XXII
Florence went faithfully to Mrs. Gould’s to ask for the nurse, though she knew the nurse was not there. A man, perhaps, would have departed from that position when it was no longer necessary, but she considered it needful, as a proof of good faith, to carry out her announced intention. It was a long way round, and then she had to make another tour to get to the place where the nurse really was, so that her walk altogether occupied some three-quarters of an hour more than it need have done, and the time was long, although, on the other hand, she was glad to have it to herself, and to get over the pang of that abrupt separation. She knew very well what it was that the curate had to say to her. It had been on his lips for many days, and she had dreaded it, not because she did not want to hear it, but because of a girl’s natural evasion of the moment she wishes for most, the shy, half mischievous, half visionary putting off of the sweet cup from the lips. The expectation of it was sweet; all the pleasures of imagination lay in that moment which would bring an entire change in her life, a remodelling of all its circumstances. Florence had taken a pleasure in stealing away, in postponing till to-morrow. But it cannot be said that she experienced that pleasure to-day. She felt that she had received a blow when the curate turned with that hasty leave-taking and left her. To run away is one thing, and hold off a joy which is on the way; but to be thus abandoned is another. It gave her a dull shock like that of an unexpected, uncomprehended blow. She had wondered how he would take her remonstrance, her statement of what she thought his duty, which had been on her lips so long; but she had never expected him to take it with instant offence, with a resentment which drove all other thoughts out of his mind. What did he resent? To have this duty which he did not wish to recognise pointed out to him, or that she should venture to point it out—she only a girl, and the girl who, by loving him, he perhaps thought was bound to see no flaw in him? Florence was not one of those who can see nothing but excellence in those they love, but she felt, with a momentary gleam of insight sharpened by pain, that perhaps Mr. Osborne was of the kind which requires that in a woman. She had not thought of the possibility before, that this might not be merely a momentary offence, but a wound from which he would not recover, which he would not forgive. A love-quarrel ever seems thus even when of the most trivial origin. It appears at once tragic, a thing never to be got over: an end of all the romance. Florence’s heart went down, down to the very depths. She said to herself that it was all over: that the last step would never now be taken, that there would be no more all her life but only an aching void, not even the recollection of words said that never could be forgotten. Had she let him speak she would at least have had that to cheer her; but as it was she would have nothing, not even the gloomy importance of an engagement to break off, a farewell that would have a whole tragedy in it: not even that: only a mere drifting asunder, a vacancy where there had been so much hope: a life blighted before it had come to bloom.
This thought occupied her mind sadly as she made that unnecessary round. He had gone off like a racehorse, scarcely touching the ground in the heat of his vexation and offence, but she went along very slowly, with the depression of the one who is in fault; whose interference and perhaps unreasonable censure had made the breach. Who, after all, was she that she should tell him of his duty, or that something else than the course he had adopted was a better way? she, only a girl with no education in particular, dictating not only to a man trained to discriminate what was the best, but a priest with the highest of vows upon him, and a special consecration to God’s service? Her presumption overwhelmed her when she thought of it in this light. But perhaps to be a member of a clerical family, used to see gentlemen of that profession too closely, and amid all the little trials of life, takes away to a certain extent the visionary reverence which it would be perhaps better to keep like an aureole about them. Florence could not surrender her natural judgment to this extent, nor convince herself that she had done wrong. She had taken perhaps an inopportune moment, but she had not said anything that was not true. She had managed badly for herself, and she would have to bear the result: but it was not wrong what she had said, nor was it wrong to say it; for perhaps, who could tell, he had never thought of that side of the question before? Very likely he had never thought of it. Some people are so happy that they never have in all their lives to encounter misery in their family, and how can they know, unless somebody who does know it, somebody who has been forced to understand it, tells them? And perhaps—she thought with a forlorn consolation—what she had said would bear fruit, though he might never have anything to do with her again. He was too much offended, wounded, hurt, to think of her any more; that was a thing to be received as certain once for all; but perhaps what she had said would come back to him, and he might feel that it was true.
Then if she had let it alone for the present, if she had allowed him to say what was on his lips, and had answered what was on hers, and had become his, and had pledged herself to him—why, then one time or other she must have spoken, not as now in the general, but plainly of Jim? And what if the righteous young man’s high disapproval and disgust with the unrighteous had gone even further, to the length of putting poor Jim, whom his sister loved, out of the charities of life altogether and casting him off as some good people do? Florence felt that no tie, not even marriage itself, would have made her bear that, and so concluded at last, mournfully, that what she had done was, perhaps, after all the best, so as to warn him off in time, and show him that her views were very different from his. Oh, what mistakes men can make even when they are the most highly instructed, the most high-minded and nobly purposed of their kind! Edward Osborne was all that; yet he thought that it was a more pious thing to make poor old Mrs. Lloyd and such harmless old bodies give up their little harmless indulgences than to risk a little trouble or company that, perhaps, might be distasteful to him, in order to save Jim.
Florence got home at last just in time for the family luncheon, which was a good thing for her, as it kept her from exposure to the close personal observation of her mother and sister, who were too well acquainted with every change of her countenance not to perceive at once when anything was wrong with Florry. But the family meal occupied Mrs. Plowden, and Emmy was fortunately so full of her own morning’s occupations that her sister escaped notice.
‘You are not eating anything, child, and you have no colour,’ her mother said, ‘after your long walk.’
‘It is the long walk that has done it, she has over-tired herself; you shouldn’t permit those long walks,’ said the Rector. This was his favourite way of treating any annoyance—with that consolatory conviction that it must be his wife’s fault, which supports many men through the smaller miseries of life. Mrs. Plowden took an equal pleasure in the pleas of self-defence. ‘How am I to prevent long walks when there is always so much to do in the parish?’ she said. ‘I am constantly telling you you should have more district visitors, or a mission woman, or something. Those girls have never a moment to themselves.’
‘Oh, it is nothing, mamma,’ said Florence. ‘I had to make a long round to get the parish nurse: for I went to Mrs. Gould’s to find her, and, of course, she wasn’t there.’
‘You ought to have known that, Florry, so it is your own fault. Why, you sent her off yourself to the little Heaths.’
‘I know, mamma: I can’t think how I could be so stupid,’ Florence said.