“Maurice is not so foolish,” said Mr. Sedgwick, “as long as he doesn’t do anything he may be a Shakespeare for anything we know. You girls may worship him as such now, if you please—there he sits quite ready to receive your homage; but if he really ventured into print, Maurice would be only Maurice Harley—just himself, like the rest of us—might even find a critic in his turn, as such is the fate of mortals. No, no, you may be sure Maurice won’t commit himself; he’s a great deal too wise for that.”
Maurice laughed a somewhat constrained laugh, and coloured slightly. Perhaps a touch of conscience made Mr. Sedgwick’s sarcasm tell—he threw down the book with a little petulance.
“Far be it from me to object to Clara’s tastes. Thanks to my sisters, I know pretty well what young ladies like in the shape of poetry,” said Maurice; “they all admire the Newdigates. There was a time when I found Alice in tears over one of these distinguished poems—and that not so very many years ago.”
“Oh! don’t be so dreadfully satirical!” said Miss Reredos, who was beginning to tire of Johnnie and his stereoscope. “I am sure that year that mamma and I went to Commemoration with Clement there was the sweetest thing imaginable—and so charmingly read too—and I have a copy of it now; but, oh! I know why Mr. Harley does not like the Newdigate,” cried the Rector’s sister, clasping her soft hands, “he’s a Cambridge man!”
“Exactly,” said Maurice, recovering himself at once, for he was quite disposed to take Miss Reredos for his antagonist; “you know the jealousy which exists between us. Your brother and I preserve an outside appearance of civility, out of respect to Mrs. Crofton and the presence of the ladies, but nobody can doubt for a moment how we hate each other in our hearts.”
“I say, do you though?” cried the small voice, down at Maurice Harley’s elbow, of my son Derwie, who was, unluckily, at that moment advancing with the rest of the little troop to say good-night. “Do you hate the Rector, Maurice?—he’s the clergyman, you know—he can’t do anything wrong; so he can’t hate you—why do you hate him?—is he cleverer than you are? Stand up a moment, please—I don’t think he’s quite as tall.”
This interruption Derwent made with the most perfect sincerity and earnestness, unconsciously guessing at the only reasons which could make a person so accomplished as Maurice Harley hate anybody. Everybody laughed except the individual questioned, who shot a glance of wrath at my boy, and eyed Mr. Reredos with a sort of contemptuous inquiry. Could any one, even a child, imagine the new rector to be cleverer than the ineffable Maurice? He sank down again in the chair from which Derwie had dragged him, laughing with a very bad grace. Then all the broken currents of talk going on in the room, suffered a little ebb and pause. Little rosy faces clustered close about Clara Sedgwick, about Alice and myself, and old Miss Polly, holding up rose-lips full of kisses. Mr. Crofton shook hands with Derwie, and turned him off with an affectionate grasp upon his shoulders, declaring, with a fondness beyond caresses, that he was too old to be kissed. Then we all paused, looking after them as they trooped out of the room. Miss Reredos, full of something clever to say in the way of an attack upon Maurice—Maurice himself too self-conscious to be diverted by that pretty procession, and Johnnie, who was hanging over his stereoscope, and following the Rector’s sister with his eyes, were the only persons in the room who did not watch with a smile and an increased warmth at heart these beautiful children disappearing, one by one, from the door. Mr. Reredos’s face shone, and he cast sidelong glances at Alice. He was young, in his first romance of love, not yet spoken. His heart was moved in him with an unconscious blessing to the children; visions of a house of his own, musical with such voices, stole into the Rector’s soul—I could see it in his face.
And was it to be so? There was no side glance from the eyes of Alice, reciprocating those of Mr. Reredos—no consciousness, as she stood by the table watching the children, of any future such as that which sparkled in the young Rector’s eyes. She stood calmly watching them, nodding and smiling to Derwent, and her little niece Clary, who, hand in hand, were the last to leave the room—the maiden aunt, only a little more independent of the children than their mother—almost as much beloved by them—the young, unmarried woman, gravely cogitating the necessities of her class of age, and feeling much superior to the vanities of love-making, without a single palpitation in her of the future bride, the possible mother. So, at least, it seemed.
CHAPTER VII.
That evening—it was the first of her visit to Hilfont, and a perfectly natural thing, considering the long affection between us—I paid Alice a long visit in her own room. I might have done so, even if I had been conscious of nothing to inquire about, nothing to suggest. It was rather late when we all came up-stairs, and when I had seen Miss Polly safely established in her easy chair by her fire, and eluded as well as I could the story about Elinor’s (to wit, Lady Greenfield, Sir Willoughby’s wife, once Mrs. Herbert Nugent, my cousin, and Bertie’s aunt) letter—I turned back to the bright chamber near my own, which was always called Miss Harley’s room. Alice was sitting rather listlessly by the table, reading. She looked tired, and did not seem overmuch to enjoy her book. She was very glad to see me come in, and, I suspect, to be delivered from her own thoughts, which it was clear enough she could not quite exorcise by means of literature; for it was not a novel, which there is some hope in, but a wisdom-book, much esteemed by the superior classes—one of those books which, if it has any power at all, excites one into contradiction, by conclusions about human nature in general, which we can all form our own opinions upon. I suspect Alice could not keep her attention to it, hard though she tried.