“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.