"You know what I mean. On honour not to."
"Not to what?" But Aunt Bessy wasn't going to answer questions on the subject, whatever it was. So she closed her eyes in harmony with an expressive lip-pinch, and said finis dumbly to this chapter of the conversation. However, she began another.
"Apart from that, I don't like his tone," said she.
"I know you don't." This meant that the Rector didn't want the second chapter. He harked back to the first. "Perhaps Sir Challis will promise not to," said he.
"I don't see how you can ask him." This was said very dryly, and the speaker indicated that it was an ultimatum by going on with a letter she was writing.
For Miss Caldecott was a sort of inverse Charlotte Eldridge. To the latter lady, as we know, the mention of a lady and gentleman, as such, and such only, was as the sound of battle to the warhorse. The former was very apt to petrify if the conversation went outside the limits of the neuter gender without stipulating for a strict neutrality on the part of the other two. A hint of what Mrs. Protheroe called "going on" on the part of properly—or improperly—qualified masculines and feminines was enough to make Aunt Bessy discover that we must be getting back, and begin looking for those children's gloves.
Why Adeline Fossett had yearned to link the lives of this lady and her friend Yorick was very difficult to guess. That, however, does not belong to the story at present. Its business is with the lady and gentleman responsible for the little bit of frigidity it has just recorded.
When Athelstan Taylor called at the Hermitage in April, just after Challis's arrival in England, he threw out, in thoughtless hospitality, a suggestion that the latter should pay him a visit in the Autumn. The invitation was jumped at, and the Rector perceived afterwards that there might have been a reason for this, to the possibility of which he was at the moment not sufficiently awake. But he was too honourable to go back on his word.
If he had felt sure enough of his ground he might have spoken frankly to Challis, and put him off till some time when Judith's absence from the Hall was a certainty. But he had not enough to go upon for that. He found out the poverty of his case by attempting a letter to Challis. "My dear Challis—You know me, and I know you will excuse my speaking plainly...." And then had to think what the plain speech was to be. He considered "I know that you and Miss Arkroyd are quite within your rights when, etc.," and "I think your wife's strange conduct has left you free to take advantage of what I should otherwise regard as a legal shuffle, etc."; and "I know you would not avail yourself of my hospitality to, etc."; and even "I can't have you making love to Judith Arkroyd while you are staying at the Rectory, etc."; but concluded by rejecting them all—he liked the last best—and tearing his letter to fragments.
He ended by saying to himself: "These are not young people, to be chaperon'd and guardianed. If they are in earnest, they will not be kept apart by not having Challis at my house. And the more I see of Challis the better my chance of influencing him towards the wiser course." A little sub-commune with his soul as to whether he was quite sure he was not being influenced by his relations with the county-families and the Bishop confirmed him, and Challis came down to Royd Rectory early in August. Thus it had come about that the Rector and his guest, one day in the middle of that month, were walking about in an early-morning garden—breakfast is very early at the Rectory when its master is by himself there—using up their subjects of conversation; or, rather, perhaps we should say, chat.