He felt more at his ease. “That was very foolish of your knees, my dear. I was greatly interested. And pray do not think me inquisitive: that is not one of my vices. It is far from my wish to—to patronize one for whom I have so high a respect. Your poverty is as it may be—at any rate, you earn your bread; and in that you are a head and shoulders above myself. And if you are a dunce, which I cannot admit—well, that can be mended, you know. Are we not all dunces? I remember a very wise man saying once that we know nothing until we know that we know nothing. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I think so. But even then—Oh, no! It is very wonderful, I think.” And then, as he looked down at her smiling, he received again her full-orbed attack, and she said in a low voice, “Thank you for being so kind to me.” He had to turn away his head lest he should betray himself, and wreck what was to him a moment of ridiculous happiness. He could not trust himself to speak.
At the turnstile between the smithy and the Rising Sun beershop their ways should have diverged; but, although he had fallen entirely silent, he accompanied her to Orient Cottage, where she lodged. At the gate he held her hand for a minute while he somewhat breathlessly committed himself. “Let us, if you will be so good, repeat our little walk the day after to-morrow—that is, on Saturday. I leave this place on Monday, and should value another conversation with you. On Saturday you will be free, I think? Shall we then say the morning, at eleven?”
She would not allow him to see her eyes now. She murmured her “Yes—thank you,” and he went on.
“It is very kind of you. I may have something to say—but, be that as it may, to an old fogy of my sort the companionship of a young lady is flattering. I hope I may believe that I have not wearied you, since you are willing to indulge me again.”
“No, indeed, Mr. Germain. I shall be proud to come.” And then he let her hand go, and she slipped through the gate. As she entered her door she looked over her shoulder a shy good-night; he saluted her and paced slowly back to the Rectory. Combustible matter had been handled; had she been less simple or he more sure, there’s no saying what might not have been ablaze. As it was he betrayed by no outward sign at all how stirred he was, though he was not very talkative at the dinner-table. The Rectory people dined at the Park. Tristram, it was told, was off again. He had gone to Pau, at a moment’s notice, with young Lord Branleigh.
VII
MISS MIDDLEHAM HAS VISIONS OF HER OWN
As for Mary Middleham, it behoved her to cool her hot cheeks and quench the fires in her eyes as soon as she might, for within a few minutes of Mr. Germain’s departure she must set out again. She had been bidden to the Wakes for supper, and the Wakes lived five miles away. Without changing her dress, she mounted her bicycle and was off. She rode fast, but her thoughts outstripped her. She tried to look cool, but the fire throbbed and gleamed. It was not possible but she must recall every stage in the journey of the week that was passing—a week in which there had not been a day without some signal mark of Mr. Germain’s attention.
He had “noticed” her; he had “noticed” her and her peddling affairs every day since the school-treat. His interest had increased, and was increasing; she could not credit it, but still less could doubt it. What in the world did the good gentleman mean? What did he see in her, what want of such as she was? Things of the sort had happened before; Mr. Duplessis was a gentleman, but he was different, quite different. He was, to say the least of it, a younger gentleman, and age was a leveller. “Fun” was to be expected from such as he; but no more. Her conscience had to be put to sleep where Mr. Duplessis was concerned. But Mr. Germain was good and great, wise and—well, middle-aged—a landlord, almost a nobleman. There was no question of “fun” there, or of conscience either—it was all wild surmise. Could he mean anything? One answer to that only: he must. Then, what under Heaven could he mean but one thing? And that was flat absurdity—impossible of belief. And yet—! So her little careful mind, scared out of its bearings, beat and boxed the compass as her heart drove it.
She had a shrewd eye for that form of flattery which girls call “attentions”; for the education of her world cultivates the fibres of sense, and she had been upon it from her seventeenth to this her four-and-twentieth year. Never a year of the seven but her wits had been strung by some affair or another, scarcely one but she had supposed herself within hail of that hour of moment, had seen before her a point beyond which there was no seeing. “If he asks me, I must answer him. And how?” Mostly he had not; and, after a drowning interval, she had presently discovered herself heart-whole, conscience-clean, with no wounds visible, no weals or bruises to ache their reminders. Then it had all begun again—da capo.