Chapter Six.
The School-Room.
Mrs Rowland was mortified that the Greys had been beforehand with her in the idea of a cowslip-gathering. From the moment of Matilda’s asking leave to accompany them, she resolved to have such an expedition from her house as her neighbours should not be able to eclipse. Like Lear, she did not yet know what her deed was to be; but it should be the wonder and terror of the place: she would do such things as should strike the strangers with admiration. When she heard an account of it from her little daughter, she found this had been a very poor beginning,—a mere walk in the meadows, and home again to tea;—no boiling the kettle in the woods,—not even a surprise of early strawberries. She could not call this being forestalled; it could not give the young ladies any idea of a proper country excursion, with four or five carriages, or a boat with an awning. As soon as Mr Rowland came home in the evening, she consulted him about the day, the place, the mode, and the numbers to be invited. Mr Rowland was so well pleased to find his lady in the mood to be civil to her neighbours, that he started no difficulties, and exerted himself to overcome such as could not be overlooked. All the planning prospered so well, that notes to the Grey family and to the Miss Ibbotsons lay on Mr Grey’s breakfast-table the next morning, inviting the whole party to dine with Mrs Rowland in Dingleford woods, that day week—the carriages to be at the door at ten o’clock.
The whole village rang with the preparations for this excursion; and the village was destined to ring with other tidings before it took place. Mrs Rowland often said that she had the worst luck in the world; and it seemed as if all small events fell out so as to plague her. She had an unusual fertility in such sensible suppositions and reasonable complaints; and her whole diversity of expressions of this kind was called into play about this expedition to Dingleford woods. The hams were actually boiled, and the chicken-pies baked, when clouds began to gather in the sky; and on the appointed morning, pattens clinked in the village street, Miss Young’s umbrella was wet through in the mere transit from the farrier’s gate to the schoolroom; the gravel-walk before Mr Grey’s house was full of yellow pools, and the gurgling of spouts or drips from the trees was heard on every side. The worst of it was, this rain came after a drought of many weeks, which had perilled the young crops, and almost destroyed the hopes of hay; the ladies and children had been far from sufficiently sorry to hear that some of the poorer wheat lands in the county had been ploughed up, and that there was no calculating what hay would be a ton the next winter. They were now to receive the retribution of their indifference; rain had set in, and the farmers hoped that it might continue for a month. It would not be wise to fix any country excursion for a few weeks to come. Let the young people enjoy any fine afternoon that they might be able to turn to the account of a walk, or a drive, or a sail on the river; but picnic parties must be deferred till settled weather came. There was every hope that the middle of the summer would be fine and seasonable, if the rains came down freely now.
This course of meteorological events involved two great vexations to Mrs Rowland. One was, that the neighbours, who could pretend to entertain the strangers only in a quiet way at home, took the opportunity of the rainy weather to do so, hoping, as they said, not to interfere with any more agreeable engagements. Mrs Rowland really never saw anything so dissipated as the Greys; they were out almost every evening when they had not company at home. It was impossible that Sophia’s studies could go on as they ought to do. What with taking a quiet cup of tea with one acquaintance, and being at a merry reading party at another’s, and Mrs Enderby’s little dance, and dinner at the Levitts’, there were few evenings left; and on those few evenings they were never content to be alone. They were always giving the young men encouragement to go in. Mr Hope made quite a home house of Mr Grey’s; and as for Philip, he seemed now to be more at Mr Grey’s than even at his own mother’s or sister’s. Mrs Grey ought to remember how bad all this was for a girl of Sophia’s age. It would completely spoil the excursion to Dingleford woods. The young people knew one another so well by this time, that the novelty was all worn off, and they would have nothing left to say to each other. It was provoking that Mr Rowland had promised that the excursion should take place whenever the weather should be settled enough. It might so fairly have been given up! and now it must be gone on with, when every one was tired of the idea, and the young people must almost be weary of one another, from being always together!
The other vexation was, that there were frequent short intervals of fine weather, which were immediately taken advantage of for a drive, or a walk, or a sail; and it came out one day from the children, who had learned it in the schoolroom, that the Miss Ibbotsons had been in Dingleford woods. There had been no such intention when the party set out; they had not designed to go nearly so far; but they had been tempted on by the beauty of the evening and of the scenery, till they had found it the shortest way to come home through the Dingleford woods. Mrs Rowland pronounced this abominable; and she was not appeased by hearing that her brother had been the proposer of this mode of return, and the guide of the party. Philip forgot everything, she declared, in his fancy for these girls; it was always his fault that he was carried away by the people he was with: he had got the name of a flirt by it, and a flirt he was; but she had never known him so possessed as he seemed to be by these strangers. She must speak to Mr Rowland about it; the matter might really become serious; and if he should ever be entrapped into marrying into the Grey connections, among people so decidedly objectionable, it would be a terrible self-reproach to her as long as she lived, that she had not interfered in time. She should speak to Mr Rowland.
Meanwhile she kept a watchful eye on her brother’s proceedings. She found from the children that their Uncle Philip had fulfilled his promise of going to see the schoolroom, and had been so much better than his word, that he had been there very often. When he went, it was always when the Miss Ibbotsons were there, learning German, or drawing, or talking with Miss Young. It was impossible to pick a quarrel with Miss Young about this; for she always sent her visitors away the moment the clock struck the school hour. The summer-house was Mr Grey’s property, too; so that Mrs Rowland could only be angry at the studies which went on in it, and had no power to close the doors against any of the parties.
The rainy weather had indeed been very propitious to the study of German. For a fortnight Margaret had spent some hours of each day with Miss Young; and over their books they had learned so much of one another’s heart and mind, that a strong regard had sprung up between them. This new friendship was a great event to Miss Young;—how great, she herself could scarcely have believed beforehand. Her pupils found that Miss Young was now very merry sometimes. Mr Grey observed to his wife that the warmer weather seemed to agree with the poor young woman, as she had some little colour in her cheeks at last; and Margaret herself observed a change in the tone of the philosophy she had admired from the beginning. There was somewhat less of reasoning in it, and more of impulse; it was as sound as ever, but more genial. While never forgetting the constancy of change in human affairs, she was heartily willing to enjoy the good that befell her, while it lasted. It was well that she could do so; for the good of this new friendship was presently alloyed.
She was not aware, and it was well that she was not, that Hester was jealous of her, almost from the hour of Margaret’s learning what a vast number of irregular verbs there is in the German. Each sister remembered the conversation by the open window, on the night of their arrival at Deerbrook. Remembering it, Margaret made Hester a partaker in all her feelings about Maria Young; her admiration, her pity, her esteem. Reserving to herself any confidence which Maria placed in her (in which, however, no mention of Mr Enderby ever occurred), she kept not a thought or feeling of her own from her sister. The consequence was, that Hester found that Maria filled a large space in Margaret’s mind, and that a new interest had risen up in which she had little share. She, too, remembered the conversation, but had not strength to act up to the spirit of it. She had then owned her weakness, and called it wickedness, and fancied that she could never mistrust her sister again. She was now so ashamed of her own consciousness of being once more jealous, that she strove to hide the fact from herself; and was not therefore likely to tell it to Margaret. She struggled hourly with herself, rebuking her own temper, and making appeals to her own generosity. She sat drawing in the little blue parlour, morning after morning, during Sophia’s reading or practising, telling herself that Margaret and Miss Young had no secrets, no desire to be always tête-à-tête; that they had properly invited her to learn German; and that she had only to go at any moment, and offer to join them, to be joyfully received. She argued with herself,—how mean it would be to do so; to agree to study at last, in order to be a sort of spy upon them, to watch over her own interests; as if Margaret—the most sincere and faithful of living beings—were not to be trusted with them. She had often vowed that she would cure the jealousy of her temper; now was the occasion, and she would meet it; she would steadily sit beside Sophia or Mrs Grey every morning, when Margaret was not with her, and never let her sister know how selfish she could be.
This was all very well; but it could not make Margaret suppose her sister happy when she was not. She could not be certain what was the matter, but she saw that something was wrong. At times, Hester’s manner was so unboundedly affectionate, that it was impossible to suppose that unkind feelings existed towards herself; though a few pettish words were at other times let drop. Hester’s moods of magnanimity and jealousy were accounted for in other ways by her sister. Margaret believed, after a course of very close observation, that she had discovered, in investigating the cause of Hester’s discomposure, a secret which was unknown to her sister herself. Margaret was not experienced in love, nor in watching the signs of it; but here was the mind she understood best, discomposed without apparent cause—more fond, more generous to herself than ever, yet not reposing its usual confidence in her—and subject to those starts of delight and disappointment which she had heard and could understand to be the moods of love. She was confirmed in her suspicion by observing that the merits of Mr Hope were becoming daily a less common subject of conversation between them, while it was certain that he had in no degree lost favour with either. They had been charmed with him from the beginning, and had expressed to each other the freest admiration of his truth, his gaiety, his accomplishments, and great superiority to the people amidst whom he lived. He was now spoken of less every day, while his visits grew more frequent, longer, and, Margaret could not but think, more welcome to her sister. The hours when he was sure not to come happened to be those which she spent with Miss Young—the hours in which gentlemen are devoted to their business. Margaret thus witnessed all that passed; and if her conjecture about Hester was right, she could have wished to see Mr Hope’s manner rather different from what it was. He was evidently strongly attracted to the house; and there was some reason to think that Mrs Grey believed that Hester was the attraction. But Margaret had no such impression. She saw that Mr Hope admired her sister’s beauty, listened to her conversation with interest, and was moved at times by the generosity of her tone of moral feeling; but this, though much, was not enough for the anxious sister’s full satisfaction; and the one thing besides which she would fain have discerned she could not perceive. These were early days yet, however; so early that, in the case of any one whom she knew, except her sister, she should have supposed her own conjectures wild and almost improper; but Hester’s was one of those natures to which time and circumstance minister more speedily and more abundantly than to the generality. By the strength of her feelings, and the activity of her affections, time was made more comprehensive, and circumstance more weighty than to others. A day would produce changes in her which the impressions of a week would not effect in less passionate natures; and what were trifling incidents to the minds about her, were great events to her.