‘Miss Grey knows, of course, everything about them. Miss Grey knows the whole story. She has been the longest here.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Grey, ‘I know, I suppose, all the outs and ins of it; or, if not all, a great part; all is a big word to say. I don’t suppose anybody knows all—about the simplest of us—except the Almighty who made us, and understands all our curious ways.’
‘That is a true speech,’ said the old General, ‘for curious are our ways, and strange are the devices we have to hide ourselves from ourselves.’
‘Come, Stephen,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘let us have none of your philosophising. You like a story, or gossip, if you like to call it so, just as well as any of us; draw your chair nearer the fire, and listen to what Miss Grey has got to tell us, for I can read a whole story in her eye.’
It was General FitzStephen’s drawing-room in which this conversation was taking place, in the March afternoon, when evening was falling. It had been cold and boisterous all day, with the March wind, which the farmer loves, drying and parching everything outside; the roads all gray and dusty; the fields looking as if every drop of sap in every green blade or leaf had retired to the heart of the plant. The wind had blown itself out, and fallen a little before the darkening, and Miss Grey, out, like all the rest of the world, for a little walk, had been met and apprehended by the General and his wife, and brought in for tea. How much this was on Miss Grey’s account and how much for their own, I would not undertake to say. They were fond of Miss Grey, and so was everybody at Watcham: and people had a way of thinking that she was lonely and wanted cheering up—which, in most cases, only meant that they wanted cheering up themselves, and that there was nobody in the village who knew so well how to do this as the little lonely spinster. The FitzStephens’ house was exceedingly cosy, and though it was not large, it was much larger than Lady William’s, and more pleasantly built; with cheerful irregularities in the shape of bow-windows, which gave more light, and agreeable little recesses and corners to talk in. It was not so plain in any way. It was almost richly furnished with warm Persian carpets and thick curtains, and a great deal of wadding and cushioning. The General and his wife had, indeed, reached a proficiency in the art of making each other comfortable, which only an elderly pair, without children, can attain, and which, in their hands becomes a fine art. There were no rough corners in their house; nothing that was not padded and made soft. The draughts, which Lady William could only faintly struggle against, they shut out by curtains, artistically-planned, to the arrangement of which they had given their whole mind, two together, which everybody knows is better than one, and each for the other, which is better still: for not a suspicion, nor even a sensation, of selfishness can be in the man who is afraid of a chill for his wife, or the woman whose whole soul is bent on keeping her husband comfortable. The candles had not been lighted, but the firelight was shining brightly through the room, giving a brightness which no other artificial light possesses: and, through the windows, the yellow glow of a spring sunset, with a little pink in it, but none of winter’s violent and frosty red, came in. Thus, between the day and the night, with the sweetness of the western light outside like a picture, and the warm domestic glow within, Mrs. FitzStephen’s pretty tea-table was the most pleasant thing one could see on an evening while it was still cold. They had generally some one to share that darkening hour with them, and make it more cheerful; and on this particular evening there were two, Miss Grey, as has been said, and the wife of the Archdeacon, Mrs. Kendal, as quiet a meek woman as ever was, not capable of doing much in the way of addition to the mirth, but quietly receptive of it, which is the next best thing.
It is a curious fact, which I don’t seem to have seen commented on, how well and easily a kind old man who has fallen into quiet society along with his wife in the evening of his days, takes to the feminine element which is apt to preponderate in it. An old lady rarely makes herself at home with men in the same way, or if she does it is perhaps with the young friends of her sons who look up to her as a mother. But old soldiers as well as old parsons, to whom that might seem more natural, fall into ladies’ society with a relish and satisfaction that is amazing. Pride of sex, which is rarely wanting, takes refuge, we may suppose, in the little superiority so willingly accorded, the deferences and flatteries with which he is surrounded, and which he repays with little gallantries and pretty speeches with which the ladies on their side are amused and pleased. General FitzStephen was a great hero among all the ladies at Watcham, and he took his place among them with little sense of incongruity, with a pleasant ease and simplicity, not sighing for anything better, not wasting, or so it seemed, a thought upon his club or his men. He liked Miss Grey to come in to tea as well as his wife did, and was as pleased with Mrs. Kendal as with her husband—more so, indeed, for he thought and said that the Archdeacon was an old woman, an expression which he never employed to any lady. For Lady William he had a sort of devotion, but that was not remarkable, for Lady William was of a different species, and not unlikely to secure the homage of any age or kind of man.
It was therefore a very cheerful old party that was assembled round the FitzStephen fire, none among them under fifty-five, the General within easy sight of three-score and ten, but all very well, with the exception of Mrs. Kendal, who had been more or less of an invalid all her life, but enjoyed her ill-health on the whole, and was as likely to live now as at thirty. She sat lost in the deepest of easy-chairs on the side of the fire opposite the window and where there was least light. Miss Grey was on the sofa in the full light of the fire, which sparkled in a pair of beautiful brown eyes she had, which looked none the worse for the number of years which had passed over their possessor. Miss Grey was very small, a little bit of a woman, with scarcely body enough to lodge a soul which was not little at all: at least the part of it which was heart, if there are any divisions in our spiritual being, was so big as to rim over continually. She was very dark, with hair that had been black before it became iron-gray, and a gipsy complexion of olive and cherry. Her feet and hands were not so small as would have become her tiny person, but as they were feet that were always in motion for the good of her poor fellow-creatures, and hands that were noted in their service, these things are the less necessary to look into.
Mrs. FitzStephen was remarkable for little more than the neatness of her cap, and the trimness of her dress and person generally. She had been what people call a pretty little woman, and on that character she lived. She was a pretty little woman still according to the limitations of her age, and her husband was still proud of her simple and somewhat faded beauty. He had always been pleased to hear it said what a pretty little woman Mrs. FitzStephen was, and he was still pleased with the thought. She had not changed for him. She was seated in front of the low tea-table, on a low chair, making the tea. The General, who was tall, looked taller than ever moving about in the little glowing room between the firelight and the dark, handing to the ladies their cake and tea.
‘We are all quite new people in the place in comparison with Miss Grey,’ said Mrs. Kendal, in her little invalid voice, ‘though we used to come here, the Archdeacon and I, long ago, before he was the Archdeacon or I was delicate: dear me, we used to go on the water! he was a great boating man once——’
‘I remember,’ said Miss Grey, ‘he once took the duty for old Mr. Plowden, before the present Rector left College. I remember you very well—you were the bride—and there were ever so many little parties made——’