Mr. Crawley did not make any immediate answer, but putting his arms behind his back and closing his hands, as was his wont when he walked alone thinking of the general bitterness of his lot in life, began to move slowly along the road in front of his house. He did not invite the other to walk with him, but neither was there anything in his manner which seemed to indicate that he had intended to be left to himself. It was a beautiful summer afternoon, at that delicious period of the year when summer has just burst forth from the growth of spring; when the summer is yet but three days old, and all the various shades of green which nature can put forth are still in their unsoiled purity of freshness. The apple blossoms were on the trees, and the hedges were sweet with May. The cuckoo at five o’clock was still sounding his soft summer call with unabated energy, and even the common grasses of the hedgerows were sweet with the fragrance of their new growth. The foliage of the oaks was complete, so that every bough and twig was clothed; but the leaves did not yet hang heavy in masses, and the bend of every bough and the tapering curve of every twig were visible through their light green covering. There is no time of the year equal in beauty to the first week in summer; and no colour which nature gives, not even the gorgeous hues of autumn, which can equal the verdure produced by the first warm suns of May.
Hogglestock, as has been explained, has little to offer in the way of landskip beauty, and the clergyman’s house at Hogglestock was not placed on a green slopy bank of land, retired from the road, with its windows opening on to a lawn, surrounded by shrubs, with a view of the small church tower seen through them; it had none of that beauty which is so common to the cozy houses of our spiritual pastors in the agricultural parts of England. Hogglestock Parsonage stood bleak beside the road, with no pretty paling lined inside by hollies and laburnum, Portugal laurels and rose-trees. But, nevertheless, even Hogglestock was pretty now. There were apple-trees there covered with blossom, and the hedgerows were in full flower. There were thrushes singing, and here and there an oak-tree stood in the roadside, perfect in its solitary beauty.
“Let us walk on a little,” said the dean. “Miss Robarts is with her now, and you will be better for leaving the room for a few minutes.”
“No,” said he; “I must go back; I cannot leave that young lady to do my work.”
“Stop, Crawley!” And the dean, putting his hand upon him, stayed him in the road. “She is doing her own work, and if you were speaking of her with reference to any other household than your own, you would say so. Is it not a comfort to you to know that your wife has a woman near her at such a time as this; and a woman, too, who can speak to her as one lady does to another?”
“These are comforts which we have no right to expect. I could not have done much for poor Mary; but what a man could have done should not have been wanting.”
“I am sure of it; I know it well. What any man could do by himself you would do—excepting one thing.” And the dean as he spoke looked full into the other’s face.
“And what is there I would not do?” said Crawley.
“Sacrifice your own pride.”
“My pride?”