How John Vane “jumped,” to be sure!—what a nervous fellow he was, though big enough for anything, and with that beard! So Jenny thought as he felt his companion’s arm thrill, and enjoyed it. I don’t think Vane made any immediate response, good or bad. He managed to make Jenny talk, which was more to the purpose, but I don’t think he committed himself in words; nor was it until they had gone a long way through the streets, and Jenny had recollected that the time approached for his train, that John Vane’s feelings burst forth in speech.
“Jenny, old fellow,” he said, “is there anything you want—books, or that? or a little spare tin that you don’t care to speak to your mother about? Make me your banker, old boy.”
Jenny withdrew his arm from that of his friend. He was quite as tall, and, barring the beard, not much less imposing in muscular magnitude. The boy stood almost on equal terms, as Englishmen love to have them, with his elder companion. He looked Vane seriously, even anxiously, in the face, and addressed him slowly.
“Do you think she’ll have you?” he said.
CHAPTER LI.
THE NUNNERY.
The Eastwoods spent several weeks at the High Lodge. They saw it at its very best, in all the spring blossoming, when the trees put on their most delicate greenery, and all the children, big and little, and all the orphans, and even the young ladies of the Upper School, got “their new things” for Easter. I am not sure that Mrs. Eastwood entered as she intended to do into “the humours” of the establishment. She disapproved of a great many things. She disapproved, for instance, totally of Father Featherstone, who directed the consciences of the community, and walked about indoors in a soutane, out of doors in a very ugly black cloak—an insignificant little individual, of whom Miss Vane and her sisters professed to stand much in awe, a profession in which Mrs. Eastwood did not believe. She herself disliked the odd little nondescript, and still more strongly disapproved of him. “Why should you neglect the clergy of the parish?” she said. “I think your rector might have good reason to be affronted——”
“But my rector is not affronted. He has no time to look after our services,” said the lay-abbess.
Mrs. Eastwood, however, was not convinced. She shook her head at Father Featherstone’s petticoats. She asked whether it was supposed that there was anything wicked in a man’s ordinary dress, and called the poor little priest “it” with a shocking Protestantism which was terrible to Miss Vane. But John Vane, who was there constantly—not as an inmate, for that would have been considered impossible at the High Lodge, but as a visitor—took Mrs. Eastwood’s hint with peals of profane laughter. “Ni homme—ni femme—prêtre,” he said, when he saw the black-robed father making his way through the sunshiny April gardens, and laughed and coaxed his sister who loved him, as pious sisters often love scoffing brothers, out of all offence. Miss Vane herself admitted that she could not go against Reginald—no one in the family had ever been able to go against him. “But everybody calls Mr. Vane John——” said Nelly. “My dear, there never was a John in our family,” said Sister Lætitia, with momentary tartness; but then she added, softening, “You shall call him John, if you like, Nelly.” To such a sudden, insidious attack, what could Nelly answer? She professed not to be aware of the meaning of the things that were said to her. She made a conscientious endeavour not to allow herself to feel that her heart was a great deal lighter than it had been, now that there was no struggle of divided duty; and when Jenny’s bold comparison of one man with another came into her mind, she tried to think that it was novel to her, that it was indifferent to her, that she had nothing to do with such a question. And in reality Nelly shrank, as every pure-minded and high-spirited girl naturally does, from the thought of replacing one with another—of giving her hand into the hand of another. The transfer was horrible to her, even though her heart had made it unawares. At the end of a fortnight, indeed, John Vane went abruptly away, leaving time and silence to work for him. He too saw that an immediate transfer was a thing impossible, though his sister was slow to see it. “Why shouldn’t they settle it all at once and get done with it?” Miss Vane said; “I never had any time to waste in nonsense. They will be far happier if they make up their minds at once.” And perhaps, on the whole, she was right. But what does it matter who is right when fantastic questions of feeling are to be considered?
When John Vane went away Nelly breathed more freely. She had got free from the toils in which her foolish youthful feet had been caught unawares. She ran about the High Lodge as she had been used to do at The Elms, with that tinkle of her pleasant steps like a brook, that flutter of her coming and going like a bird among the branches, which had been peculiar to her in the old days at home. There was perpetual movement of light young steps and gleam of cheerful faces in that well-populated place; but Nelly’s kept their special character, and were always recognizable. I do not think, for my own part, that Ernest Molyneux enjoyed his release as Nelly did. I don’t believe he enjoyed it at all. And this was strictly poetic justice, as the gentle reader will perceive who remarks how Molyneux worried Nelly and rent her gentle being in twain. He has been very bitter about women ever since, and he it is, I am informed, who has written the most virulent of those articles on the subject which have appeared from time to time in a very able and amiable periodical known to all men. Let us hope that in thus developing his sentiments he found as much ease to his mind as Nelly did when, after her long and feverish struggle to keep loving him and approving of him, to keep faithful to her promise, and steadfast in her duty, she got free from his toils, and turned her back on love, and healed herself among the spring blossoms and the admiring girls at the High Lodge. How they all admired her! She was not so saintly, not so abstracted as poor Innocent, predoomed (they thought) to the crown of martyrdom. But Nelly could do so many things; she was so clever, she was so pretty; and was it not whispered in the community that she had rejected one lover because he had failed to come up to the full standard of her ideal; and had they not seen how Mr. Vane, whom everybody at the High Lodge regarded as the very type of manly excellence, was at her feet? The girls thought there had never been any one seen so delightful as Nelly. They copied her very tones, her little gestures, her modes of speech; and Nelly healed herself of her long warfare in the midst of the cheerful order of the community, amongst the girls and the flowers.