“I should like to be a policeman and tell them to move on,” said Sara. “That woman there, who is giving the bread to the beggar—she has been the vexation of my life; why can’t she give it and have done with it? I think I hate pictures—I don’t see what we want with them. I always want to know what happened next.”
“But nothing need happen at all here,” said Powys, with unconscious comprehension, turning to the Claude again. He was a little out of his depth, and not used to this kind of talk, but more and more it was going to his head, and that intoxication carried him on.
“That is the worst of all,” said Sara. “Why doesn’t there come a storm?—what is the good of every thing always being the same? That was what I meant down stairs when you pretended you did not understand.”
What was the poor young fellow to say? He was penetrated to his very heart by the sweet poison of this unprecedented flattery—for it was flattery, though Sara meant nothing more than the freemasonry of youth. She had forgotten he was a clerk, standing there before the Claude; she had even forgotten her own horror at the discovery that he was a man. He was young, like herself, willing to follow her lead, and he “understood;” which after all, though Sara was not particularly wise, is the true test of social capabilities. He did know what she meant, though in that one case he had not responded; and Sara, like every body else of quick intelligence and rapid mind, met with a great many people who stared and did not know what she meant. This was why she did the stranger the honor of a half reproach;—it brought the poor youth’s intoxication to its height.
“But I don’t think you understand,” he said, ruefully, apologetically, pathetically, laying himself down at her feet as it were, to be trod upon if she pleased. “You don’t know how hard it is to be poor; so long as it was only one’s self, perhaps, or so long as it was mere hardship; but there is worse than that; you have to feel yourself mean and sordid—you have to do shabby things. You have to put yourself under galling obligations; but I ought not to speak to you like this—that is what it really is to be poor.”
Sara stood and looked at him, opening her eyes wider and wider. This was not in the least like the cottage with the roses, but she had forgotten all about that; what she was thinking of now was whether he was referring to his own case—whether his life was like that—whether her father could not do something for him; but for the natural grace of sympathy which restrained her, she would have said so right out; but in her simplicity she said something very near as bad. “Mr. Powys,” she said, quite earnestly, “do you live in Masterton all alone?”
Then he woke up and came to himself. It was like falling from a great height, and finding one’s feet, in a very confused, sheepish sort of way, on the common ground. And the thought crossed his mind, also, that she might think he was referring to himself, and made him still more sheepish and confused. But yet, now that he was roused, he was able to answer for himself. “No, Miss Brownlow,” he said; “my mother and my little sisters are with me. I don’t live alone.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Sara, whose turn it now was to blush. “I hope you like Masterton?” This very faltering and uncomfortable question was the end of the interview; for it was very clear no answer was required. And then she showed him the way down stairs, and he went his way by himself, retracing the very steps which he had taken when he was following her. He felt, poor fellow, as if he had made a mistake somehow, and done something wrong, and went out very rueful into the park, as he would have gone to his desk, in strict obedience to his employer’s commands.