“I sent up this afternoon with my cart,” said Wilkins, “to say as, if it was quite convenient——”
“My daughter will see to it—my daughter will see to it,” said the curate anxiously. “I am occupied at present, as you perceive, and in a hurry. She will see you, or I, to-morrow.”
And he shuffled on through the dust of the highroad, quickening his pace. His step had been the long, firm, manly step of a man still young, till they met with this interruption. But poor Mr. St. John fell into a shuffle when he met the grocer. His cheek got a hectic flush; he shrank visibly; his knees and his elbows grew prominent. He did not speak again till they had got beyond the village. Then he drew breath, and his natural outline came slowly back. “You will find much hardness among the people,” he said; “Heaven forbid that I should blame them, poor souls: they live hardly, and have hardness to bear from others; but when any question arises between them and one who has unfortunately the niceties—the feelings—that we are brought up to——” (the curate stopped); “and I never was used to it,” he said, as if to himself, in a low voice.
What did it all mean? the new rector said to himself. I think it was easy enough to divine, for my part; but then the rector was young, and had always been well off, and it did not occur to him that a grocer, simply as grocer, could have any power over a clergyman; more and more he felt convinced that some drama, some domestic tragedy, must be connected with the St. Johns, and he felt more and more eager to find it out. They went to the station, and sent a boy to the rectory with Mildmay’s portmanteau, and then they strayed home by the common, across which the setting sun threw its very last slanting arrow of gold.
“This is delightful!” said Mildmay. “What freedom! what breadth of atmosphere! One feels oneself on the moors, in the great, ample world, not shut in by walls and houses.”
“No, there is little of these,” said the curate; “and it is very healthy, I have always understood: the common is what my girls love. But I don’t see them coming.” He arched his hand over his eyes as a defence against the light, as he looked along the road for his daughters. Mr. St. John had quite recovered himself. I don’t think that even the name of Wilkins would have discouraged him now. In the warm and balmy air he took off his hat, holding up his venerable bare head to the sky. It was a head which might have served for that of an old saint. His white hair was still thick and abundant, his eyes full of soft light, his expression tranquil as the evening. “I have come here in many troubles,” he said, “and I have always been refreshed. I don’t pretend to know much about art, Mr. Mildmay, but nature is always soothing. Greenness cools the eyes whether it is study or tears that have fevered them. But I wonder what has become of the girls.”
Mildmay was charmed by the meditative turn his companion’s remarks had taken, but the question about the girls embarrassed him.
“I am afraid,” he said, “that my intrusion has perhaps given Miss St. John some trouble.”
“No; there is the servant, you know, a very good sort of girl, and Cicely is like her dear mother—never taken by surprise. If you are here as long as I have been you will know how pleasant it is to see a new face. We country folks rust: we fall into a fixed routine. I myself, see, was about to take this little byway unconsciously, a path I often take, forgetting there was any one with me——”
The curate looked wistfully along the thread of path; it had been worn by his own feet, and he seldom concluded his evening walk otherwise. Mildmay followed the narrow line with his eyes.