‘Ah, it is Jane then? Mr. Schoolmaster—I forget your name—you are a man of penetration and sense; I honour you. A man who chooses the best woman within his knowledge—that’s the sort of man I approve of. It happens so seldom. Men are all such fools on that point. So it is Jane!’
Mr. Peters breathed a long sigh. ‘She never looks at me, madam—she never knows I am there. You must not think she has anything to do with it.’
‘Ay, ay, that’s always the way. When the men show some sense the women are fools; or else it’s the other thing. Now, listen to me. You say, Do I know Jane? Yes, I know her from her cradle. Why, I brought her up! Can’t you see the girl has the manners of a lady? I gave them to her. There is nothing Jane will not do for me. And I like the looks of you. You’re stiff, but you’re a man. Do you think I should have come out of my way, and hurt my foot (oh, it is quite well now!) to speak to you, if I hadn’t heard all about this? I want to help you to marry Jane.’
‘Oh, madam, what can I say to you?’ cried Mr. Peters, not knowing in his bewilderment what might be going to happen. He was shocked in his sense of propriety by being told that he was stiff, and by the old lady’s frank avowal that she knew all about him after she had wormed his secret out of him; and he was excited by this promise of aid, and by the bold jump of his patroness to the last crown of success. To marry Jane! To get a word from her, or a kind look, seemed enough in the meantime; and he did not know on the spot whether he was ready to marry any one, even this queen of his affections.
He led Mrs. Mowbray to her door, and listened to her talk, divided between alarm and eagerness. She made everything so easy! She was willing to be his plenipotentiary—to explain everything. She would see no obstacle in the way—all he had to do was to put himself in her hands. The old lady herself got very much excited over it. She said more than she meant, as people have a way of doing when they are excited, and sent Mr. Peters away in the most curious muddle of hope and fear—hope that the way might be opened for him to Jane, fear lest he might be driven along that path at a pace much more rapid and urgent than he had meant to go.
Next morning Mrs. Mowbray had made up her mind to send for Jane and open the subject at once—merely to represent to her how much more satisfactory this man was than such a lout as John. What a suitable union it would be! just her own quiet tastes and ways. And a man able to sustain and help her, instead of a lad of her own age, whom she would have to carry on her shoulders, instead of being guided by. The pleas in his favour were so strong, that the old lady could not see what pretence Jane could find for declining to listen to the schoolmaster. But she was not so certain about it next morning—and she neither went to the Barley Mow nor sent for Jane—but gave herself, as she said, time to think. And but for an accident that happened that very evening, prudence might have overcome the livelier impulse in her mind.
That evening however Mrs. Mowbray went out again to see the sunset, taking a short turn down the lane from her house. The lane ran between her house and the Barley Mow, and a back door from Mrs. Aikin’s garden opened into it. It was a very green, very flowery bit of road, leading nowhere in particular except due west; and as the ground was high here—for Dinglefield stood on a gentle eminence raised above the rest of the valley—this lane of an evening, when the sun was setting, seemed to lead straight through into the sunset. It was an exceptional evening: the sunset glowed with all the colour that could be found in a tropical sky, and the whole world was glorified. It drew Mrs. Mowbray out in spite of herself; she had thrown a scarf over her cap and about her shoulders, being so near home, and was ‘stepping westward,’ like the poet, but with the meditative step of age which signifies leisure from everything urgent, and time to bestow upon this great pageant of Nature. To be so at leisure from everything in thought as well as in life is a privilege of the aged and solitary. And there is nobody who enjoys the beauty of such a scene or dwells upon it with the same delight. But the privilege has its drawbacks, like most human things. Those busy folks who give but a glance, and are gone, have perhaps a warmer, because accidental pleasure: the more deliberate enjoyment is a little sad. Mrs. Mowbray however was one to feel this as little as could well be. She walked briskly, and her mind, even in the midst of this spectacle, was full of her plans. She was half-way down the lane, with all the light in her face, when she suddenly perceived two figures black against the light in front of her, standing out like black silhouettes on the glow of lovely colour. She saw them dimly; but they, having their backs to the dazzling light, and being totally unmindful of the sunset, saw her very clearly, and were much alarmed by her appearance. They had been so much occupied with each other that the sound of the old lady’s step upon some gravel was the first thing that roused them. The girl gave a frightened exclamation, and sprang apart from her companion, who for his part backed into the hedge, as if with the hope of concealing himself there. Though Mrs. Mowbray’s attention and curiosity were immediately roused, she did not even then recognize them, and they might have escaped her if they had not been so consciously guilty. The girl was the first to be detected. She ran off after that startled look, with a half-laughing cry, leaving the other to bear the consequences.
‘Bless me! Ellen Turner. The little flirt! She is after some mischief,’ Mrs. Mowbray said to herself; and even then she thought nothing of the young man. But he was not aware of this. He did not know that her eyes, which had been fixed on the glow in the sky, were dazzled by it, and unable to see him; and feeling himself detected, it seemed to John safer to take the matter into his own hands. He made a step into the middle of the road, in front of her. He could not have done anything less wise. Mrs. Mowbray was thinking only of Ellen, and nothing at all of the man she was fooling. This was the way she put it to herself: What did it matter who the silly fellow was? If he put any dependence on such a little coquette as that, he was to be pitied, poor fellow. The old lady had half a mind to warn him. But she was much surprised to find him confront her like this, and even a little frightened. And it was only now that she recognized who he was.
He had forgotten what little manners he had, and all his awe of ‘the quality’ in the excitement of the moment. ‘You’ll go telling of us!’ he cried, in sudden excitement, almost with a threat of his clenched hand.
A thrill of apprehension ran through the old lady’s frame, but she stood still suddenly, confronting him with the courage of her nature. ‘How dare you speak to me so, with your cap on your head?’ she said.