“How do you know?”
“Of course I know. Mr. Puddicombe is brimming with the news. They went like a pair of turtle-doves cooing and billing to Mr. Puddicombe, and he has nearly run his legs down to stumps since. The schoolmaster”’
“But I don’t mean about the schoolmaster.” Pooke spoke with a tremble in his voice.
“Oh! about that affair, that comical affair in the orchard? Half the village, I reckon, was out behind the hedges looking and listening. There was Betsy Baker, and there was Jenny Jones, and that sprig of a chap, Tommy Croft’I won’t be sure they heard, but I fancy so’anyhow, everyone has been talking of it, and pitying you that you were made ridiculous; and then to go off, right on end, and accept a schoolmaster.” In a tone of infinite contempt, Rose added, “A schoolmaster! It takes ten tailors to make a man, and ten schoolmasters to make a tailor; Puddicombe excepted’that was a man, and was so highly respected, he knew how to make himself looked up to, and folk forgave him his profession for his own sake. But this new whipper-snapper! And to be rejected for him!”
Jan Pooke writhed. He had not heard the news of Kate’s engagement. Somehow it had been kept from, or had not reached, him. The fire had distracted men’s and women’s thoughts from the affairs of Kate, Bramber, and himself. His colour changed, and he flushed purple. He shared the prejudice entertained by farmers and labourers’by all who were semi-educated and wholly uneducated’for the man of culture that was striving to enlighten dull minds and wake torpid intelligences. Parsons and schoolmasters are in the same category. The heavy soul resents being raised to spiritual life, and the heavy mind resents being wakened to intellectual life. It ever will be so, and it ever has been so. A man going along a road found a sodden toper lying in a ditch. He tried to pull him out. “Leave alone!” roared the drunken man. “I likes it, I enjoys it. I’ll knock you down if you don’t let me lie in my ditch. There are effets there, and slugs there, and frogs and toads; get along your own way and leave me where I am.”
Pooke and Rose Ash had imbibed the views of their parents and companions, and the prevailing atmosphere in a country parish. They had not risen above it, and their ideas took colour from it.
“It was scandalous conduct, was it not, Jan?” asked Rose. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stand it, not half an hour.”
“But what can I do?”
“What’? do’? Oh, lots!”
“I can do lots. I do not see it. If Kitty chooses”’His lips quivered, and he gulped down something.