“We must wait and hope—he has such excellent—perceptions,” said the Rector, stumbling a little for a word, “and so much—good sense—that I don’t doubt everything will come right.” Then he added, bending over her, “Do you think that I could be of any use?” He took her hand for a moment, half fatherly in his tender sympathy. “Could I help you, perhaps, to induce him——”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Katherine, drawing her hand away; her alarm, however, was not for anything further that the Rector might say to herself, but in terror at the mere idea of anyone ever hearing what Mr. Tredgold said.
“Ah, well,” he said with a sigh, “another time—perhaps another time.” And then by way of changing the subject Katherine hurried off to a little display of drawings on the table. Charlotte Stanley, the Rector’s eldest daughter, had her correspondence class like the other ladies; but it was a Drawing Union. She was devoted to art. She had made little drawings since ever she could remember in pencil and in slate-pencil, and finally in colour. Giotto could not have begun more spontaneously; and she was apt to think that had she been taken up as Giotto was, she, too, might have developed as he did. But short of that the Drawing Union was her favourite occupation. The members sent little portfolios about from one to another marked by pretty fictitious names. Charlotte signed herself Fenella, though it would have been difficult to tell why; for she was large and fair. The portfolio, with all the other ladies’ performances, was put out to delight the guests, and along with that several drawings of her own. She came up hastily to explain them, not, perhaps, altogether to her father’s satisfaction, but he yielded his place with his usual gentleness.
“We send our drawings every month,” said the young artist, “and they are criticised first and then sent round. Mr. Strange, of the Water Colour Society, is our critic. He is quite distinguished; here is his little note in the corner. ‘Good in places, but the sky is heavy, and there is a want of atmospheric effect’—that is Fair Rosamond’s. Oh, yes, I know her other name, but we are not supposed to mention them; and this is one of mine—see what he says: ‘Great improvement, shows much desire to learn, but too much stippling and great hardness in parts.’ I confess I am too fond of stippling,” Charlotte said. “And then every month we have a composition. ‘The Power of Music’ was the subject last time—that or ‘Sowing the Seed.’ I chose the music. You will think, perhaps, it is very simple.” She lifted a drawing in which a little child in a red frock and blue pinafore stood looking up at a bird of uncertain race in a cage. “You see what he says,” Charlotte continued—“‘Full of good intention, the colour perhaps a little crude, but there is much feeling in the sketch.’ Now, feeling was precisely what I aimed at,” she said.
Katherine was no judge of drawing any more than she was of literature, and though the little picture did not appeal to her (for there were pictures at the Cliff, and she had lived in the same room with several Hunts and one supreme scrap of Turner—bought a bargain on the information that it was a safe investment many years ago—and therefore had an eye more cultivated than she was aware of) she was impressed by her friend’s achievement, and thought it was a great thing to employ your time in such elevated ways. Evelyn, who was only seventeen and very frolicsome, wrote essays for the Mutual Improvement Society. This filled Katherine, who did nothing particular, with great respect. She found a little knot of them consulting and arguing what they were to say in the next paper, and she was speechless with admiration. Inferior! Lady Jane did not think much of the Sliplin people. She had warned the girls in the days of her ascendency not to “mix themselves up” with the village folk, not to conduct themselves as if they belonged to the nobodies. But Lady Jane had never, Katherine felt sure, written an essay in her life. She had her name on the Committee of the University Extension centre at Sliplin, but she never attended a lecture. She it was who was inferior, she and her kind: if intellect counted for anything, surely, Katherine thought, the intellect was here.
And then Dr. Burnet, came flying in, bringing a gust of fresh air with him. Though he had but a very short time to spare, he made his way to her through all the people who detained him. “I am glad to see you here; you don’t despise the village parties,” he said.
“Despise them!—but I am not nearly good enough for them. I feel so small and so ignorant—they are all thinking of so many things—essays and criticisms and I don’t know what. It is they who should despise me.”
“Oh, I don’t think very much of the essays—nor would you if you saw them,” Dr. Burnet said.
“I tell you all,” said Miss Mildmay, “though you are so grand with your theories and so forth, it is the old-fashioned girls who know nothing about such nonsense that the gentlemen like best.”
“The gentlemen—what gentlemen?” said Katherine, not at all comforted by this side of the question, and, indeed, not very clear what was meant.