather you asked me,” she told him; but his answer was to kiss her lips.

She went with him to the garden gate, seemed most unwilling that he should go. Farewells spoken, her ring-hand kissed, she stood watching him down the terrace, and then, as he never looked back, walked slowly into the house and shut the door. Had she stayed a moment longer she would have seen an encounter he had at the corner where you turn up for the station. Perhaps it was better as it was; I don’t know. He had paused there to hail a fly with his umbrella, and having faced round towards his way, saw Duplessis advancing towards him. He felt himself turn cold and sick. The fly drew up. “Wait for me where you are,” he said, and went to meet the young man. Duplessis saw him on a sudden; his eyes, blue by nature, grew steely and intensely narrow.

“Good-evening, Tristram,” said Germain. “Constantia told me of your return.” Duplessis dug the pavement with his stick.

“Did she? Well, it is true, you see.”

“I do see. You are going to pay Mary a visit, I suppose. She’s not very well, I’m sorry to say—a little overtired. Otherwise, I am sure she would have been delighted.”

Duplessis made no reply, and the other continued: “I told Constantia that I hoped to see you—to tell you a small piece of news. I am about to be married again. Mary has been so kind as to confide her future happiness into my hands. Perhaps you won’t misunderstand me if I say that some little fraction of that happiness depends upon her not seeing you for the moment. When she is rested, we may hope—The wedding will naturally be a very quiet one. Her people wish it, and my taste agrees with theirs. Otherwise we should have liked to have you among our guests. We promise ourselves the pleasure of seeing you at Southover in the near future. I think the place will please you. You must give an account of my pheasants in December.”

“That’s very good of you, Germain,” said Duplessis, looking him full in the face.

Mr. Germain turned to his waiting fly. “Have you other engagements in Blackheath?”

“None,” said Duplessis.

“No? Then perhaps I can offer you a seat in my carriage.”

“Thanks,” said Duplessis, “I’m walking;” nodded, and went forward, the way of the heath.

“The station,” said Mr. Germain.

He could thank God, at least, that she had not meant to deceive him; he could thank God, at least, that she had done with the past. But he had received a mortal wound, and after his manner concealed it. His lovely image was soiled; the glass of his life to come dimmed already. He saw nothing more of Mary until the wedding day, though he wrote to her in his usual fashion and on his usual days. “My dear child,” and “Yours with sincere affection.” She did not guess that anything was amiss, could not know what they had cost him to write them twice a week. His brother and sister-in-law noticed his depression. Mrs. James indeed was tempted to believe that, at the eleventh hour—but the Rector knew him better. All his forces were now to put heart in the bridegroom. He spoke much of Mary.

XV
A PHILOSOPHER EMBALES

That young man with the look of a faun, at once sleepy and arch, the habit of a philosopher and the taste for gardening at large, whom we have seen very much at his ease in society quite various, was by name Senhouse—patronym, Senhouse, in the faith John, to the world of his familiars Jack Senhouse, and to many Mad Jack. But madness is a term of convenience to express relations, and to him, it may well be, the world was mad. He thought, for instance, that Lord Bramleigh was mad, to whom we are now to hear him talking, as much at his length and as much at his ease as of late we saw him in the company of Miss Mary Middleham, or of Miss Hertha de Speyne of the Cantacute stem.

Perhaps he was more at his ease. He lay, at any rate, before his tent, full length upon his stomach, his crook’d elbows supported his face, which was wrinkled between his hands. His pipe, grown cold by delay, lay on the sward before him. One leg, from the knee, made frequent excursions towards the sky, and when it did, discovered itself lean and sinewy, bare of sock. His sweater was now blue, and his trousers were grey; it was probably he had no more clothing upon him. Upon a camp-stool near by sat Lord Bramleigh of the round face, corded and gaitered, high-collared and astare. To express bewilderment, he whistled; concerned, he smiled.

“Well,” he said presently, “I think you might. We’re short of a gun—I’ve told you so.”

“My dear man,” said the other, “I shoot no birds. I’d as soon shoot my sister.”

“That’s rot, you know, Jack.”

“To me it’s plain sense. God save you, Bramleigh, have you ever seen a bird fly? It’s the most marvellous—no, it’s not, because we’re all marvels together; but I’ll tell you this—boys frisking after a full meal, girls at knucklebones, a leopard stalking from a bough, horses in a windy pasture—whatever you like of the sort has been done, and well done—but a bird in flight, never! There’s no greater sight—and you’ll flare into it with your filthy explosives and shatter a miracle into blood and feathers. Beastly work, my boy, butchers’ work.”

“Rot,” said Bramleigh—“But of course you’re mad. Why are my cartridges filthier than your pots of paint? Hey?”

“Well, I make something, you see—or try to, and you blow it to smithereens—However, we won’t wrangle, Bramleigh. You’re a nice little man, after all. Those Ramondias—it was really decent of you.”

“Much obliged,” said the young lord; and then—“I say, talking of the Pyrenees, you knew Duplessis? He’s our man short. He’s chucked, you know. He’s awfully sick.” Senhouse was but faintly interested.

“Yes, I knew him—Cleverish—conceited ass. What’s he sick about?”

“Gel. Gel goin’ to be married—to-day or something—end of September, I know. Tristram’s mad about it. He was at San Sebastian with me when he heard about it—and bolted off like a rabbit—mad rabbit.”

Senhouse yawned. “We’re all mad according to you, you know. So I take something off. I can understand his sort of madness, anyhow. Who’s the lady?”

“Oh, I don’t know her myself. Gel down at his place—in a poor sort of way, I b’lieve. Companion or something—he played about—and now she’s been picked up by a swell connexion of his—old Germain of Southover. Be shot, if he’s not going to marry her.”

The lengthy philosopher smiled to himself, but gave no other sign of recognition until he said, “I know that lady. Brown-eyed, sharp-eyed, quick, sleek, mouse of a girl.”

“Dessay,” said Lord Bramleigh. “They know their way about.” The philosopher threw himself upon his back and gazed into the sky.

“Yes, and what a way, good Lord! Idol-hunting—panting after idols. Maims herself and expects Heaven as a reward. I don’t suppose that she has been herself since she left her mother’s lap. And now, with an alternative of being sucked dry and pitched away, she is to be slowly starved to death. I only saw her once—no, twice. She had what struck me as unusual capacities for happiness—zest, curiosity, health—but no chances of it whatsoever. Ignorant—oh, Lord! They make me weep, that sort. So pretty and so foolish. But there, if I once began to cry, I should dissolve in mist.”

“Oh, come,” said Lord Bramleigh, “I don’t think she’s doin’ badly for herself. She was nobody, you know, and old Germain—well, he’s a somebody. He’s a connexion of mine, through his sister-in-law—she was Constantia Telfer—so I know he’s all right.”

“I’ll do her the justice to say,” Senhouse reflected aloud, “that she didn’t sell herself—she’s not a prostitute. She’s a baby—pure baby. She was dazzled, and misunderstood the sensation. She thought she was touched. She’s positively grateful to the man—didn’t see how she was to refuse. She’s a donkey, no doubt—but she had pretty ways. She could have been inordinately happy—but she’s not going to be. She’s in for troubles, and I’m sorry. I liked her.”

“She’d better look out for Tristram, I can tell you,” said Bramleigh. “He’s an ugly customer, if he don’t have his rights. Not that there were any rights, so far as I know—but that makes no difference to Tristram.”

“Is she worth his while? I doubt it.”

“She will be. Germain’s rich. Besides, Tristram sticks up for his rights—tenacious beggar.”

“Should have been kicked young,” quoth the philosopher, and sped Lord Bramleigh on his way.

“Mary Middleham, O Mary of the brown eyes and pretty mouth, I should like to see you married!” he thought, as he packed his tent. “There’s a woman inside you, my friend; you weren’t given her form for nothing. You are not going to be married yet awhile, you know. It’ll take more than a going to church to do that. You’ve got to be a woman first—and you’re not yet born!”

He lifted a shallow box of earth, and fingered some plants in it. “Ramondias—beauties! One of these springs there’ll be a cloud of your mauve flushing a black cliff over the green water. There’s a palette to have given old England! Mauve, wet black, and sea-green. I have the very place for you, out of reach of any save God and the sea-mews and me. But even with them you won’t have a bad ‘assistance.’ That’s a clever word, for how is the artist going to make a masterpiece unless the public makes half of it? Black, mauve, and green—all wet together! We’ll make a masterpiece in England yet. . . .

“That girl’s great eyes haunt me. Lakes of brown wonder—they were the colour of moorland water—a dainty piece! I could see love in her—she was made for it. A dark hot night in summer, and she in your arms. . . .! Good Lord, when the beast in a man gets informed by the mind of a god—there’s no ecstasy beyond the sun to compare with it. . . .

“Two things worth the world—: Power, and Giving. When a girl gives you her soul in her body, and you pour it all back into her lap, you are spending like a king. Why do women mourn Christ on His cross? Where else would He choose to be? A royal giver! To have the thing to give—and to give it all! He was to be envied, not mourned. . . .

“Old Germain—what’s he doing but playing the King on the Cross. He feels it—we all feel it—but has he got anything to give? It’s an infernal shame. He’s bought the child. She’ll never forgive him; she’ll harden, she’ll be pitiless—have no mercy when the hour strikes. There’ll be horrors—it ought to be stopped. I’ve half a mind——

“Damn it, no! She must go to school. If there’s woman in her, after travail she’ll be born. . . .

“To school? To Duplessis? Is he to school her, poor wretch? What are his ‘rights?’ Squatter’s rights, you may suppose. So she’s to be a doll for Germain to dandle, or an orange for Duplessis to suck, and betwixt the feeding and the draining a woman’s to be born! Wife, who’s no wife, mistress for an hour—and a pretty flower with the fruit unformed. . . .

“If I bedeck the bosom of England and star it with flowers, do I do better than Germain with his money, or Duplessis with his rights? And if I were to court her bosom . . . Oh, my brown-eyed venturer in deep waters, I could serve you well! Go to school, go to school, missy—and when you are tired, there’s Halfway House!”

That evening under the hunter’s moon he struck his camp. He had told young Bramleigh that he was soon for the West, where he preferred to winter. “I shall be in Cornwall by November,” he had said, “and that’s time enough;” and this being late September, it is clear that he projected a leisurely progress from Northamptonshire, where he now was, to the Cornish Sea. He had indeed no reason for hurry, but many for delay. That fairest of all seasons to the poet’s mind—that “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun” was to him foster-mother, whether her drowsy splendours fed him or he felt the tonic of her chill after-breath. He worked out, he said, in winter what he had dreamed in the autumn, and he could afford to lose no hours from her lap.

Loafer deliberately, incurably a tramp, he was never idle—whether mending kettles or painting masterpieces (for he had a knack of colour which now and then warranted that word), his real interest was in watching life and in establishing a base broad enough or simple enough to uphold it all. He was not too proud to learn from the beasts, nor enough of a prig to ignore his two-legged neighbours: but for the life of him he could not see wherein a Lord Bramleigh differed from a ploughboy, or a Mary Middleham from a hen partridge—and it was a snare laid for him that he was constantly to be tempted to overlook the fact that they differed at least in this, that they had the chance of differing considerably. He would have been greatly shocked to be told that he was a cynic, and yet intellectually he was nothing more. He did himself the honour of believing most people to be donkeys: if they were not, why under the sun did they not do as he was doing?

The answer to that was that if they did, he would immediately do something else, and find plenty reasons to support him. He had not worked that out—but it’s true.

It was also true—as he had told Mary Middleham—that he lived from hand to mouth. His father, Alderman Senhouse, J.P., of Dingeley, in the Northern Midlands, was proprietor of the famous Dingeley Main Colliery, and extremely rich. His mother had been a Battersby, well connected, therefore. He had been to Rugby and to Cambridge, just as Duplessis had been, and at the same times; like Duplessis he idled, but unlike him, he cost no man anything. For his needs, which were very simple, he could make enough by his water-colours, a portrait here and there, an essay, a poem. Then—and that was true, too—he had the art and mystery of tinkering at his disposition. He had earned his place in the guild of tinkers—a very real body—by more than one battle. He was accepted as an eccentric whose whim was to be taken seriously—and as such he made his way. He had never asked his father for a sixpence since he left Cambridge and was on very friendly terms with him. His brothers took the world more strenuously; one was partner at the colliery, another in Parliament, a third—the first born—was Recorder of Towcester.

So much for his talents—now for his accomplishments. He was an expert woodman, a friend to every furred and feathered thing, could handle adders without fear, and was said to know more about pole-cats, where they could still be found, and when, than any man in England. He had seen more badgers at ease than most people, and was infallible at finding a fox. All herbs he loved, and knew their virtues; a very good gardener in the West said that the gentleman-tinker could make a plant grow. There’s no doubt he had a knack, as the rock-faces between Land’s End and St. Ives could testify—and may yet. He had a garden out there, which he was now on the way to inspect. But he had many gardens—that was his passion. He was but newly come from one in Cumberland.

He said of himself that he was a pagan suckled in a creed outworn, and that he was safely weaned. There was a touch of the faun about him; he had no self-consciousness and occasionally more frankness than was convenient. The number of his acquaintance was extraordinary, and, in a sense, so was that of his friends—for he had none at all. Accessible as he was up to a point, beyond that point I know nobody who could say he had ever explored Senhouse. That was where the secretiveness of the wild creature peeped out. Nobody had ever said of him that he had loved, either because nobody knew—or because nobody told. Yet his way with women was most effective; it was to ignore their sex. “I liked her,” he would say meditatively of a woman—and add, “She was a donkey, of course.” You could make little of a phrase of the sort—yet one would be glad to know the woman’s opinion. We have seen that he could be a sympathetic listener, we know that he could be more, in moments of difficulty—and there we stop.

Lastly, I am not aware that he had any shame. He seems always to have done exactly as he pleased—until he was stopped by some guardian of custom or privilege. This frequently happened; but so far as I can learn the only effect upon Senhouse was to set him sauntering elsewhere—to do exactly as he pleased. He never lost his temper, was never out of spirits, drank wine when he could get it, but found water quite palatable. He was perfectly sincere in his professions, and owned nothing in the world but his horse and cart, Bingo, the materials of his trade, and some clothes which had not been renewed for five years. We leave him at present, pushing to the West.

XVI
THE WEDDING DAY

Saint Saviour’s Church was by many sizes too large for the party—a modern edifice in the Gothic taste, carried out in pink brick with white facings. It was large and smelt of damp. The bridegroom wore his overcoat throughout the ceremony. It was distinctly high, and Mrs. James’s hands were many times up, and her eyes all about for witness of the “frippery” they beheld. Stations of the Cross were affixed to the pillars of the nave, lamps twinkled in the sanctuary; dimly in an aisle she made out the plaster effigy of a beardless young man in the Capuchin habit, pink cheeks, and a fringe, who carried lilies in a sheaf. “The hermaphrodite,” Mrs. James did not scruple to call him for his pains. “Can we not have some of these things taken out?” she had asked her lord; but the Rector was precise that they must have a faculty, and that they were ten minutes late as it was. He was to officiate, that was one comfort; but it diminished the bridegroom’s party by one.

That occupied, barely, the front pew on the right; the bride’s company that of the left. Mrs. James, Lady Barbara Rewish, an old friend, Miss Germain, a pale sister, Mr. Gradeley, Q.C., who was best man, and smiled at his own thoughts, and the Right Hon. Constantine Jess, like a large comfortable cat, who had been President of the Board of Trade and hoped to be again; that was all—but it was too much for the Middleham connexion, which shrank into a row of ciphers as the rite proceeded.

Jinny Middleham, whose shyness was taken for impudence, would have made a very handsome appearance if she had not been so painfully aware of it; the bride, shorter by a head, looked like a child. She wore pale grey cloth and feathers, and had a black hat. All that art could do for her had been done; her slight figure was enhanced, her little feet seemed smaller, her gloves were perfect—and yet, as Mrs. James recognized with lead in the heart, if John had picked her up in her poppies and white muslin, and married her then and there one could have understood it. A man might love a milkmaid—but a little doll in a smart frock, a suburban miss in masquerade—ah, the pity of it! And yet the girl’s eyes were like stars, and her face, if it was pale, was serious enough. “It won’t do—it will not do,” said Mrs. James to herself—“I despair.” She despaired from the moment of the bride’s entry upon the arm of her little anxious whiskered father—when she saw old Lady Barbara raise her lorgnette upon the group for one minute—and drop it again, and snuggle into her lace. “There’s nothing in it—not even romance,” that look told Mrs. James. “It’s ridiculous—it's rather low—but here I am. And Germain’s an old friend.” Lady Barbara Rewish, alone among his equals, sometimes called Mr. Germain Jack.

That anything possibly low could be set beside Mr. Germain seemed incredible—but, if credible, then tragic. He wore race in every span of his tall, thin figure, in every line of his fastidious, patient face. His simplicity was manifest, his courtesy never at fault. The slight stoop towards her which he gave his bride as she drew level with him—the humble appeal, the hope and the asking—should have struck the word from his old friend’s mind. Thus a man defers to a queen, she might have said—and yet in that she did not she was wiser, perhaps, in her generation than the children of light. Germain was really, now and throughout the ceremony, revelling in the æsthetic. The position, in its pathos and its triviality at once, appealed to the sensual in him. How lovely her humility, how exquisite, how pure his pride! Benevolence! Behold, I stoop and pick for my breast this hedgerow thing! See it for what it is in all this state—see it trembling here upon the edge of a new world! Is not this to be loved indeed—where I only give, and she must look to me alone? To be sought as a mother by a frightened child, to be source and fountain of all, to give—this is to be happy. And, incapable of expressing it by a sign, he was at this moment supremely happy, and, though he would have been aghast at the thought, supremely luxurious. He was, in fact, indulging appetite in the only way possible to him.

The Rector of Misperton, safe behind his panoply of shrugging eyebrows, hardened, too, by use and wont, administered the rite with calm precision. The words were said:—“I, John, take thee, Mary Susan,” “I, Mary Susan, take thee, John”—how she murmured them and how he loved her!—the book was signed—but Mr. Gradeley, Q.C., had no pleasantries at his command, and Mr. Constantine Jess had never had any. Old Lady Barbara kissed the cold bride, and hoped she would be happy. “I’m sure he’s in love with you,” she said, “and you must be good to him. I’ve been in love with him myself any time these ten years. But he wouldn’t look at me—and I don’t wonder. I’m such a wicked old woman.” She told the tale on the way to the Wheatsheaf Hotel, where the bride was to be sped, of how poor old Lord Morfiter had married his cook—“She was a Viennese—and, of course, they are wonderful—such tact! Or is it the stays? There’s a place in Wigmore-street. At any rate, it worked very well, and really there was nothing else to be done. No one understood him so well as she had—no one! She always cooked for him when they were alone—or had one or two people dining. Perhaps it’ll be all right here.”

Mr. Jess bowed. “I sincerely hope so. But—forgive me—do I understand—? Was Mrs. Germain——.”

“Lord bless us, no!” cried Lady Barbara. “I don’t suppose she ever saw a cutlet, off a dish. A Bath bun and a cup of coffee is her standard, you may be sure. Of course, she’ll be different in a year, you know. She’ll drop her people and all that.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Jess. “And get what you call ‘tact’——.”

“Oh, she’s dressed herself beautifully—or Ninon’s done it for her. She’ll pay for dressing. I call it a pretty figure. Charming. And she’s got fine eyes,” Lady Barbara replied. “That’s what did it, no doubt. Constantia tells me that Tristram Duplessis—.” Mr. Jess grew animated.

“A clever young fellow, Duplessis. I have had him under observation lately. My secretary is leaving me, and there has been talk—I hear, by the way, that the Cabinet is hopelessly divided: breaking up,—really, you know, on the rocks.”

“So poor Lord Quantock was telling me last night, with tears in his eyes. Then you come in, it seems.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Jess soothingly, “we shall see what we shall see.”

“No doubt,” said Lady Barbara, bored with Mr. Jess.

The reception was rather ghastly. Lady Barbara supposed “we ought to mingle,” and gallantly tried it upon Mrs. Middleham, who had her daughter Mary’s fine eyes crystallized, as it were, in her head, stiffened into glass and intensely polished! Mr. Germain, seconding his friend’s effort while rigidly ignoring that an effort was to be made, performed the introduction—“Ah—do you know Lady Barbara Rewish? Mrs. Middleham,” and departed, not without hearing Mrs. Middleham say that she did not know her ladyship.

“Such a pretty wedding,” said Lady Barbara; “she looked delicious.”

Mrs. Middleham, who was not without character, said that Mary was a very good girl. She had her “back up,” as her daughter Jinny said, and neither gave nor took any odds. Lady Barbara replied that we were all good at that age—and then found herself stranded. To see Jinny with Mr. Gradeley, Q.C., had been a cure for the spleen. She ignored him, till he perspired in her service.

Mary was cutting the cake while Mr. Germain was engaged in the very unpleasant task of watching his sister-in-law “put things on a proper footing” before Mr. Middleham. He could tell by the quivering eyelids of the poor man that things were being put there with vigour. “No, madam, no,” Mr. Middleham was heard to say. “I don’t know that we could fairly expect more than that.”

“Nor do I,” said Mrs. James, with the air of one who adds, “I should think not.”

“Mr. Germain has been more than kind,” he ventured to proceed; “princely, indeed—and we should not presume——.”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. James, and was echoed, somewhat to her discomfiture, by Mrs. Middleham, who had escaped from Lady Barbara by the simple means of walking away.

“I think that Mrs. Germain may take for granted that nobody from our house will intrude where he is not wanted,” said Mrs. Middleham with dignity. “Whenever Mary comes to see us she will be welcome. That she knows. We shall go where we are welcome—and nowhere else.”

“Then we quite understand each other, I see,” said Mrs. James.

“I hope we do,” said the other. “It shan’t be my fault if we do not.”

Mr. Germain was very uncomfortable, but there was now none too much time for the train, according to his calculations. While Mary was “changing her hat”—as it was put—the wedding party, rigidly segregated, stood astare, each at its window, upon the gusty vagaries of a late autumn day.

Mary was at the glass, flushed and on the edge of tears. Her hands were at her hat, while her eyes searched Jinny’s stony pair for a sign of melting. But Jinny was immovable. In vain did the pretty bride turn this way and that, invite criticism, invoke it: Jinny’s disapproval persisted. This was not to be borne—with a little whimper the victim turned, clasped Medusa round the waist; with one hand to her chin she coaxed for kindness. She stroked Jinny’s cheek, tiptoed for a kiss. Presently she fairly sobbed on Jinny’s bosom.

“Oh, you are unkind to me—you hurt me dreadfully! What have I done, that you won’t love me?”

“Done!” cried Jinny. “Hear her!” Then with blazing wrath she scorned her sister. “I’ll tell you what you’ve done, my dear. You’ve married a gravestone. Sacred to the Memory of John Germain, Esquire—that’s what you’ve sold yourself to—take your joy of that. The price of a kissed hand! You’ll find out before morning, my beauty. If I marry a crossing-sweeper, he shall be a man.”

“You liked him, you know you liked him——.”

“Yes, for a grandfather, my dear; but for a husband, if you please, I’ll have a man. And so might you—over and over. You’ve been as good as promised half-a-dozen times——.”

“Jinny, you know that’s not true.” She was ruthlessly put away to arm’s length.

“But it is true. There was Rudd—what do you say of him?”

Rudd must be owned to. So far off he showed so dim a speck in the distance, there seemed nothing in it.

“Young Stainer—you forget him, too, I suppose——.”

“Stainer?” said poor Mary. “He was a boy, Jinny.”

“He had a pair of arms, I believe. And I should like to hear your opinion of Fred Wimple. You were never at Folkestone in your life, I suppose? You never talked to Sandgate by moonlight? Never met any one in your life by moonlight?”

The remembrance of a meeting by moonlight, more recent than any at Folkestone, enabled Mary to consider Mr. Wimple’s case.

“I don’t think you need drag up flirtations against me. You’re not very generous, Jinny. Of course I flirted.”

“Did you flirt with Mr. Ambrose Perivale? Was that what made him follow you home across England? Did you flirt with Mr. Dup—.” But now Mary clung to her.

“Stop, Jinny, oh, stop! If I’ve been wicked I must pay for it—it’s always the girl that pays. But I have never been wicked—you know it, oh, you must know it of your sister. I’ve told him everything, Jinny—all that he would hear. But he’s too good to believe anything against me; he’ll protect me, he’ll never let me come to any harm. Oh, Jinny, Jinny, don’t be cruel to me any more! If ever a girl meant to do her duty in life I mean it now. Dearest, you must help me—I’m afraid of him, you know.”

Jinny folded her arms tightly over her chest. “Yes, I can believe it—and you may be afraid of your husband before long—for the same reason. You go out of your own walk—and you get lost. Your Tristram Duplessis, who looks at a girl as if he wanted to eat her! You can’t be expected to understand such ways. And it’s my belief that your John Germain, Esquire, is no better—except for one thing, that he hasn’t any teeth. If you ask me, I would rather be eaten any day by Mr. Duplessis. He’d make a cleaner job of it.”

Mary was not crying. On the contrary, her eyes were hard. She was pale and serious.

“I know that I’ve done a thing which you don’t approve. You think that I’m going to leave you all for good. I hope that I shall show you soon that you are wrong. Do me justice, Jinny. You have never seen me try to get out of my station. I shall do whatever Mr.—, my husband, wishes, of course—but I will never turn my back on my people. Nor would he ask it of me—be sure of that. I can’t say any more—except that you have hurt me by what you have said—and that five minutes after I’ve gone away, you’ll be sorry.” Then she choked down something, and Jinny was sorry.

“Molly, I’ve been a brute——”

“No, no.”

“But I have. I’m proud of you, really—you looked quite a beauty in your French clothes——”

“Jinny! Beside you I’m a little brown mouse.”

“You’re not, my dear. You’re as sharp as any needle. You’ll be one of them in a month, and they’ll be the first to own it. I could see that old Lady Rewish look you over—and nod her wicked old head. She knows, bless you! Little Moll, forgive your tiresome sister—kiss me now——”

“Darling Jinny, darling Jinny——”

They clung, wept, and kissed; and presently a radiant bride went down to meet her lord.

Good-byes were said in haste. Jinny promised there should be no rice. A momentary flush of cordiality warmed the unhappy guests. Lady Barbara kissed the bride on both cheeks; Jinny hovered about her, eager now to show her contrition. Wonder of all, Mr. Germain, saluted her fair cheek. Jinny was seen to blush. Riceless, slipperless they went their way—and the party dissolved like smoke.

It was afterwards agreed at Blackheath that Mr. Germain and the Rector were gentlemen.

XVII
THE WEDDING NIGHT

Torquay was the place for the honeymoon; but Exeter was to be the end of that day’s stage. Mr. Germain’s valet put them into the train, handed his master the tickets, Mary her jewelcase, took off his hat and retired to an adjoining compartment. Everything was very easy, done with an absence of enthusiasm which might have chilled a more resolute heart than this bride’s. It was done, she reflected, as if a wedding was a matter of every day. Why, a budget of evening papers, Punch, Truth, and other things had been laid in order upon the opposite seat. Was he going to read all these? It was almost incredible—but after the events of the afternoon she could have believed anything. She felt her ring to make sure, and then her eye caught sight of the paper on the window—Reserved to Exeter—J. Germain, Esquire. Perhaps great people always reserved carriages when they travelled—perhaps a carriage would always be reserved for her when she went about alone. There would have been a maid if she had chosen; it had been proposed to her. She had laughed and said, “Of course not!” But he had taken his man-servant—and how could he? On his wedding journey! Had he taken him before—? This was his second wedding, she remembered.

Anxiety as to whether the train could be caught might account for the bridegroom’s silence during the carriage journey. His watch was open in his hand. For some time, too, after the train moved, he kept silence. She found herself looking soberly at the little pointed toe of her shoe when her thoughts were broken in upon by the capture of her hand. The sudden attack made her heart beat; she blushed hotly, lost her command of experience. As if it had been the first advance he had ever made, she dared not raise her eyes. She must be wooed from the beginning if she was to be won.

This was the way to charm him; he was charmed. He called her his Mary, and asked, of what she was thinking? She didn’t know, couldn’t say. Was she thinking of their coming life together? No, not then. “I think constantly of that,” he told her and put his arm about her. She let him draw her closer as he developed his plans for their joint happiness. “Calm spaces for work together, my love—there is so much in which your help will be a pride to me—and something I do believe, in which I can be useful to you. We must keep up our languages—French, Italian, even Spanish (quite worth your while for Cervantes’ sake): I do think I can help you there. Then your music—I could not bear you to abandon that. I have a little surprise for you when I bring you to Southover—you shall see. Then riding. I think you don’t ride? You shall be under Musters’s care. Musters is an admirable fellow—you will like him. We ride together daily, I hope. Will you like that?”

“Yes, yes, I shall like everything. It will all be very wonderful to me—all quite new.”

He smiled, as if tolerant of a simplicity which could find daily horse-exercise wonderful—and she felt it. In her present state of acute sensibility she needed anything but this treatment. He should have taken her as an adorable dunce and laughed at her outright between his kisses, or he should have whirled her off her balance in the torrent of his ecstasy. But Mr. Germain never laughed—it was not a Germain’s habit—and ecstasy at four in the afternoon was not possible to him. He liked his cup of tea at a quarter past, and when that hour came proposed to Mary that she should give it him from her tea basket—Lady Barbara’s present.

She was thankful for the relief, and almost herself again in the bustle of preparation; she forgot her dumps, and when he burnt his fingers and said “Tut-tut!” she fairly laughed at him and took, and even returned, his kisses. Things were better; but he very nearly imperilled the position thus hardly won, by wiping his mouth with a silk pocket handkerchief. True, she had been eating bread and butter—but was this a time—?

They chatted after tea—first of Berkshire where her home was to be. He spoke of his “riverine property.” She could almost see the edge of his estate as they slipped away from the ragged fringe of Reading. Then, by natural stages, he was led to reflect upon the society she would meet about Southover. The Chaveneys—he thought she would like the Chaveneys; they were her nearest neighbours, five miles off. Sir George was asthmatic—a sufferer; but Lady Chaveney was a charming woman, a woman of the world. She had been a Scrope of Harfleet. The girls were quite pleasant young women; and there was a son—rather wild—an anxiety occasionally. Then there were—but her eyes were wide. Five miles off! Were those the nearest people? She had thought there was a town—was not Farlingbridge the post town? He considered Farlingbridge. Yes, Farlingbridge was a mile and a half from the Park gates—a market town of 2,000 souls. There was a Vicar, a worthy man, of the name of Burgess. He met Burgess, of course—on the Board of Guardians, for instance. There was a Colonel Dermott, too; yes, he had forgotten Dermott. Nobody else. Her “Oh, I see,” was his reproof; he was ashamed of himself. “Two thousand other people, of course! Everybody will be delighted to see you, my dearest. Don’t misunderstand me. They won’t call, probably—Foolish old customs die hard with us. But there won’t be a door in Farlingbridge which won’t be open to you. I shall go with you, if you will allow me. I have long wished to know more of my neighbours—but you know how sadly I have lived.” He drew her closely to him—“How I have lived so long without my Mary passes my comprehension! Do you remember that last July was not the first time I saw you?”

She was pleased, and showed that she was. She questioned him shyly. Had he seen her before this year? What had he thought? What made him notice her this time? His answers were in the right vein. He was allowed to be the lover—and so the moments passed, and Swindon with them. The train swung slowly by a crowded platform. He released her.

Silence succeeding, she relapsed at once into her desponding mood. She was embarked indeed—but on what a cruise! The Chaveneys—five miles away—Sir George and Lady Chaveney—She knew what that meant; how the County reckoned, from one great house to another. Why, if a Colonel Dermott, a Reverend Burgess were as nothing—from what a depth of blackness had she been dragged up! . . . A toy, an old man’s plaything, Jinny had called her . . . picked out of a village and put in a great house . . . five miles from anybody. . . .

During this time of long silence, of reverie, in the which, though his arm embraced her and his hand was against her side, his eyes were placidly shut, while hers gazed out of window, fixed and sombre, at the flying country, she suddenly started and became alert. Misgivings faded, a wash of warm colour—as of setting suns—stole comfortably about her. For a moment, it may be, she was conscious again of wide horizons. The train was rolling smoothly—so smoothly that its swiftness had to be felt for—over an open common backed by a green down. Furze-bushes dotted it, clumps of bramble; there was a pond, a dusty road, geese on the pond, a cottage by the road, with a woman taking linen from the hedge. Along the road, pushing to the West, went a cart, drawn by a white horse; the driver sat on the tilt, smoking, his elbows on his knees; a grey dog ran diligently beside. Could this be—? Could it be other? Oh, the great, free life! Oh, the beating heart! Oh, the long, long look! Mary strained against the arm of her husband; his hand felt her heart beat. He opened his eyes, looked at her, and smiled to see her eager gazing. But what mystery of change in women! The next moment she had turned to him, her eyes filled with wet. She turned, she looked wistfully upon him; her lip quivered. “My darling?”—and then she flung herself upon his breast. “Oh, take me, take me, keep me safe!” she cried. “I will be good to you, I will, I will! But you must love me always——”

“My sweet wife, can you doubt it? What has frightened my pet?” She hid her face on his shoulder. “Nothing—nothing—only thoughts. I’m not good, you know. I told you so—often.”

He pressed her closely to him. “Who is good? Who dares to ask for love? We ask for mercy—not love. But we can always give it. It is our blessed privilege. You have the whole of mine.” He kissed her hair—all that he could reach of her, and she lay with hidden face for a long time. The unknown resumed its chilly grip—the horizon narrowed again, the fog hung about the hedgerows which hemmed it in. But the outlook was not quite the same—or the out-looker was changed. The tilt-cart was journeying to the West, and so was the train. . . . But Mr. Germain exulted in every mile which he could watch out with that dear head upon his shoulder. The tired child slept!

“Exeter, my love!” he awoke her with a kiss; she blushed, looked dazed, and snuggled to him in an adorable way. But for that unlucky servant of his it is possible that the day might have been saved yet. But inexorable order resumed its hold, and she chilled fatally between station and hotel. A carriage and pair was waiting for them, a cockaded coachman touched his hat; the porters touched theirs; the luggage followed with Villiers; up the stairs of the hotel there was quite a stately procession. . . . They were shown their rooms; sitting-room, dining-room, two bed-rooms, all en suite. Mr. Germain disappeared with anxious Villiers; a gigantic chambermaid, old, stately, with a bosom fit for triplets, superintended the unpacking of Madam’s trunk, which was plundered by two smart underlings with velvet bows very far back upon their sleek heads. Would Madam require a dresser? Madam said, Oh, no, thank you—and then had to ring in confusion for somebody to fasten her bodice. Madam looked charming, when all was done, in a gown of dangerous simplicity, and Madam knew it—but there beat a wild little heart under the tulle, and a cry had to be stifled, a cry to a friend on the open road—for good fellowship, sage counsel, and trust to float between eyes and eyes. Her treadings had well-nigh slipped; she felt herself to be drowning—as it were, in three feet of water.

She sat at his table, and ravished his delicate fancies with her pretty embarrassments, her assumed dignity, her guarded eyes and lips. King Cophetua lived again in this honest man, who had no need to protest to Heaven that he would cherish his elected bride. He was now perfectly happy, wallowing in sentiment, bathing every sense. The exquisite antithesis he had made! From nothing she was become this! Sweet before, and now all dainty sweet; rare unknown, now known to be the rarest. Her white neck with a jewel upon it, her scented hair with a star, rings glittering on her fingers, her gown as dainty as her untried soul—and through the clouded windows of her eyes that shrinking soul looking out—wistful, appealing, crying for help. Ah, what loyal help should be hers! Complacent, benevolent gentleman.

She sipped his champagne, she watched everything, missed nothing, gave no chances, knew herself on her trial. She was strung up to the last pitch, and staked all her future upon the hazard of this night. If she was cold in her responses, slow to take up, quick to abandon positions in the talk, she may be excused. She could be bright enough when she was at ease—but who is at ease with his honour at proof? Great honour had been done her, she knew; and it required all her honour in return. That prompted her to a curious requital. She burned to cry out to this courteous gentleman in black and fair white, and to these noiseless, prompt attendants—“Look at me well—I am nothing, a shred from the wilderness. He has chosen me for his breast, decked me out—I am a slave-girl—my ignorance is hired. How dare you wait upon me, you who would pass me in the street, and nudge, and tell each other with a wink what I was, and how you found my looks? Was I so low that I must be thus lower? Can you not spare me this?” She burned with shame, was dangerously near to panic. More than once she must bite her lip to hold back these words—and as she bit, he looked at her and adored her splendid colour and lovely frugality of glance and speech. . . . She left him to his port, and sat alone in the drawing-room, a prey to all the misgivings.

When he took her in his arms and struggled with himself to tell her all he had found in her of excellence and beauty, she could only hide her face. But she clung to him at last, sobbing out her protest that she would serve him utterly. “Oh, you are good to me, you are good! Oh, help me to be what you wish. I am so ignorant—I cannot tell you—” She broke off here, and, holding herself stiffly in his arms, looked strangely in his face. “Do you know—have you thought—that—that—I cannot be what you think me?” she said; and when she saw that he was taken aback, “Listen,” she said, “let me sit by you.” He took her on his knee and held her swinging hand. Her eyes were veiled as she tried to speak to him. “I have been—I began to work, you know, when I was sixteen. I went away from home——”

She caught him unawares, or she hit by some fatal telepathy the centre of his thought. He flinched at the blow, but she could not know that, being too full of her own affair. She must discharge her heart at all costs—and at this eleventh hour, if so must be. Now let him be generous if he is to be accounted wise!

Once too often he was tried. This time, at the crisis, he did not respond. Generosity, which is Love’s flag of victory, was not at command. The hand that shaded his eyes made a deeper shadow. His voice was small and still. “Yes, my dear, yes?”

She lifted her head and looked up, not at him, but over the room. She went on as if she was reading her story off the wall. But she was reading it from Jinny’s eyes of scorn.

“You must know me as I really am before you—before to-morrow. I was engaged—once—before I knew you. He was a farmer’s son—Mr. Rudd. He thought—I thought—he gave me a ring. That was soon after I had gone to Misperton. I was twenty-two.”

He sat very still, hiding his face. It looked as if he were crouching from a storm. “Yes, yes, my child. Why not?” She was pitiless.

“Oh, but— . . . I have more to tell you.”

He seemed to shrivel. “You wish to speak of these things? You were very young.” And yet his voice said, Tell me all—all.

“At sixteen? Yes. Of course I was very foolish.”

“There had been—Before you went to Mr. Nunn’s—before you went to Misperton?”

She left his knee, and sat opposite to him upon a straight chair. She folded her hands in her lap and began her tale. As if she had been in the dock she rehearsed her poor tale. He neither stirred nor spoke.

She made no excuses, did not justify herself, nor accuse herself. She did not say—it never entered her head to say—You, too, have made mistakes. There was a Lady Diana for your bitterness. But she knew what she was doing only too well; and a force within her said, “Go on—spare nothing—go on. Whatever it cost you, be done with it. No peace for you else.” . . . “I must tell you that there was a gentleman—you will not ask me his name. I think that you know it. He gave me a book—and—other things. I have not seen him since—since you spoke to me at the school-feast.”

He stirred, but did not look up. “I will ask you not to see him.”

“I will never see him. I have refused——”

“He has tried to see you?”

“I took care that he should not.”

“I don’t wish to seem unreasonable,” he said slowly; “I cannot bear to seem so to you. But—it would be for our happiness.”

“I assure you that I have no intention. I hope you will believe me.” His lips moved, but he did not look up. She rose. “I am very tired,” she said; “I think I will go now.” He got up immediately; the fog seemed in the room. She came and stood before him.

“Be patient with me,” she said. “Be kind to me. I shall try to do everything you wish.”

He made as if he would take her, but she drew back quickly.

“I should have told you all this before if I could have thought you would care—would allow it. Indeed, I have tried more than once, but you—Now, I am glad that you know me—but I am very tired.”

“Mary,” he said, and held out his hands to her. She looked into his face, then shut her eyes.

“I am very tired. Please let me go. Good-night.”

He held open the door for her.

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