It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room, glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset sky.
Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.
“We will have tea as soon as they come in,” she said, in that voice of camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a woman—if such a friendship be possible. Is it?—who knows? “They will not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so long abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the alleviations. I don’t know which. And now, tell me all that has happened since you went away—if you care to.”
CHAPTER XXVII — OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Miriam’s manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as he could remember. He had once thought—indeed, he had made to her the accusation—that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day be deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.
Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great height or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in his friends. Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which peeped out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have suffered a chill. The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed in “The Last Hope” with him, seemed to hold him at a distance. They nodded to him with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking hands. The hand which they would have held out readily enough, had he needed assistance in misfortune, slunk hastily into a pocket. For he who climbs will lose more friends than the ne’er-do-well. Some may account this to human nature for righteousness and others quite the contrary: for jealousy, like love, lies hidden in unsuspected corners.
Juliette do Gemosac had been quite different to Loo since learning his story. Miriam alone remained unchanged. He had accused her of failing to rise superior to arbitrary social distinctions, and now, standing behind her in the fire-lit dining-room of the rectory, he retracted that accusation once and for all time in his own heart, though her justification came from a contrary direction to that from which it might have been expected.
Miriam alone remained a friend—and nothing else, he added, bitterly, in his own heart. And she seemed to assume that their friendship, begun in face of social distinctions, should never have to suffer from that burthen.