I daresay that, in these times of general reform, of competitive examinations and official purity, no such state of things could be possible as existed in the Whitford Post-office forty odd years ago. I have only faithfully to record the events of my story, and to express my humble willingness to believe that, nowadays, "nous avons changé tout cela." I must, however, be allowed distinctly to assert, and unflinchingly to maintain, that Algernon took no pains to acquire any knowledge of his business; and that, nevertheless, the postal communications between Whitford and the rest of the world appeared to go on much as they had gone on during the reign of his predecessor.
Mr. Gibbs was a close, quiet man, grave and sparing of speech. He had known something of the Erringtons for many years, having been a crony of old Maxfield's once upon a time. Mr. Gibbs remembered seeing Algernon's smiling, rosy face and light figure flitting through the long passage at old Max's in his school-boy days. He remembered having once or twice met the majestic Mrs. Errington in the doorway; and could recollect quite well how the tinkling sound of the harpsichord and Algy's fresh young voice used to penetrate into the back parlour on prayer-meeting nights, and fill the pauses between Brother Jackson's nasal dronings or Brother Powell's passionate supplications. Mr. Gibbs had not then conceived a favourable idea of the Erringtons, looking on them as worldly and unconverted persons, of whom Jonathan Maxfield would do well to purge his house. But Mr. Gibbs kept his official life and his private life very perfectly asunder, and he allowed no sectarian prejudices to make him rusty and unmanageable in his relations with the new postmaster.
Then, Mr. Gibbs was not altogether proof against the charm of Algy's manner. Once upon a time Algy had been pleasant to all the world, for the sheer pleasure of pleasing. Years, in their natural course, had a little hardened the ductility of his compliant manners—a little roughened the smoothness of his once almost flawless temper. But disappointment, and the—to Algernon—almost unendurable sense that he stood lower in his friends' admiration (I do not say estimation) than formerly, had changed him more rapidly than the mere course of time would have done. Still, when Mr. Ancram Errington strongly desired to attract, persuade, or fascinate, there were few persons who could resist him. He found it worth while to fascinate Mr. Gibbs, desiring not only that his clerk should carry his burden for him, but should carry it so cheerfully and smilingly as to make him feel comfortable and complacent at having made the transfer.
I have said that disappointment had changed Algernon. He was disappointed in his marriage. It was not that he had been a victim to any romantic illusions as regarded his wife. He had had his little love-romance some time ago; had it, and tasted it, and enjoyed it as a child enjoys a fairy tale, feeling that it belongs to quite another realm from the everyday world of nursery dinners, Latin grammars, and torn pinafores, and not in the least expecting to see Fanfreluche fly down the chimney into the school-room, or to find Cinderella's glass slipper on the stairs as he goes up to bed. Romances that touch the fancy only, and in which the heart has no share, are easily put off and on. Algernon had wilfully laid his romance aside, and did not regret it. Castalia's lack of charm, and sweetness, and sympathy would not greatly have troubled him—did he not know it all beforehand?—had she been able to help him into a brilliant position, and to cause him to be received and caressed by her noble relatives and the delightful world of fashionable society. It was not that she failed to put any sunlight into his days, and to fill his home with a sweet atmosphere of love and trust. Algy would willingly enough have dispensed with that sort of sunshine if he could but have had plenty of wax candles and fine crystal lustres for them to sparkle in. Give him a handsome suite of drawing-rooms, filled with the rich odours of pastille and pot-pourri, and Algy would make no sickly lamentations over the absence of any "sweet atmosphere" such as I have written of above. Only put his attractive figure into a suitable frame, and he would be sure to receive praise and sympathy enough, and to have a pleasant life of it.
No; he could not accuse himself of having been the victim of any sentimental illusion in marrying Castalia. And yet he had been cheated! He had bestowed himself without receiving the due quid pro quo. In a word, he began to fear that it had not been worth his while to marry the Honourable Miss Kilfinane. And sometimes the thought darted like a twinge of pain through the young man's mind—might it not have been worth his while to marry someone else?
"Someone else" was talked of as an heiress. "Someone else" was said by the gossips to be so good a match that she might have her pick of the town—aye, and a good chance among the county people! But Algernon smothered down all vain and harassing speculations founded on an "if it had been!" Neither did he by any means hopelessly resign himself to his present position, nor despair of obtaining a better one. He persisted in looking on his employment as merely provisional and temporary; so that, in fact, the worse things became in his Whitford life, the less he would do to mend them, taking every fresh disgust and annoyance as a new reason why—according to any rationally conceivable theory of events—he must speedily be removed to a region in which a gentleman of his capacities for refined enjoyment might be free to exercise them, untrammelled by vulgar cares.
CHAPTER XI.
It was true that Mrs. Algernon Errington had distinguished the Misses McDougall, by her notice, above all the other ladies whom she met at Dr. Bodkin's. The rest had by no means found favour in her eyes. Minnie Bodkin she decidedly disapproved of. Ally Dockett was "a little black-eyed, fat, flirting thing." The elder ladies were frumps, or frights, or bores. Rhoda Maxfield she had scarcely seen. On the evening of the Bodkins' party, Rhoda, as we know, had kept herself studiously in the background.
Mrs. Errington intended to present Rhoda to her daughter-in-law as her own especial pet and protégée, but a favourable moment for fulfilling this intention did not offer itself. Rhoda had not distinctly expressed any unwillingness to be taken to Ivy Lodge, and it could never enter into Mrs. Errington's head to guess that she felt such unwillingness. But in some way the project seemed to be eluded; so that Castalia had been some weeks in Whitford without making the acquaintance of Miss Maxfield, as she began to be called, even by some of those to whom she had been "Old Max's little Rhoda" all her life.