Jimwas not in any way afraid of Osborne, the curate—that is, he was not afraid of being stopped by him, or interrupted in any way in his career. He could not, indeed, go into the ‘Blue Boar’ while the curate was about; that would be giving an occasion to the adversary to blaspheme. But Jim did not dislike Osborne. He was quite willing to walk along with him so long as their ways ran together, turning back when the curate turned the first corner. It would always be something to do; and whether he arrived at that undesirable destination half an hour earlier or later was of importance to nobody. He did not notice that the curate’s salutation was anything more than usual, or that he came up to him with a distinct purpose, instead of the usual cool nod with which the two young men passed each other by on ordinary occasions.
‘Oh, Plowden,’ Mr. Osborne said, ‘have you got work over early, or are you taking holiday?’
Few people in Watcham took Jim’s work seriously. Most of them, having the advantage over him of having known him all his life, were disposed to be a little admonitory, and shook their heads when they met him out. ‘No work to-day, Jim?’ the General would say: and most people shared the same feeling. But Osborne, probably because he also was young, never took a mean advantage. He spoke as if it were quite natural that Jim should have a holiday now and then.
‘Well, yes,’ said Jim, moved to confidence, and to take the matter easily, too. ‘The Rector has gone to town, and I have half a day to myself. If I had been wise no doubt I should have taken it in the afternoon,’ he added, with ingratiating frankness; ‘but then, who knows, it may rain this afternoon, and it’s too fine this morning to work.’
‘Then you’d better come with me,’ said Osborne quickly. ‘I’m going to walk into Winwick to see if I can pick up some musiciansfor my entertainment. There never was a finer morning for a walk. It is not too hot, and what with the shower this morning there will be no dust. Will you come? We can look in upon Ormerod for a bit of bread and cheese if we’re kept late for lunch.’
Jim hesitated a moment, but all the same there mounted up into his cheek a pleasant colour and into his heart a certain warmth of gratification. He had always entertained a certain admiration for Osborne, a fellow who had played for the University! On the other hand, it was agreeable to lounge into the ‘Blue Boar,’ where everybody was so very civil to him, and where he anticipated meeting the vet. Thus it was with a mixture of pleasure and reluctance that he received the unlooked-for invitation. To look in upon Ormerod, who was another parson in Winwick, was not without its temptations too, for that gentleman was a fine cricketer, known over all the county. Jim was not often led into such society—his usual cronies admired Mr. Ormerod at a distance, talking big of having seen him do this and that feat. A fear of beingde trop, of being looked down upon by these men, of having to act the part of an undesired third, checked, however, his pleasure in that thought. Poor Jim was proud, though he had not very much reason for it, and his pride had received some severe blows, and was always on the watch for more. For a moment its whisper that he would be nobody between these two, and that he was always somebody at the ‘Blue Boar,’ had almost turned him back. But then ‘Come along,’ said Osborne, ‘come along, don’t let us lose the best of the day!’
If Jim had known that Florry was at the bottom of it all—Florry, only a girl, one of the home police who kept that insufferable watch upon him, his sister! But, fortunately, no such idea could by any chance have crossed his mind. Florry! what could she have had to do with it? And he was moved by the cheerful call of the curate, who was not in general a very cheerful man, and who rather preferred in an ordinary way to tramp through the slush and cold than to take advantage of a beautiful morning for a walk. He said, ‘I suppose you will not be very late,’ hesitating at the corner.
‘Late! You know how far it is to Winwick,’ said Mr. Osborne, ‘a matter of three miles—not much that to you and me.’
‘No, it’s not much,’ said Jim. ‘I think I’ll risk it,’ he added, when the turn was actually taken, and the Winwick Road stretched before them. ‘I’m on an easy bit to-day. I’ll have time to get it all up when we get back.’
‘A good walk always clears a man’s head,’ said Osborne; and he resumed after a pause, ‘What are you reading now?’
‘Oh, it’s Sophocles. Seven against Thebes, don’t you know, with all those hard choruses.’
‘Oh, for Greats?’
‘I wish I only knew what it was for,’ cried Jim. ‘You know I haven’t been lucky, Osborne. I got into a scrape, don’t you know. I suppose everybody knows: though we think at the Rectory that if we make-believe strong enough nobody need know.’
‘A great many men get into scrapes,’ said the curate oracularly.
‘Don’t they, now?’ cried Jim, with eagerness; ‘that’s what my people won’t see.’
‘The only thing is to get out of them as fast as possible,’ added Mr. Osborne.
‘Ah,’ said Jim, a little crestfallen. He went on after a pause: ‘If you knew what your governor meant, don’t you know. He wants me to read, and yet he says I’m to go out to a ranche or into an office in the city. Why doesn’t he make up his mind? And what good will Greek do me on a ranche? Morris the vet. could teach me what would be more use for that than all the Sophocles in the world.’
‘But then you see,’ said the curate, ‘Morris is not just the kind of tutor for a gentleman.’
‘Oh,’ said Jim again. His pride was of the kind that could not bear to desert his friends, however undesirable. ‘He’s a decent fellow enough.’
‘In his own sphere—I suppose so,’ said Osborne; ‘and clever, they tell me, in his way; but not our kind.’ He added: ‘I believe, from what I’ve heard, if you are going to a ranche, the best way of learning is just—to go.’
‘If any one he minds would only tell my father that,’ said Jim, gratified by the pronoun, and that Osborne had said ‘our’ instead of ‘your.’ He was aware that Osborne’s ‘kind’ was different from his own, and that his kind would not have been, perhaps, very desirable for one of the curate’s cloth. Thank God, there was no question of Jim going into the Church, though it had been his mother’s desire. ‘That’s the chief thing I complain of,’ he said; ‘let them tell me straight out what I’m to do. Whether it’s one thing or the other I don’t mind. If it’s to be Oxford over again, well, then the Greek’s good for something; but ifit’s the ranche——’
‘That is reasonable,’ said the curate, ‘and if you put it to the Rector like that, surely——’
‘Poor father!’ said Jim, moved to unusual sympathy, ‘I don’t believe he knows himself. First he thinks one thing and then he thinks another. And chiefly, I suppose, he thinks that I am not good for very much, any way.’
‘That’s an idea that you must get him out of, Plowden.’
‘It’s easy to say so, but how am I to do it? When people lose their confidence in you——’ said Jim. And then he hesitated and drew back. ‘What did you say you were going to Winwick for?’ he added hastily. ‘Musicians for your—what did you say?’
‘Musicians for my entertainment—to amuse my temperance people. Your sisters are going to sing: and I hear you recite, Plowden.’
‘No, I don’t—not good enough for you. I used sometimes to do things at penny readings; but that was before I went to Oxford,’ said Jim, with a sudden flush, which seemed to envelop him from head to foot—a flush half of unexpected pleasure, half of overwhelming shame.
‘Well,’ said the curate, ‘you had better begin again: unless you disapprove of my temperance meetings, like’—he paused a little and said fiercely—‘your sister.’
‘My sister!’ cried Jim with amazement; and then he laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you mind very much. Which was it? Emmy? She’s dreadfully serious about everything that God has given us being meant for use. I think that myself, you know,’ he said.
‘But perhaps you haven’t seen, as I have, the terrible misery it has brought,’ said the curate, watching secretly with great interest to see what the result would be.
Now Jim knew a great deal about himself, more than anybody else knew: but he did not accuse himself in this respect. He had not realised the danger here. In other ways he was aware that there was danger; but in this, for himself, no.
‘I’m not such a novice as you think,’ he said. ‘I’ve known fellows at Oxford—Good God! if one was to think of it, it’s enough to make your brain go round—nice fellows, men that there was no harm in, and yet—— ’
Jim walked on very soberly for a few minutes, thinking of tragic scenes he had seen. Even though he was so young, Heaven help him, he had seen tragic scenes. He had beheld with his own eyes the tribute of youth, which the infernal powers demand and receive wherever youth abounds. He knew it well enough. Butfor himself there was no question of that; for himself there was only a little escape from paternal coercion—a place to lounge in when he had nothing to do, a set of people obsequious, admiring him whenever he opened his mouth. Danger in the ‘Blue Boar!’ He could have laughed at the thought; and so had the nice fellows by whose example he was not warned. He did not say anything at all for a few minutes, being deeply moved by things he remembered, though not by any trouble for himself.
‘Plowden,’ said the curate, ‘that’s one thing I wanted to speak to you about. I don’t know how you feel, but to think upon those men makes me so sick at heart that I don’t know what to do. They’re so often nice fellows: and how are we to get hold of them? How are we to stop them? You’re freshly out of it, you’re of the present generation. What is a man that wants to stop them to do?’
Jim gave him a frightened half-glance, then lowered his eyes. ‘Good Heavens,’ he said, ‘what a question to ask! How am I to know?’
‘How is one to get at them? How is one to get hold of them?’ said the curate. ‘There’s always some way of getting at the young fellows in the slums. You may not do any good, but yet you can say out what you’ve got to say. There’s the river men, the boatmen, and all those. I don’t say that usually they pay a bit of attention, but now and then there’s a chance of getting hold of them and speaking one’s mind. They can’t help listening to you, and they know what you say is true. But the gentlemen are different. You can’t get at them, and they wouldn’t believe it if you did; they don’t know the result. They think they can stop when they please, and there will always be some one who will stick to them. How are we to get hold of them, Plowden?—our own very brothers, men of our own kind. They’re all our brothers, every one, to be sure; but think, Plowden, those fellows at Oxford, in London, everywhere. God help us! all the harm isn’t in the slums. There must be some way of getting at them too!’
Jim Plowden looked at the curate with an interest he had never felt before. He was moved by this earnestness, almost passion, that was in him. ‘The poor beggar must have a brother that’s gone to the bad,’ he said to himself. That it should be he himself about whom the curate was concerned, or that there was any reason why anybody should be so concerned for him, never entered into Jim’s head.
‘I see what you mean,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t answer your question if you were to give me a fortune for it. They know fastenough. They see other men going to the dogs every day. I suppose that ought to be better than sermons or any other kind of missionary work, or what a parson could do. I’m sure I can’t tell you, or how you’re to get hold of them. It won’t be with any teetotal stuff, if I must say what I think.’
A shade of anger crossed the curate’s face, and he looked at Jim with a wondering gaze, which awoke that young man’s surprise in return. ‘What do you look at me like that for?’ he said, half irritated in his turn.
‘Like what? I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean anything—particular. I suppose I thought I saw the others, the men I want to get hold of, through you, or behind you,’ he said. This was not a speech which was very agreeable to Jim, who did not see any reason why he should be chosen as a type of the young man of whom the curate wanted to get hold. But Mr. Osborne here made a diversion by another reference to Jim’s suspended power of recitation or reading, and by entering with him into a discussion of what would be suitable for the occasion, which distracted Jim’s attention. Before they got to Winwick Jim had proposed to read something—unwillingly, yet not without a little gratification too.
When they had accomplished their business, and secured the aid of two or three amateurs all very willing to exhibit themselves and their accomplishments, the two young men made their way to the lodgings of Mr. Ormerod, who was one of the curates of the place, and who produced for them the bread and cheese demanded in the shape of a beef-steak, round which they were all mildly merry as befitted the character of the party, and talked cricket and music, and other matters in which Jim felt himself quite able to take his share, and did so, to the surprise of his host, who had heard the usual derogatory murmurs which breathe into the air concerning every such young defaulter—and of his companion, who had given poor Jim the credit of being a fool as well as other troublesome things. The entertainment took solid shape in the hands of the two curates, and poor Jim felt a certain elation in feeling himself one of them—taking a part with those who were of ‘one’s own kind,’ as Osborne had said. A passing reflection even glanced through his mind that it would not have been nearly so comfortable had he been leaving the ‘Blue Boar,’ a little heated by the refreshment which it was necessary to take there, after an hour or two’s talk with Morris the vet., and the landlord, even on a subject so instructive as cows. He knew exactly what would have happened in that case. He would have been very late for lunch, for which meal the ladies would have waited till hecame in; and his feeling that his morning had not been very profitably employed, as well as the refreshment that had been necessary, would have made him irritable. He would have answered his mother (who of course would have said something brutal to him) insolently, and then there would have followed a hush at table, no one saying anything, since all were angry, for the sake of the servant who waited. And his sisters would have looked as if they would like to cry, and his mother would have been red with wrath, and as soon as the meal was over he would have strolled off—to his study in the first place, where he would have opened his books, and then sat down to think how hard it was upon a fellow never to be left to himself, never to have funds for anything, to get angry words and tearful looks whatever he did. And then, after half an hour’s indignant musing, he would have strolled out again. Now how different everything was, as he walked through the hilly street of Winwick, keeping up with his companion’s long strides, fresh and good-humoured, feeling that he had done himself credit, with Mr. Ormerod’s wholesome beer, light upon both mind and stomach, and the three miles’ stretch of leafy road before him. To be sure there would be a little rush at the Rectory to meet him, a cry of ‘Jim, where have you been?’ But he was not afraid of that cry. If there were tearful looks they would be looks of pleasure. If his mother met him red with anxiety, she would soon be bubbling a hundred questions full of satisfaction. ‘Walked into Winwick with Osborne. I know I ought not to have done it, but don’t be frightened, I’ve time to do the Sophocles before father comes back. And we lunched with Ormerod at Winwick, who gave us a capital beef-steak.’ What a secret thrill of pleasure would run through the faded drawing-room at this explanation! There was no virtue in having gone off to Winwick instead of doing his work. To tell the truth, it was not a whit more virtuous than strolling into the ‘Blue Boar.’ But oh, the difference! the difference! The difference to himself, walking home with a calm conscience and a light heart! And the difference to them, whose trembling would all at once in a moment be turned into joy, though he did not doubt that for the moment they were unhappy enough now!
‘Come over, will you, in the evening, and try over that “Ride from Ghent,”’said Mr. Osborne, when they parted.
‘I will, with pleasure,’ said Jim. They parted, though neither was aware of it, in sight of Florry, who had come out very wretched to see whether in her perambulations about the village she could catch a glimpse of Jim, and who came up to him a fewmoments after he had left the curate, in a state of curious commotion which Jim found it very difficult to understand.
‘Oh, Jim,’ she cried, ‘where have you been?’—the usual phrase. But then she added, ‘Have you been somewhere with Mr. Osborne?’ in a voice that fluttered like a bird.
‘I have been to Winwick with Osborne, and we lunched with Ormerod off an excellent beef-steak,’ said the complacent Jim.
But Florence answered not a word. She put down her veil, which was unnecessary, and struggled with it a little to draw it over her face, turning away her head.
Jimwas very busy about the book-shelves that evening, taking out and putting back various books, until, at last, his movements called forth the observations of his anxious family. The Rector, who had come home moody and troubled, and who had made no inquiry into Sophocles, neither had shown the interest that was expected in Jim’s expedition to Winwick with the curate, looked up fretfully and begged his son to have a little respect for other people’s occupations if he had none of his own. Mr. Plowden was doing nothing more serious than reading the evening paper, so that the gravity of this address was a little uncalled-for; but he was put out about something, as all the family was aware.
‘What are you looking for?’ said his mother, who had boundless patience with Jim.
‘I want to take two or three things over to Osborne,’ said Jim, ‘to let him choose. I’m to read something for him at his entertainment.’
‘What?’ said the Rector, looking over the top of his paper with angry eyes.
Upon which Jim repeated his announcement a little louder and with a slight air of defiance; or, at least, the air of a man ready to be defiant, as—when there is nothing but virtue in his mind, a man feels that he has a right to be.
‘His entertainment! His teetotal entertainment! Stuff and nonsense—cramming the fellows’ heads with pride and folly, as if they were better than their neighbours.’
‘Oh, James!’ said his wife, ‘let them be as silly as they like. What does that matter in comparison with ruining their families by drink?’
‘They’ll ruin their families by something else,’ said the Rector; ‘if not in one way they’ll get it out in another—politics, most likely, and socialism, and that sort of thing. What Osborne willdo is to make them all a set of insufferable, narrow-minded prigs.’
‘Even that, James——’ began Mrs. Plowden.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said the Rector, ‘that you’ll make men Christians by teaching them that there’s a curse on one of the gifts of God. You may abuse any and all of the gifts of God; but to make a young ass think he is superior to his honest father, because he abstains, forsooth, and the old man likes his honest glass of beer!’
‘Mr. Osborne doesn’t teach them that, papa,’ said Florry from the further corner of the room, in which, her eyes, she said, being a little weak, she had established herself. Mr. Plowden turned upon her like a tempest.
‘Who are you?’ he said; ‘a little chit of a girl, to tell me what Osborne teaches them or doesn’t teach them! I should hope I am still able to judge for myself—at least, in such a question as this.’
‘Hush, Florry!’ said her mother, with a little nod at Florence. They were all aware that in certain conjunctures it was inexpedient to contradict the Rector. As for Jim, he held up two books to his mother behind backs over Mr. Plowden’s head and disappeared with them, shutting the door softly behind him. He was too much in the habit of closing doors softly and stealing out; but Mrs. Plowden’s mind being otherwise occupied, she did not think of this to-night.
If there had been anything wanted to throw Jim into the arms of the curate, that tirade did it. Had his father sent him forth to Mr. Osborne’s company with a blessing, it would have spoiled all; but to escape for all the world as if he were going to spend the evening with Mrs. Brown, put things at once on a right footing. Jim walked through the village, not in his usual lounging way, but with a long stride and head high. He glanced at the ‘Blue Boar,’ with the cheerful light shining through its red curtains, and thought with a little contempt of the fellows who were seated, he knew, in a cloud of smoke within, and with talk as smoky as the air, he thought to himself lightly. It was a place where a man might go to pass the time when he had nothing else to do; but he had never entertained any illusion on the subject of its dulness, Jim said to himself.
It is doubtful whether Mr. Osborne heard Jim’s step coming through the little garden of the cottage in which he lodged with the same exhilaration. The curate, indeed, had been of opinion that Jim was not at all likely to come, and had settled himself to hisevening’s occupation with that view. He had not found much pleasure in the young man’s companionship during their long walk. He had caught the look of surprise, the lifting of the eyebrows, with which the people of Winwick testified their amazement to see such a superior person as Mr. Osborne accompanied by that unlucky Jim—and Mr. Osborne had not liked it. The fact that he did not like it, however, was the one good thing in the matter, for it gave him the conviction that since he did not like it, it must be the right thing. He had liked that little glorification of taking the pledge to induce old Mrs. Lloyd to do it; and this sensation had made him much less strong than he might have been as to the absolute virtue of the act. Mr. Osborne, as will be perceived, was really a very superior young man. When Mr. Ormerod had taken him aside, with again a lifting of the eyebrows, and asked him whether that young cub of Plowden’s had turned over a new leaf as he (Osborne) had taken him in tow, the curate of Watcham had been angry. ‘Don’t you think it might be perhaps my duty to help him to turn over a new leaf?’ he had said, with some asperity, at which the Winwick curate had lifted his eyebrows more and more. They had all thought that to consort with Jim was rather a token that Mr. Osborne himself was acquiring a relish for indifferent society, than that it was his duty to endeavour to reclaim that species of lost sheep. This naturally and beneficially excited the temper of Edward Osborne, which was a fine, animated, vigorous sort of temper, capable of doing a great deal to encourage him in an unpopular way. If it had been a young boatman on Riverside there would have been no lifting of eyebrows. So much the more was it evident that this particular thing was his duty, and that he was bound to pursue what these asses took upon them to disapprove of. A man may be a very good man, and yet feel his virtuous determination strengthened by the consciousness that those who are against him are asses. And just as Jim was encouraged by his father’s angry opposition, so was Mr. Osborne by the surprise, whether put in words or not, of his Winwick friends. They had all been greatly complimentary and touched to the heart by the episode of old Mrs. Lloyd.
But he had thought that his reformatory effort was over for the day. The invitation he had given Jim for the evening had been a sudden and passing impulse, and he had never suspected that it would be accepted. Even when it was accepted in word, he still thought nothing more would come of it. The young fellow would not be able to pass the ‘Blue Boar,’ or he would be caught at the schoolhouse by Mrs. Brown. Having done his dutyamply, as he felt he had done, it was almost with relief that the curate concluded that Jim would never manage to pass the ‘Blue Boar.’ When he heard, on the contrary, a footstep ring upon the little line of pavement which divided in two the cottage garden where his lodgings were, Mr. Osborne was much startled, and it cannot be said that his start was one of pleasure. ‘Oh! here’s this confounded fellow again.’ I am afraid that was the thought that passed through his mind: and he pushed away his work with impatience, clearing away several books which he had been consulting. He wanted to make a conquest, a convert of Jim. He had a hundred reasons for wishing it. First, the conviction that on the whole it was a far more difficult task than administering the pledge to Mrs. Lloyd: second, that Jim Plowden, after all, would be a more considerable prize than the old woman, that lie was at least worth as much trouble as a young waterman on Riverside; third, that perhaps it might be allowed that an Oxford man and a gentleman has a peculiar duty towards another Oxford man and gentleman who is going astray, even though that duty is very little acknowledged. Fourthly—— No! there was nothing at all about Florence Plowden in the matter, nothing but an undying resentment against the girl who had presumed to teach him his duty! She might be right. I presume he felt in his heart that she was right, or he would not have taken the measures he had done. But he also felt in his heart that he could never forgive her for her temerity, for departing from the woman’s part so much as to venture to suggest to one of the priests of her parish what he should do. No, Florence Plowden told for nothing in the effort he was making. When her name floated up it awakened nothing but feelings of anger in his breast.
Poor Florry! She sat half in the dark with her knitting, pretending she felt her eyes weak, in order that she might not betray the melting mist of happiness that was in her face, the soft dew that kept coming into her eyes. If anybody had seen how near she was to crying, they would have thought her unhappy: whereas she was almost too happy to think, certainly too glad—except in a momentary impulse like that which had called upon her the reproof of both parents—to speak.
Jim put his books before Osborne, who grinned at the sight. It was intended for a smile, but it was a poor version of a smile. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘Browning, the “Ride to Aix.” Isn’t it just a little hackneyed? Oh, no, not the poem itself. I don’t mean that: but everybody does it. What’s the other? Ingoldsby. O—oh. I don’t know, if you ask me my opinion, that I care so very much for Ingoldsby, myself.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Jim, who for this once was wiser than his leader, ‘buttheydo, you know. He’s always the most popular of all.’
‘Eh—oh—ah,’ said Mr. Osborne, putting his head on one side as though to see in that way the virtues which were visible to the people in general. ‘Now, I should have thought,’ he said, ‘that this sort of stuff was too—too conventional, too fictitious, in the wrong sense of the word, to please these sort of rough intelligences; that they would like something more—more straightforward, don’t you know.’
‘Like the “Ride to Aix”? But then they’re awfully anxious to know,’ said Jim, ‘what it was for, what the news was, and when it was, and all that; and I’ve never found yet any one that knew.’
Mr. Osborne discreetly turned that question aside, for on this point he had no more information than other people. ‘Suppose you read it and let me hear,’ he said. It was very good-humoured and kind of him. He expected nothing, if truth must be told, and he was really very full of occupation and had a great many things to do. But Jim, as it turned out, did not read badly at all. And there came a note of emotion in his voice as the gallop rang on; that sort of sympathy with the excitement of the strain, and climbing passion in the throat, which only a few readers are moved by. The curate listened in amaze while this high note of poetic sympathy thrilled through the lines, which Jim read with a pause or two and strain of breath to overcome himself. He could not understand what it meant to feel thus, and yet to drift into the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar’; to tremble and flush with the poetry, and then listen to Slaughter and White maundering about politics, or sit with the schoolmistress. There came over the curate for the first time in a great many years a sense of humility, a sudden conviction that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy.
‘By Jove,’ said Jim, ‘I got through it pretty well this time. The worst is my voice always breaks at that line: “And into the square Roland staggered and stood.” One gets wound up so, don’t you know. After that I can always manage the rest.’
‘Give me the book,’ said Osborne; and he, too, read the last verses, but his voice did not break at all, the water did not come into his eyes. He read it all as if it were one of his own sermons. Decidedly there were things in heaven and earth—perhaps heacknowledged it a little grudgingly: ‘Evidently, Plowden, you have the knack of it much better than I.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Jim, with a good-humoured laugh. ‘You read so well. I’ve got no knack. It is only that a few of these things get over me somehow. Because—because they are mere stories and of no consequence.’
‘Plowden,’ said the curate.
‘Yes?’
‘I wonder if you’d be dreadfully offended if I asked you one thing?’
‘I am not very peppery,’ said Jim; ‘fire away?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will, but you will be angry, I fear. It is just this. When you feel these things so, more than most people—more,’ he added, with a naïve surprise, ‘than I do myself; how is it, you know—that—I don’t want to offend you—how is it that——’
Jim’s countenance grew deeply red, a cloud came over it for a moment; then he shook his head as if to shake off any consideration of such questions. ‘I say, don’t ask me that kind of conundrum. I’m not good at guessing things,’ he said. ‘Will the “Ride” do?’
‘The “Ride” will do capitally,’ said the curate. He too shook off with a flush the questions which had risen involuntarily to his lips. He was grateful to Jim for passing it over, for neither taking offence in words nor jumping up and breaking off the conference. ‘What sort of people do you think will come,’ he said, ‘since you seem to have experience of these things?’
‘Oh!’ said Jim, ‘a number of the village people will come—the daughters of the tradespeople, and those shifting folks that live in Pleasant Place, and a number of the “gentry”—the General——’
Mr. Osborne made a sign of impatience and dissatisfaction.
‘Don’t you want the gentry to come? But the others like it. I assure you they do. Mrs. White and Mrs. Slaughter will not come, they are too grand. They’re able to pay for their pleasure when they make up their minds to go out.’
Jim said this with a gleam of Florry’s mimicry, which discomposed the curate more than he could say. ‘You seem to know all about it,’ he cried, a little sharply. ‘But I want the men from Riverside, the fellows from the boats. I don’t want ladies and gentlemen. What I want is to keep the men from the public-house. Do you mean to say the same sort of thing has been done here before?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Jim, ‘we have done it before; but I don’t think we got any of the Riverside men. The people who come generally are—well, just the village people, Osborne, the people you know, particularly the women and the Sunday School lads, those that my sisters teach carving to, and so forth; and the ones that come to the night-school.’
‘Ah!’ said the curate, ‘that is always something,’ with a sigh of relief.
‘And all that my mother calls the nice, respectable people,’ said Jim, with a laugh, destroying the momentary good effect he had produced.
The curate put his face in his hands, and was silent for a minute. ‘So that I have been taking all this trouble,’ he said, ‘and getting people to come over from Winwick, and laying myself under obligations—to amuse the old women—and the gentry, as you call them.’
‘Well, yes; there will be old Mrs. Lloyd, and some more of her kind,’ Jim said.
Mr. Osborne looked at his visitor for a moment, with as deep a colour as that which Jim had shown when he was being questioned—as much heat of embarrassment, and an air of offence much more marked. Mrs. Lloyd! The curate felt that the name of this old woman was a missile that any one was now at liberty to fling at him, to turn him into ridicule. Strange! when a very short time ago it appeared to him the finest feather in his cap.
‘We must do something about this, Plowden,’ he said. ‘We must lay hold on some of these fellows, and get them to come. I’ve pledged myself it’s for them. I’ve meant it all along for them. What can we do to get hold of them? You’ve been here all your life; you must have known half of them as boys. Can’t we do something? can’t we find some way of attracting them? Think for yourself. Do you want to read that “Ride,” which, you do so well, to—— Mrs. Lloyd?’ It would be impossible to express the tone of disgust with which Mr. Osborne said this name.
‘I don’t suppose she would understand much of it, poor old body. But she will like to hear the girls sing,’ said Jim, more charitable, after all, to the old lady than was the instrument of her conversion from beer. ‘About the men, I don’t know; they’re very hard to fetch. Yes, I used to know a lot of the young ones as boys; but I haven’t seen anything of them for a long time.’
‘I tell you what, Plowden,’ said the curate, ‘we’ll go downthere some evening when the fellows are about. You can talk to them, for old acquaintance’ sake, while I—— Put your shoulder to the wheel! Of course, you could do a great deal if you chose. Don’t, for the credit of the parish, let those fellows say we bring them over here to play to the old women. I can’t stand it. I may have been a fool,’ Mr. Osborne said. He said it with a force and bitterness which Jim could not understand—not to Jim, that was clear, but to some unknown adversary. ‘But stand by me,’ he said, putting his hand on Jim’s shoulder, ‘and we’ll tell another tale.’
‘Stand by me!’ Was it the curate that spoke, and was this Jim to whom he appealed?
Jimwas hurrying home to the Rectory full of the plans that had been settled between him and his new friend, full of the unusual excitement of something to do which was novel at least, and might be amusing, and was voluntary, exacted from him by no one. It was the loveliest spring night, the first of May, but full of a softness which is little to be depended upon at that season, the stars shining sweetly in a sky which was fresh and luminous, with nothing of the sparkle of frost in it, but a prophecy, almost a realisation, of summer. The village was quiet, as it usually was at that hour; the window of the ‘Blue Boar’ still shining with light, for it was not yet the closing hour: but all except thehabituésof that respectable place, where general drinking was not encouraged, had left. Jim did not feel the drawing to-night of those invisible links which drew him to the ‘Blue Boar,’ and he was hurrying along towards home, when he encountered a wrapped-up figure which paused as he approached, but which he did not at first recognise. Indeed, to tell the truth, he thought for a moment with a quick movement of anger, that it was one of his own belongings, mother or sister, who had taken the liberty of coming out thus, veiled and covered up, to look for him, which was a thing that the young man in his greatness of superiority would not very readily have forgiven. But it was not anything so innocent as poor Mrs. Plowden with her shawl over her head, strolling forth, as she would have explained, because it was such a beautiful night, just to breathe the air; not anything nearly so innocent. The dark figure stopped as Jim came up, and with a little cough to call his attention, said: ‘Is this Mr. Jim?’
‘Oh!’ he said, coming to a sudden pause, ‘Mrs. Brown!’ but not with any delight in his tone.
‘I fear,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘there is not much pleasure in seeing me in that exclamation; but then, of course, you can’t seeme, which takes from it all the uncomplimentary meaning. And where are you coming from at this hour—some of your smart parties?’
‘You know as well as I do,’ he said, aggrieved, ‘that there are no smart parties here.’
‘What do you call Mrs. FitzStephen’s ball?’ she said, with her laugh of mockery. ‘I have heard that it was very smart—the young ladies’ dresses beautiful, and diamonds upon some of the old ones. I call that very smart. Unfortunately, I hear, there were no Royal Highnesses—unless it was yourself, Mr. Jim.’
‘How fond you are of laughing at people!’ said Jim.
‘I—the most innocent woman in the world! I will be very civil, now, if you will walk as far as my house with me. I don’t mind the road up to the Hall, but here in the village, where a tipsy man might run up against me——’
‘Oh, I don’t think you need be afraid,’ said Jim; but he could not refuse so small a request, though he did not like it—neither the interruption nor the fact, indeed, of escorting the schoolmistress, who was exceedingly amusing, and knew how to make herself agreeable in her own place; but here, outside, where he might be recognised by any one! Jim was half disgusted with himself for this feeling, yet felt it all the same, and turned back with a little reluctance, which he concealed, indeed, but which, from his companion’s quick eyes, was not altogether to be concealed.
‘You have been somewhere to-night where you ought to have been,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘One soon gets to know the ways of young men. Sometimes you are not proud of the place in which you have been spending your evening, but to-night it’s different. You are going home in a hurry to tell them all about it before they go to bed. What a pity that I should have met you just to-night!’
‘It can never be a pity that I should have met you,’ said Jim, a little sulkily, ‘if I can be of any use.’
‘Poor boy,’ she said, with a half laugh, and then she added: ‘I have been among naughty people to-night, who have been putting naughty schemes in my head. Tell me what nice, good society you have been having, to put it out of my mind.’
‘Where are those naughty people to be found?’ said Jim.
‘Ah, you would rather know that than tell me your news! But they are not naughty people of your kind; they wouldn’t amuse you at all. There is no fun in their naughtiness, but rather the reverse: envy and malice and all uncharitableness, notthe folly that pleases you poor boys. Poor boys! for the one often leads to the other, don’t you know, when you outgrow the fun and yet love the naughtiness, and get out of the way of all that’s good——’
‘You are in a very serious humour to-night.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘not more than usual. I’m a very serious woman, though you may not have found it out. You have not found it out, have you?’ she said, with a sudden laugh, apparently overcome by the absurdity of the situation, which, however, Jim did not feel at all. He saw no fun in it: all that he was afraid of was that with her laugh, though it was very soft, she might attract the observation of some one whom they met.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I—I haven’t thought about the subject, I never tried to——’
‘Understand, did you?’ she said quickly; ‘took me as you found me? Of course you did. And you were quite right. Don’t be afraid that any one will find you with me. In the first place, there is nobody to be seen, and in the second place——’
‘I am not at all afraid of any one seeing me. I am not responsible to any one. I hope I am of an age to choose my own friends.’
‘Well spoken, Mr. Jim, and very manly of you; and I am glad you would stand by me like that, as one of your own friends. Now, there is something I would like you to do for me. It is a great secret, and you must tell nobody of the request I am going to make.’
‘Well,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘I hope I don’t want much cautioning on that subject. The moment one is told that a matter is private, it is sacred—at least, to a man.’
‘Ah! you think more sacred to a man than a woman, Mr. Jim? I don’t agree with you; but still, I’m glad that it’s your view. If you should find out—— You know of all that is going on in the family, don’t you?’
‘In the family,’ cried Jim, astonished; ‘in what family?’
‘You may well be surprised. What should I have to do with your respectable family?’ cried Mrs. Brown, laughing again. It was not like other people’s laughter; it was a thin little sound, which, if it conveyed mockery of other people, seemed in some indescribable way to mock herself too. ‘But yet,’ she added, ‘it is really your respectable family I mean. If your aunt should be hard pressed by those people, and felt as if she might be crushed altogether—now, mind what I say—feltas if she might be crushed altogether——’
‘Do you mean my aunt Emily, Lady William? Why, who in the name of wonder wants to crush her altogether? You have got some joke in your mind that I don’t understand.’
‘Felt,’ repeated Mrs. Brown with emphasis, ‘as if she might be crushed altogether. I will make you say it after me to impress it on your memory, if you don’t mind. Felt as if she might be crushed altogether—you understand?’
‘I understand the words: but what they mean, or what you mean——’
‘That is quite enough, so long as you know the words. Keep them fast, and in such a case let me know; not until you see there is very grave trouble, mind—not if you hear that she sees her way out of it.’
‘You are speaking Hebrew, I think,’ said Jim.
‘No, I am speaking English. You will see, even if they don’t tell you, by your people’s looks, or you will get it out of one of your sisters. Mind! if you find that they are all in the dumps, and she feels herself beaten—you’ll see it in their looks—let me know. If I should not be here I will let you know where I am.’
‘Are you going away?’ said Jim.
She did not make him any immediate answer, but turned round upon him, in the light of a lamp which they were approaching, putting back her veil a little, with a mischievous look. ‘Should you be very sorry? No, I’m afraid you would not be very sorry,’ she said.
‘Yes, I should,’ said Jim, with an impetuosity which alarmed him next moment, as he suddenly realised that somebody passing (but there was no one passing), or somebody unseen at a door or window, might hear what he said. ‘I should be very sorry indeed to think I should not see you any more,’ he added, in a lower tone.
‘But that dreadful fate need not come, even if I were to leave Watcham,’ she said, in her mocking tone. ‘We met before I came here, which is the origin of all our acquaintance, and we may meet after I leave here. The world is a wide place. I shall let you know, somehow, where I am: and in the case I have so impressed upon you——’
‘The case in which Aunt Emily (of all people in the world!) should find herself crushed altogether.’
‘You are a good scholar. You have learned your lesson. In that case you will take care—but only when there is no other hope—to let me know. Now I’ll release you, Mr. Jim. I won’texact that you should come to my very door. No harm can happen to me between this and my door.’
‘It is the only part of the way where anything could happen,’ said Jim. ‘It’s the middle of the town.’
‘A wonderful town, and a wonderful middle,’ she said, laughing. ‘No, nothing will happen. Good night, and I am more obliged to you than I can say.’
Jim stood irresolute, and watched her as she drew down her veil over her face, and hurried along to the door of the schoolhouse. He was, on the whole, well pleased to get rid of her, but he did not like the idea of being thus dismissed at the moment it occurred to her to do so—a sensation which roused his pride and kept him, accordingly, standing where she left him until he saw that she had reached her own door. She turned round there and made a slight gesture of farewell, or dismissal. It was just at that moment that theconvivesat the ‘Blue Boar’ began to stream out, with a little noise of voices and feet, the last jokes of the little convivial club. Jim turned and hurried homeward, not without an uncomfortable feeling that his return would correspond unpleasingly with the dispersion of that assembly. But yet it was not his fault.
His mother was in the drawing-room still, waiting for him, or at least pretending not to wait for him, but to be very busy with something she had to do. And Jim had by this time remembered again the great news he had been carrying home so eagerly when he met Mrs. Brown. Though Jim detested the ‘parish’ in the official sense of the word, he was not without a natural feeling for his own side; and it pleased him almost as much as if he had been a Rector’s son of the more orthodox description to find that the new curate, with his immense commotion as of a new broom, found it necessary after all to have recourse to the old rulers and their ways for help. He had, I need not say, not the faintest idea of the curate’s benevolent intentions towards himself; but Mr. Osborne had been a little superior in the morning—it was his nature to be a little superior—and his final appeal for help to Jim, who of all the Rectory family was the only one whom nobody else would have thought of appealing to, was a triumph which Jim could not but be sensible of. His mother looked up at him from her sewing with those curves about her eyes which he had grown accustomed to, and did not at this present moment take any notice of, notwithstanding the keen inspection of him which she made instantly, an inspection so keen that it seemed to cutbelow the surface and see what never can be seen. Jim was more or less aware of this inspection when he had anything to conceal, but on this occasion, having nothing to conceal, it did not occur to him. ‘Have the girls gone to bed?’ he said, in a disappointed tone. He had brought in with him no heavy odour of tobacco or other scent inharmonious with the place, but a whole atmosphere of fresh air, cool and pure, to which the haste of his arrival gave an impetus, and which seemed to fill and refresh the whole room, which was half dark, with only Mrs. Plowden’s solitary lamp shining on the round table. ‘They’ve gone upstairs,’ she said, rising to meet him with that sudden sweetness of relief which fills an anxious heart when its anxiety is found unnecessary. ‘Do you want them? Shall I call them? Oh, Jim, they will be too happy to come.’
‘I’ll call them myself,’ he said, then paused—‘unless it will disturb my father! He looked a little worried at dinner.’
‘It is like you to think of your father.’ Mrs. Plowden could not but caress her son’s shoulder as she passed him. ‘You can always see farther than any one—with your heart, my dear. Yes, he was worried. But never mind that; I’ll call the girls.’
They came at the call like two birds flitting noiselessly down the staircase, and came into the room with a faint rustle as of wings.
‘Jim has something he wants to tell you,’ the mother said, and there went a quick glance round the three like an electrical flash; oh! of such ease, joy, consolation to themselves; of such admiration, enthusiasm for him! That there should be nothing to lament over, nothing to find fault with, meant whole litanies of honour and praise to Jim.
He told them his story with a pleasure which found an immediate echo and reflection from his mother and Emmy. Florence, of whose sympathy he had felt most sure, had turned a little away.
‘He seemed struck all of a heap,’ said Jim, not pausing to choose his language, ‘when he heard we’d had those sort of things before. He thinks he’s the first to do everything; and when I told him it was the respectable folks that came and the FitzStephens and so forth, and the old women—Mrs. Lloyd and the rest——’
‘Jim,’ cried Florence, seizing his arm, ‘it was ungenerous to mention Mrs. Lloyd.’
‘Why?’ cried Jim, opening his eyes; and Florry made no reply. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Osborne was taken all aback, as I tell you. He says it is the men he wants to catch—the fellows down by theriver, that sort. When I told him he might as soon look for the Prince of Wales, I never saw a man so broken down. He said, “How are we to catch hold of ’em, Plowden? What are we to do to fetch ’em? Come down with me,” he said. “You must have known some of them from boys. Come down, you and me together, and let’s see what we can do.” I said to myself, “Oho, my fine fellow! for all so grand as you think yourself, you can’t get on without the oldest inhabitant after all.”’
‘But, Jim, you’ll help him,’ cried Emmy; ‘so will I, I am sure, with all my heart. We have always wanted to get hold of them; and you could do something, Jim, if you were working with him.’
‘Oh yes, I shall help him,’ said Jim in a magisterial way, ‘fast enough. He isn’t a bad sort of fellow when you know him. I said I’d go down with him when the fellows were at home in the evening whenever he liked. Of course, as he said, I know them all; half of them I’ve licked or they’ve licked me. He has sense to see the advantage of that, and, of course, now he’s asked me I’ll do whatever I can for him; and see if I don’t have them up to hear all the tootle-te-tooting and you girls singing and all the rest.’
‘If your father approves, Jim,’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘We cannot make quite sure that your father approves.’
‘Oh, papa will approve,’ cried Emmy. ‘I am sure he really knows how much good there is in Mr. Osborne. He only does not like his little—— Well, I don’t like to call it conceit.’
‘Excellent opinion of himself; but that’s so common with young men,’ said the Hector’s wife.
And Florence—Florence who was the lively one, who on any ordinary occasion would have been in the heat of the discussion, talking now in the tones of Mr. Osborne, now like old Mrs. Lloyd, now like all the ‘fellows’ at Riverside—Florence said nothing at all! That is, nothing to speak of—nothing for her. She kept her face away from the light, and threw in a monosyllable now and then; and when Mr. Osborne’s conceit was spoken of, threw up her head with an indignation which happily nobody perceived. To think they should discuss him so, who was doing all this, giving up his pride in his superior management, for their sake—appealing to Jim! It seemed to Florry that the force of noble self-abnegation could not further go.
TheRector, when he came home upon that day, when Jim’s alliance with Mr. Osborne began, did not show any such pleasure in the circumstances as his wife expected. He mumbled and coughed, and with a lowering brow said that anything was an excuse that kept the boy from his work, and that if Jim picked up Osborne’s fads in addition to his own faults they would make a pretty hash of it altogether. Mrs. Plowden, however, made the less of this that the Rector was evidently in but an indifferent state of temper and spirits generally. ‘He has been put out about something,’ his interpreter said to the girls; ‘something has gone wrong with him in town; he has not got his business done as he wished.’ But what that business was, his wife was obliged to allow that she did not know. ‘I can’t help thinking,’ she said, ‘that it’s something about your uncle Reginald. What else could Emily have come over in such hot haste about? And then your father going up to town in this wild way without giving any reason. I can’t imagine what can be the cause unless it was something about Reginald. They are dreadful for sticking to each other, the Plowdens; they would think, perhaps, that I would make a remark, and I am sure that there are plenty of remarks I might make, for if ever there was a man who was utterly unbearable in a house it was Reginald Plowden, and nothing in the world would make me consent to have him here again, nothing! Your father has had something on his mind for some time back. Don’t you remember he burst in one day as if he were full of something to tell us, and then stopped short all at once?’
‘But that looked as if it was good news, mamma. He had met Mr. Swinford and he was just going to tell us.’
‘What good news could come to us through Leo Swinford?’ cried Mrs. Plowden scornfully: which was to poor Emmy as if somebody had given her a blow in the face. Shefell back quite suddenly behind her sister, and attempted no reply.
‘It did look at first as if it was something good,’ Mrs. Plowden allowed; ‘but when I tried to draw it out of him he only got into a fuss you know, as he does so often, and told me I’d hear it all in good time. I am sure ever since he has had something on his mind; and when he came back from town last night he could have torn us all in pieces. If it is not about Reginald I am sure I can’t imagine what it can be.’
‘It may be something about Aunt Emily, mamma.’
‘What could there be about Emily? No, she has heard from Reginald, that is what it is, and he has told her he was sending back her money, or something of that sort, and your father has gone up to town to see if it was true. And he has found out, of course, that it was not true, as I could have told him before he went a step on such an errand. And now he can’t contain himself for rage and disappointment, and if I’m not mistaken, he has gone over to tell your aunt Emily that she is not to think of it any more.’
‘He did walk over to the cottage,’ one of the girls said; and the other added:
‘How do you find out things, mamma? Now I am sure I never should have thought of anything of that kind.’
‘My dears,’ said Mrs. Plowden with a certain complaisance, ‘you never knew Reginald Plowden. And I do. You cannot gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles; and if there ever was thorns and thistles in flesh and blood, Reginald Plowden is the man. That your Aunt Emily should still expect to get her money back from him, just shows what a thing family affection is; but she might as well expect it to drop down from those lilac-trees.’
The girls did not say anything in reply; but Emmy, for her part, thought of quite a different explanation. She believed that Leo Swinford, whose proceedings had been so great an object of interest, and of whom she knew both by her own observation and by common report that he was ‘always at the cottage,’ had offered himself and his fortune to Lady William. Proposed to Aunt Emily!—that was how poor Emmy put it. A girl cannot but think such a proposal wholly ridiculous, if not an absolute infatuation. Her respect for her aunt made her still believe and hope that the proposal had been rejected; but this wonderful event would quite account for the ‘something on his mind,’ which it was very clear the Rector had. What he had gone to town about,however, and whether his mission could have any bearing upon this disquieting question, Emmy could not say. Florence was so preoccupied with other matters that upon this, even though it cost her sister so much disquietude, she expressed no opinion at all.
The Rector, as had been perceived, had gone towards the cottage when he went out with care upon his brow. He had not, after all, as the reader will understand, proclaimed the wonderful news about Mab when he went home after his meeting with Lord Will. He reflected to himself that it might be some time before he could set his sister’s position quite straight, and that in the meantime the report of Mab’s heiress-ship would flash all over the parish, and that any question, any hesitation, any delay, on the subject would attract the curiosity and interest of the village folks. Mab an heiress! It would go from one end of the county to the other, and questions as to when she would come into her fortune would come from all sides; very likely that last horror of impertinent gossip which reveals what everybody leaves behind him to the admiration of the public, would communicate the news in spite of all precautions. Lord John’s death intestate and the amount of his fortune would be in all the papers, with a list of the kindred concerned. But at all events, the Rector said to himself, he would say nothing till the matter was more assured. It was not an easy thing to do. He felt it bursting from his lips during the first day when he allowed himself to mention Lord Will simply to relieve his mind, but by main force kept the other communication back. And to say that it was not with the most dreadful difficulty that he kept his mouth shut on those many occasions when it is so natural to let slip to your wife the secret that is in your heart, would be to do Mr. Plowden great injustice. He was not in the habit of keeping things to himself. Even the secrets of the parish, it must be allowed, sometimes slipped—things that ought to have been kept rigorously inviolate. He had not, perhaps, the most exalted opinion of his wife’s discretion, and yet she was his other self—a being indivisible, inseparable, with whom he could not be on his guard. But she had shown great discrimination when she said that the Plowdens stuck to each other. Nothing would have made him confess to his wife that there was any insecurity in the position of his sister. Emily was a thing beyond remark, a creature not to be criticised. He would have nothing said about her—not a word of compassion. There are a great many men who deliver over their sisters and mothers without hesitation to be cut in small pieces by their wives, but here and there occurs an exception.Emily was James Plowden’s ideal and the impersonation of the family honour and credit. He could not have a word on that subject, and thus he was strengthened in his resolution to say nothing of Mab’s prospects—until, at least, they were established beyond any kind of doubt.
This did not by any means look like the position in which they were now. Mr. Plowden went into the cottage almost with a little secrecy—looking round him before he opened the little garden gate—for the gossips in the parish were quite capable of reporting that there was something odd and unusual in the Rector’s constant visits to his sister, and that certainly something must be ‘up.’ To be sure it was only his second business visit—but even so much as that was unlike his usual habits, and he was extremely anxious that no question should be raised on the subject. He found her in the drawing-room, at her usual sewing. Mab was out, which was a thing of which the Rector was glad. She looked up hastily at the sight of him, reading his face, as women do with their eyes, before he had time to say a word.
‘You have not succeeded, James?’
‘How do you know I have not succeeded?’ he asked crossly. ‘I have not, perhaps, done all that I hoped to do—but Rome was not built in a day. It was absurd to expect that I had only to go up to London—an hour in the train—and walk into old Gepps’ parsonage and find him still there.’
‘You did not find him at all?’
‘No, I didn’t find him at all. I never expected to find him, considering that he was an older man than my father, and that my father has been dead for sixteen years.’
‘To be sure,’ said Lady William faintly.
‘I found his name, however, all right, and the place—not quite in the City, as I thought—St. Alban’s proprietary chapel, Marylebone.’
‘Ah!’
‘Do you remember the name?’
‘No,’ said Lady William; ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember even the name.’
‘Well, never mind; Gepps was incumbent then. And a very good place, too, for anything that was to be kept quiet—hidden away in a labyrinth of little streets; not so noticeable as the City, where an old church in the midst of warehouses is often something to see. Lady Somebody or other’s proprietary chapel; incumbent, the Rev. T. I. Gepps. No doubt that was the one.’
‘Was it like my description? But, to be sure, it may have been changed, or restored, or something.’
‘I can tell nothing about that. It has been changed with a vengeance. Emily, the chapel has been burned down——’
She gave a little scream of annoyance, but more because of the face he had put on, than from any perception in her own mind of the significance of the words.
‘A few of the things were saved—the books, I mean—but not all, not all, by any means: and all those between 1860 and 1870 perished.’
‘What do you say, James?’
She began to awaken to a little consciousness that this concerned her, which she had not at first understood. ‘The books?’—she took it up but vaguely now—‘the books? What—what does that mean, James?’
‘It means that of the period of your marriage there is no record at all. Do you understand me, Emily? No record, no certificate possible—nothing. It is as if you had planned it all. A clergyman who is dead; a chapel which is burned down; a registry which is destroyed. That is what it might be made to look by skilful hands—as if you had invented the whole.’
She sat half stupefied looking at him, the work still in her hands, her needle in her fingers, looking up at him more astonished than was compatible with speech. ‘The clergyman dead, the chapel burnt down, the registry destroyed!’ She said these words in a kind of half-conscious tone—repeating them after him, yet not knowing what she had said.
‘That is about the state of the case; if you had meant to deceive, you couldn’t have done better all round.’
Lady William looked at him with a curious half smile, yet wistful wonder in her eyes. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I did not want to deceive.’ There was a sort of startled amusement in her tone, mingling with something of reality, a question half rising, a faint feeling of the possibility, and that even, perhaps, her brother——‘James,’ she cried, ‘you do not imagine that I—I——’
The words failed her; the colour forsook her face, and she sat looking up at him dismayed; her work fallen into her lap, but the needle still in her hand.
‘Of course I do not imagine that you—nor, did I doubt that, could I doubt for a moment when there’s my father’s hand and date upon it. And I suppose that would be evidence in a court of justice,’ the Rector said, knitting his brows—‘I’m rather ignorant on such subjects, and I don’t know. But I suppose it would beevidence. I could prove my father’s handwriting, and that I found his notebooks, and produce the rest of them, and so forth. But it’s touch and go to rely upon a thing so close as that.’
‘The books destroyed!’ she said, repeating the words, ‘the church burned down, the clergyman dead. Do such things happen? all to overcome a poor woman? If it was in a book one would say how impossible—how absurd—— ’
‘Emily,’ said the Rector, ‘you must forgive me for saying it, but that’s just what your whole story is—impossible and absurd. It has been so from the beginning; people have no right to launch themselves on such a career. You had it always in your power not to take the first step. I blame my father almost more than you—he ought not to have allowed you to do it: but I blame you too. For even a girl of nineteen is old enough to know what’s possible and what’s impossible. You ought not to have allowed yourself to be launched upon such a bad way. After your ridiculous marriage you might have expected everything else that was ridiculous to follow. It is all of a piece. Nobody would believe one word of it from the beginning to the end—if it was, as you say, in a book.’
Lady William listened to this tirade with a curious piteous look, almost like a child’s; a look that was on the verge of tears and yet had a faint appealing smile in it, an appeal against judgment. Oh what a foolish girl that had been, that girl of nineteen, that ought to have known better! and what a good thing for her if she had known better; if she had been able by her own good sense and judgment to overcome those about her: the foolish old father, the false friend who led her into the net. Listening to her brother’s voice so long, long after the event, and looking back upon the thing that was so impossible, the thing which between them these foolish people had done—she could see very well how preposterous it was, and how it could have been resisted. Mab (all these thoughts flew through her mind while the Rector was speaking) would not have done it. But Mab’s mother had done it, and could not even now see what else she could have done among these three people surrounding her, arranging everything for her. And there was a sort of whimsical, ridiculous humour in the idea that all these complications must have followed from that foolish beginning. What could she expect but that the clergyman should die, the church be burned down, and the books destroyed? To the disturbed and disappointed Rector, thoroughly put out, touched in mind and in temper by acontretempsso painfuland disconcerting, there was nothing whatever ludicrous in the thought. But to her, whose whole life hung upon it, her child’s fortune, her own good name, everything that was worth thinking of in the world, there was an absurdity which had almost made her laugh in the midst of her despair.
‘I am very sensible of the folly of it now,’ she said, commanding her voice, ‘and I know all the misery that has been involved better than any one can tell me—but it is too late now to think of that. We must think in these dreadful circumstances what is now to be done.’
‘You see, Emily,’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘I never knew the rights of it till the other day. I knew there was something queer and hasty about it, a sort of running away; but you know that till you came back here a widow with your little girl I had heard actually nothing—and, indeed, not very much until you came to the Rectory the other day.’
‘That is quite true; and I am very sorry, James.’
‘I don’t say it to upbraid you, my dear. My father was much more to blame than you were. I would not like to have any of my daughters exposed to such a temptation, even at their age. And Florence is twenty-three. And you were always a spoiled child, getting everything your own way.’ The Rector had gradually worked out his impatience and had gone round the circle to tenderness and indulgence again. He put his hand on her shoulder, and patted it as he might have done a child. ‘My poor girl,’ he said, ‘my poor Emily!’ with the voice of one who brings tidings of death, and a face as long as a day without bread, as the French say.
She looked up at him with a gaze of alarm.
‘James!’ she cried, ‘do you think it is all over with us? Don’t say so, for Heaven’s sake! I’ll find Artémise if I seek her through all the country; I’ll find evidence somehow. Don’t condemn us with that dreadful tone.’
‘Condemn you!’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘never will I condemn you, Emily. Even if you had done something wrong instead of only something very foolish, you may be sure I should have stood by you through thick and thin. No, my poor dear, you shall get no condemnation from me; and Jane, I am sure, has far too much sense and too good a heart——’
Here the Rector’s voice broke a little. The idea that his wife would have to be made the judge of his sister, and might almost, indeed, hold Emily’s reputation in her hands, was more than he could bear.
‘Jane!’ said Lady William, with a ring in her voice as sharp and keen as that of her brother’s was lachrymose; but, happily, she had sufficient command of herself not to express the exasperation which this suggestion of being at Jane’s mercy caused her. She said, however, with a painful smile, ‘You are throwing down your arms too soon; I don’t intend to be discouraged so easily. Now I know that the fight will be desperate I can rouse myself to it. It is evident that the one thing that is indispensable is to find Artémise.’
‘Who is Artémise? Some French maid or other?’ said the Rector, with a tinge of disdain.
‘Artémise is Miss Mansfield, who was with us—a cousin, or some people thought a half-sister, of Mrs. Swinford. Their father was a strange man, more French than English, and that is the reason of their names, and—many other odd things. She is a strange woman, and has a strange history. She was at the Hall, a sort of governess—when—— And she was sent with me that night. And without her I don’t think—but we need not enter into those old stories now. One thing I know is that she is living, and that Leo Swinford has seen her—not very long ago.’