The news that young Mr. Wingfield had come not only into possession of the property which he had inherited, after the interval made compulsory by the will, but into residence at the Manor House as well, did not take long to spread round Framsby. Framsby was ready to receive him to her great motherly heart. The fact of his being a prodigal did not interfere in the least with the warmth of the maternal embrace which Framsby was preparing for him; nay, it actually increased the enthusiasm with which the sentiment of his coming was hailed. Is it not well known that the prodigal son is the nearest to the mother’s heart of all her family?
Now, nothing was known of the details of Jack Wingfield’s prodigality; but the terms of his grandfather’s will had assumed that his prodigality would be a matter of course, and all Framsby were ready to stand by the inference of so interesting a legal document. If there was any doubt in the matter, they were quite ready to give him the benefit of it by assuming that the piquancy of prodigality was attached to him. He would make the money fly, no fear! was the prediction of the men who winked at one another in the evening over the pewter measures of the “Field and Furrow”; and the tradesmen of Framsby hoped with all their heart and soul that he would. A prodigal during the first few years of his career is the idol of the tradesmen; later on they think of Jeroboam the son of Nebat first, and of the fate that befell his house, and of Pharaoh the monarch of Egypt afterwards. They turn away from the worship of idols and harden their hearts at the suggestion of credit.
But of course it was the representatives of the right set at Framsby who were most interested in the news that Jack Wingfield had come to the Manor House. The truth was that eligible men were not numerous in Framsby or the neighbourhood; and this was, socially speaking, rather a pity, considering what a number of eligible women there were. The worst of a country society, or, for the matter of that, the society in any community, is that every woman is “eligible,” but only a man here and there. Every girl in Framsby considered herself eligible, and her mother agreed with her; but there the matter began and ended. The select set was not the set from which eligible men made their selection, and the consequence was that the number of unmarried young women of various ages between twenty and forty-six became oppressive to any statistician who was thinking with interest, increased by alarm, of the future generation.
But none of them gave up all hope. Some of them hunted a little and got themselves splashed thoroughly with the mud of many ditches, and torn woefully with the briars of many gaps, and the barbarities of numerous fences—they made themselves blowsy at hockey and brown at golf, hoping that they would be taken for young women still; but they would not have minded being taken for middle-aged women or elderly women, if only they would be taken. It seemed, however, as if no man would take them at any estimate. Their devotion to sport was keen, but, unhappily, keenness does not invariably mean proficiency. It means talk, and there was consequently plenty of talk at Framsby about golf and hockey and lawn tennis and croquet, but the examples of play given by the exponents of every one of these games were deplorable. The Tennis and Croquet Club, however, absorbed practically the whole time of the members of the right set throughout the summer; but when it became known that the Manor House was occupied by Mr. Wingfield and his mother, the civility of these representatives of Framsby society caused them to steal some hours from the courts to pay their respects to the newcomers; and within a week Mrs. Wingfield and her son received twenty-five visitors, and an equal number of offers to propose them as members of the Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Unfortunately, Mr. Wingfield had not an opportunity of making the acquaintance of any of those visitors, the fact being that he had slipped out upon that convenient terrace which went round the front and the side of the house, the moment that the approach of the visitors became imminent. In two cases he was just half a minute too late to be absolutely free from any charge of impoliteness: the French window of the drawing-room, by which he was escaping, was stiff and jerky in one case, and in the other the edge of one wing got caught in the curtains, thereby detaining him most awkwardly for several seconds. The back view of him which the callers obtained did not afford them sufficient data for a detailed description of young Mr. Wingfield, but they made the most of it in conversation with their less fortunate associates the next day.
“Have you called on the Manor people yet? What, not yet? We were there yesterday. My husband knew old Mr. Wingfield very well, you know. Mrs. Wingfield is a charming person—quite handsome still. She had been looking forward to seeing us. She feared that there were no families with whom she could make real friends in this neighbourhood.”
“Was the son there? Did you see the son?”
“Ah, yes, we saw him—only for a short time, however; he had to hurry off to keep an appointment. What is he like? Oh, quite nice—rather retiring, I should say.”
“We heard some rather dreadful stories about him. Did he seem wild?”
“Oh, nothing to speak of. It doesn’t do to believe all that one hears about young men like that. I hear that the property, even allowing for the unlet farms, amounts to something close upon twenty thousand a year.”
And then the audience raised interested eyebrows and smiled complete acquiescence in the obvious truth that one should be slow to believe anything to the discredit of an eligible bachelor with an income approaching twenty thousand pounds a year.
It so happened, however, that Jack Wingfield was something of a lawn tennis player, and he had already entered for an open tournament to be held on the Framsby ground the first week in June; and he was glad when his mother told him that she had accepted the offer of Mrs. Bowlby-Sutherst to put up his name and her own for the club. Jack Wingfield belonged to Ranelagh and Hurlingham and a couple of lawn tennis clubs, and he had snatched a second-class prize now and again at Cannes and Mentone. He had been told encouragingly by the men who had beaten him that he had in him the making of a first-class player; and perhaps he had, but he had also in him an inherited trait of self-depreciation which prevented him from working hard to attain anything. He thought very poorly of himself all round; and when urged by competent advisers to give himself a chance, he had invariably given his shrug, saying, “What’s the good? I’ll never be anything but a plater or an ‘also ran.’ I get some fun out of it as it is, but I’ll never do more than I have done.”
So it was with cricket and polo. He never took every ounce out of himself in fighting for anything.
Framsby’s lawn tennis week begins on the first Monday in June, and the tournament being an open one, and several champions and ex-champions coming to take part in it, some good play was certain to be seen when the Framsby folk were got rid of, which was usually during the first day’s play. Moreover, there was a “gate” during this week, so that the ground, sacred for the rest of the year to the members, was invaded by outsiders with shillings in their hands—five shillings for the week.
And that was how it came that Priscilla Wadhurst contrived to put in an appearance at the club from the membership of which she was excluded by the engineering of the select and the elect.
This was the first time she was seen by the Framsby people since her name had appeared in the local papers in brackets at the foot of the account of the loss of the barqueKingsdale; and there was a consensus of opinion in the pavilion that she showed rather more than doubtful taste in exhibiting herself to the public—the phrase was Mrs. Gifford’s. Mrs. Gifford was the senior member of the select, the wife of the colonial gentleman with a pension. “But it was just what might be expected from her,” another of the set whispered to her when Priscilla passed in front of the pavilion. The pair took good care to be so engrossed in conversation together that even an ambitious young woman like Priscilla could hardly have looked for a recognition from them. (She was on nodding terms with the most exclusive ladies in Framsby, but only when they met her in the street—not upon special occasions when important strangers were present, who might go away with the notion that they were intimate with her.)
But whatever bad taste Priscilla showed in appearing in a public place so soon after the death of the man who had tried to wreck her life, no one could suggest that any detail of her dress was not tasteful. All that people might have found fault with was her dress as a whole. And a good many of her own sex availed themselves of such a chance. She was undoubtedly a widow, and yet she bore no token of widowhood in her dress; and so the right set either turned their eyes toward each others’ faces as she passed, or gazed at some point in space a considerable distance above her head. Thus they avoided hurting her feelings by letting her see how shocked they were.
But all the same she knew that they wished it to be known that they were shocked; and she also knew that they would not have been so greatly shocked if her dress had not fitted so extremely well. A chastened spirit and a misfit invariably go together in some people’s minds.
Priscilla knew what it was to dress well, and she was quite aware of the difference there is between a garden party and a lawn tennis meeting. She wore the simplest hat and the simplest frock; both white, and neither relieved by the least touch of colour. But the hat and the frock and the shoes and the gloves and the sunshade were the best that money could buy. They were the sort of things that owed their distinction to the wearer, and only when she had served them in this way did they show their generosity by conferring distinction upon her.
“Who is that exquisite creature?” said one of the strangers in the front row of the pavilion seats, as Priscilla moved past without so much as casting a glance at the occupants of any of the seats.
“An exquisite creature, indeed!” said the one to whom the remark was addressed. “She walks like a goddess; and what hair!”
The two of the right set smiled each in the other’s face, with the corners of their lips turned down. They could hardly resist giving the strangers the information that she was not an exquisite creature, but only a farmer’s daughter.
But before they had straightened their lips once more the ladies in front of them, who had followed Priscilla with their eyes, were becoming excited.
“Dear me!” cried one. “Cynthia is speaking to her. I hope she will bring her here.”
“How nice of Cynthia!” said the other.
The Framsby people, by putting their heads slightly forward, saw that a big girl in tennis costume and with a racket in her hand had sprung up from a seat where she had been resting between games, and flung herself upon Priscilla, kissing her impetuously and then roaring with laughter. Priscilla had received her onslaught only a trifle more sedately, and they stood together on the turf beside one of the courts, chatting like old friends who have not met for years.
And now the Framsby people saw that the young girl was pointing with her racket to the pavilion, and then leading Priscilla back by the way she had come. She led her, still chatting briskly, until they were both beside the two strangers in the front row.
“Mother,” said the girl, “your chance has come at last;—this is Priscilla the Puritan maiden.”
The lady got upon her feet.
“Not Miss Wadhurst?” she said. “But of course you are Miss Wadhurst. I should have known you from Cynthia’s photograph, only you are older now—more—what shall I say?—no, not more—less, yes, you are less of a girl.”
“That is charmingly put, Lady Gainsforth,” said Priscilla.
The Framsby ones gasped. So that was the Countess of Gainsforth, and that girl was her daughter, Lady Cynthia Brooks, the great tennis player, who was waiting for the mixed doubles. They gasped together; and then each tried to outdo the other in an attempt to catch Priscilla’s eye. One of them succeeded, but somehow Priscilla missed seeing her even with the eye that she caught, and the next moment Priscilla was being presented to the second lady, whose name was Mrs. Marlowe.
And then the four began to chat of matters far beyond the horizon of Framsby folk—of the old school where it seemed the girls had been together—of Lady Gainsforth’s kindness in asking Priscilla to stay at Gainsforth Towers during the Cowes week, which Priscilla so greatly appreciated, only regretting that she had promised to go with the Von Hochmans to their villa at Honnef-on-Rhine; and after all the Count had been ill, so that they had nothing of him or his opera. Oh, yes, the opera was produced at Frankfort and afterwards at Nice.
“Why, did they not sing your old English song in it?” asked Lady Gainsforth.
“Oh, yes,” replied Priscilla. “It was highly praised too in one of the papers. This is what they said about it”—here followed half-a-dozen phrases in French, which might have been Sanscrit to the listening Framsby folk—and Priscilla went on:
“Vanity, was it not, committing the criticism to memory?”
“Shocking vanity!” laughed Lady Cynthia, and when Lady Cynthia laughed the people in the furthest court looked round, and then they laughed also.
But the Framsby folk did not laugh, although they were closer to the cyclonic centre. They were, however, ready to smile should Priscilla give them the chance. But Priscilla was a hard woman; she could so easily have spoken to them; and after that it would have been a simple matter introducing them to Lady Gainsforth and Mrs. Marlowe as the leaders of society in Framsby; but Priscilla would not do it, just because they had taken some pains to cut her a quarter of an hour earlier. Oh, she was a hard woman for one so young!
Lady Cynthia had, however, betrayed her whereabouts by her laugh, and one of the officials of the Association sent her a message to the effect that the second of the Mixed Doubles would be played when the court would be vacant at the end of the Gentlemen’s Singles.
“I must rush,” she cried. “I have a good fighting chance for the M.D.s., though not a ghost of one for the L.S.s. Come round with me, Prissy.”
Priscilla saidau revoirto Lady Gainsforth and Mrs. Marlowe and strolled away with Lady Cynthia’s arm through hers; but before she had turned the corner of the pavilion she found herself face to face with Mr. Wingfield, and he took off his cap and greeted her also as if he was an old friend—it seemed that he had been talking to Lady Cynthia earlier in the day.
Framsby gaped and then gasped.
In a few minutes they were alone together, Lady Cynthia having hurried to the court which was now vacant. They were alone, with something like two hundred people about them.
“I have not seen her for two years,” said she. “Funny, isn’t it, that girls may be the closest of chums at school and yet never see each other again in life? Of course it is less funny in regard to Lady Cynthia and myself, because we move in what’s called different spheres.”
“Of course,” he assented with a laugh. “I never thought of that. Yes, to be sure; you are the daughter of a farmer and her sire is an earl. Her grandfather was a working navvy, and no human being knows who his father was. Your grandfather and great-grandfather and great-great-great-grand-grand-grandfather was a Wad-hurst of Athalsdean on back to the time of William the Conqueror, a noted robber who flourished in the year ten hundred and something, and brought over a crowd of gaolbirds to England to turn out the Saxons. They didn’t turn out the Wadhurst of the time, and so here you are moving in a different sphere from Lady Cynthia. And that brings us up to the present moment. Now maybe you’ll tell me in what particular sphere you’ve been moving since I saw you last. That’s ten days ago. I hoped to have the chance of coming across you at some place.”
“I have not been very far beyond the boundaries of the farm,” she said. “I have been fully occupied. You see, I’m very fond of two things—music and milk, and both are absorbing all my time.”
“I could understand music absorbing you, but surely it’s you who absorb the milk, if you like it,” said he.
“It wasn’t that sort of absorption,” she said. “No one knows anything about milk by drinking it.”
“And what on earth do you do with it?”
“Test it—analyse it; so that at a moment’s notice you can say what it is.”
“It’s never anything but milk, is it—before it’s wheeled off to the railway stations and sent up to the retailers who mix it with things—water and boracic acid?”
“That’s the haphazard way in which a dairy was run until recently. My father used actually to run his on the same want of principle. It was I who got the laboratory built, and now he works it on a proper system. We got rid of over fifty cows in a fortnight—some of them were believed by the dairy manager to be the best on the farm. It was only after a number of tests that I found out that their milk contained only the most miserable proportion of the true component parts of good milk.”
“And was it worth your while, may I ask?”
She looked at him in surprise.
“Worth our while? Why, the milk question is the most important that exists in England or anywhere else at the present moment. It is not going too far to say that the whole future of England depends upon the milk consumed by the people. Milk is the most marvellous thing in the world. It seems to me that it should be given a place in Nature all to itself. There is nothing so marvellous as milk, believe me.”
“It’s not so popular as beer in most localities. But now that I come to think of it, I fancy that you are right about it. It certainly is worth your while keeping your eye on it.”
“Oh, everything is worth one’s while if one does it properly.”
“Everything—except farming, it would appear. Dunning, my agent, has a very bad account to give of our farms—three of them without tenants—the largest has had no tenant for over three years. That’s not encouraging.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What can I do?”
“Why is the largest farm unlet?”
“Bad times; the chap who had it last threw it up in despair. He wanted to get it rent free for a year and half-rent for the next two so that he might carry out some wild-cat scheme of market gardening on the French principle.”
“And why didn’t Mr. Dunning let him have it on his own terms?”
“I suppose Dunning knows. He saw that the market garden notion was all tommy rot.”
“Did he go into the matter thoroughly—scientifically? Did he show you the basis of his calculations, and did you verify them?”
“Is it I? Great Gloriana! Where should I be by the side of Dunning?”
“You would be there—by the side of Dunning, and you would make Dunning look silly. Why should you accept any man’s judgment without figures? Make him give you figures.”
“He said it would be madness to give him the place rent free for a year.”
“But you have given it over to Nature, rent free, for three years. The figures that Mr. Dunning has given you are £2,000 with a minus sign in front.”
“That’s a fact. You are beginning to wake me up, Miss Wadhurst. I wish I wasn’t so lazy. But that market garden scheme—Dunning says the chap had been reading up a lot of stuff that was written about the French system, and that turned his head.”
“It turned his head—yes, it turned it in the right direction, Mr. Wingfield; that farm would make a fortune for any one setting to work it solely for market produce.”
“God bless my soul!” Jack Wingfield stopped dead when Priscilla had spoken—they had gone beyond the green limits of the furthest of the nets and were walking under the group of trees that had been allowed to remain standing when the ground had been deforested in order to make the tennis courts. “God bless my soul!” he repeated, in quite a reverent voice, which he assumed to counteract the suggested levity of his first utterance of the exclamation.
“Have I startled you?” she asked. “I meant to startle you. I used every art that I could think of to startle you. I should be horribly disappointed if you had remained unmoved.”
“Unmoved,” he said, in a slow way, moving from one syllable to the other. “Unmoved. I say, there’s a seat in a reasonable place under those trees. Let us make for it. I want to hear more.”
“I can’t quite see that you are justified in practically leaving the courts when you may be called on at any moment to play your game.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter; I’ve got no chance of anything. The people here are too good for me. I don’t bother myself working up my game until the week before.”
“You never will do anything in the world on that principle.”
“I don’t suppose I shall; but what’s the odds? You can’t turn out a Derby winner if you have only a humdrum roadster to go upon.”
“And you are content to live the life of a humdrum roadster?”
“The roadster that looks to win the Derby is an ass—a fool! Now isn’t he?”
“I’m not sure of that. He may become the fastes roadster of his day, and that’s something. No, I’ll not’ encourage you to sit on that lazy man’s seat under the trees. I want you to play every ounce you have in you in your game. I don’t want the strangers to go away at the end of the week saying that there isn’t a player in this neighbourhood.”
“Oh, let the game go hang! I want you to tell me what you meant by startling me as you did just now. What did you mean when you said that about the market garden? Was it merely a ruse to draw me out?”
They were now standing on the low natural terrace with the trees at their back. She lowered her sunshade.
“I meant to startle you, but not at the sacrifice of the truth,” she replied firmly. “We know all about that farm. My father, who is the best judge of land in the county, and who has made more by this knowledge than any man in the county, went over every inch of the farm, and he is absolutely certain that it would make the fortune of any man working it as a market garden.”
“If I was startled a minute ago, I’m amazed just now,” said he. “Does your father not believe in Dunning?”
“I can tell you nothing about that,” she replied, shaking her head. “I can’t say what his opinion of Mr. Dunning may be, but he knows something about men and farms and—cats and mice.”
“If he has a working knowledge of parables he beats me,” said Wingfield. “Cats and mice—what have cats and—Oh, Lord! maybe I do see it after all. When the cat’s away—-”
“Exactly. And you told me that you hadn’t brains!”
“Your father thinks that Dunning is no exception to the rule that applies to cats and mice?”
“I’m sure he thinks that he could convince you in a day or two that that farm could be worked at a profit if the worker turned it into a market garden, and showed the railway that it would be greatly to their advantage to give him siding and a wagon all to himself. You could do that, Mr. Wingfield. What have you on your hands just now?”
“Time,” he said mournfully. “I’ve time on my hands, and by the Lord Harry it hangs pretty heavy there. I was just thinking how on earth I was going to put in the summer in this place.”
“And you haven’t been here more than a month?”
“Even so. What is a chap to do when he has pottered about the place with a couple of fat dogs at his heels? I love summer and I love the place, but what is a chap to do to keep himself from dying by sheer boredom?”
“Good gracious!” she cried, lifting up her beautifully-fitting gloves so that he was as much impressed by the movement as he would have been if her arms had been bare. “Good gracious! You can talk of being bored at a place so full of possibilities as yours!”
“Possibilities? You see possibilities in the place as well as in me? You look through the eyes of an incorrigible optimist. Your generosity runs away with you. Possibilities? Should I learn how to test the quality of milk, for example? I believe there is a pretty good lot of beasts at the home farm. I wonder, by the way, what becomes of all the milk.”
“Look into that. I don’t want to be the means of depriving any deserving or undeserving family of their perquisites; but you take the first opportunity of placing the transaction—the benefaction—on a proper basis. And take the advice of one who knows, and get rid of that nice lot of beasts which you have heard are on the home farm.”
“You mean to say that they are not a nice lot?”
“They were a nice lot ten years ago, my father told me; but instead of being kept up to the highest level, they have been allowed to degenerate to a frightful extent.”
“How?”
“The same way as any first-class stock degenerates—by marrying beneath them. Now the matrimonial alliances among the beasts on that farm would make any matchmaking mother weep. There’s not one in the family that did not make amesallianceat some time of her life. And your grandfather was so careful in this respect. If you have any respect for his memory you will get rid of the lot.”
He was greatly interested in her revelations, and said so, adding,
“What a juggins you must all think me! But I suppose that was because you worked on the same principle as Adam did when he was asked to give the fox a name. ‘I’ll call it a fox,’ said he, ‘and a better name you’ll not get for it, because it’s a fox, if I know anything about animals.’ You couldn’t find a better name for me than a juggins, because I am one.”
“That’s nonsense,” she said. “There’s nothing of the juggins about you if I know what a juggins is. If you were one would you be talking here to me on the most important topics that an owner of property can talk about, when you might be criticizing some of the play at the nets? And if I thought you a juggins would I talk to you for five minutes—for one single minute? I’m mistress of myself. I’m independent of the opinion of any of the people here. I see no reason to be bored for the sake of being polite. I told you the last time we met just what I thought of you, and since then I’ve thought more on precisely the same lines. Of course I feel flattered at your listening to all that I have to say; but I’m not so eager for flattery that I should bother myself talking to you for the pure joy of seeing you listen to me with one ear while I knew that all the time everything I said was trickling out by the other. Now the next word you say depreciating yourself will make me consider that you are trying to depreciate me, so I’ll get up and walk away, or else say something about the weather.”
He had turned his eyes slowly upon her in the course of her long speech—she had spoken her words so rapidly and with such animation it did not seem so very long—and by the time she had ended, which she had with a little flush, he was gazing at her with an expression that was bordering upon wonderment. In the pause that followed, his expression had become lighted up with admiration. Then he looked away from her, and rubbed the tip of his chin with the tip of one forefinger. He became very thoughtful, and the break in their conversation was so long as to assume the proportions of an irreparable rupture. It was, however, nothing of the sort. It was long only because he found it necessary to review and to revise some of the most highly cherished beliefs of his life, and the young woman beside him was fully aware that this was so. She had no mind to obtrude upon his course of thought.
At last he spoke.
“I wonder if you could tell me if I really did think myself a juggins,” he said.
“Why do you ask me such a question, Mr. Wingfield?”
“Because you have opened my eyes to so many things. You have shown that you can read me like a book.”
“Before I talk to you about reading you like a book, I will try to answer your question. I believe that from the first you have been in contact with very foolish people—as foolish as the people at Framsby—it has been called ‘foolish Framsby’ before now.”
“If not, we’ll call it so now. Go on.”
“These people, I have an impression, assumed that because your grandfather so arranged things that you should not take over the property until you were twenty-seven, you were bound to be the sort of person your grandfather believed you would be, and they treated you accordingly, and you were content to accept yourself at their valuation.”
He almost sprang out of his chair, making in the excitement of the moment a downward smash with his racket which, if it had taken place in the course of a set, would never have had a chance of being returned by an opponent.
“Great Gloriana! you have hit the nail on the head!” he said. “I don’t know how you’ve come to know it, but you have come to know it; and now you’ve let me into the secret, and I’m hanged if it isn’t the most important secret of my life—it’s a revelation—that’s what it is! I’ve been now and again at the point of finding it out, but I never got so far. I don’t know how you came to make the discovery, but you have done it, and by the Lord Harry Augustus it has made a new man of me!”
Suddenly he appeared to recover himself. He had spoken so excitedly that he had not only startled her, he had also drawn the attention of some one who was standing by the nearest of the courts, and that person—a stranger—was smiling.
He dropped into his seat at once, saying, “I beg your pardon; I’m making rather a fool of myself; but—well, it can’t be helped.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about him,” she said—she saw that he had noticed that the stranger had noticed him. “He’ll only fancy that we are quarrelling; but we’re not, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Not a tinker’s curse,” he replied, with more than necessary emphasis. Then he turned to her and spoke, leaning forward, swinging his racket between his knees, so as to convince the observant stranger that he was not so excited after all. “I tell you that you have hit upon the mistake that I have made all my life and that everybody about me has made,” he said. “From the first it was taken for granted that because my poor father was a fool I must be one too. I tell you that I took it for granted myself. Now, when a chap starts life in that way what chance has he, I should like to know? When a poor devil is told by every one around him that he has in him the seeds of an incurable disease—consumption, or cancer, or something—what chance has he? I never had a chance. That was why I made an ass of myself at Oxford. Oh, those blessed trustees! They told me when they were sending me to Oxford that they were perfectly certain I should make an ass of myself, and they somehow made me feel that it was inevitable that I should, and so I rode for a fall. I see it now. And it was the same when I went on my travels. They believed that I wanted to paint every place sealing-wax red that I came to, as I had painted the college oak navy blue, and they made that an excuse for cutting down my allowance to bedrock—they didn’t let me have enough to buy turpentine even at wholesale price to mix my paint.”
“And you didn’t buy a can or two of distemper—distemper is what young dogs suffer from, and you were a sad young dog, you know,” said she, laughing under her breath.
“I never did any painting at all after Oxford,” he said. “I had really only now and again an inclination for it. I give you my word that I began to feel ashamed—actually ashamed—at my own tameness, and it was really because I did so that I now and again nerved myself to go on a bust. Gloriana! what poor busts they were. I never came in touch with the police but once, and nothing came of it; the judge—every magistrate is a judge out there—began to laugh at the business—it had something to do with a mule, of course—and then thepolisbegan to laugh, and so the bust bust up, with every one grinning, and making me feel that I was pretty bit of a mug that couldn’t even get up a row that would be taken seriously.”
“What did you do to the poor mule?” she asked, for she had detected the note of despondency in his voice as he told her the story of his failure, and she wanted to cheer him up.
“Oh, it was some rot or other,” he replied. “There was the old mule, with his ears going like the fans of a screw propeller, and his tail whisking mosquitoes into eternity by the thousand, and there was the basket with the eggs, and when the mule man went into the wineshop with the woman that had laid down the basket, what was there to be done?”
“You needn’t ask me; you saw for yourself. But after all you only got the length of painting the pavement a nice yellow—not vermilion. It’s no wonder that the judge laughed.”
“I suppose it isn’t. But you needn’t. I’m sorry I said anything about the mule. You may begin to think that I’m not serious in all that I say.”
“Are you serious?” she cried very seriously.
“I give you my word that I am. The scales have fallen from my eyes. I’ll never think of myself as a juggins again. Oh, confound this fellow! He’s looking for me. I think I’ll scratch for the rest of the day. I’ve no chance against Glenister. Yes, I’ll tell him——”
“Now’s your chance,” she said earnestly. “If you have made up your mind not to treat yourself in future as your trustees and the rest treated you in the past, you’ll play every ounce that’s in you in this tournament and ever afterwards.”
He looked at her.
“What’s a set or two—knocking a ball backwards and forwards across a net, when we’re talking together on a vital matter?” he said peevishly. “I want to have my talk out with you and—here he comes, I’ll tell him to go to——”
“To the court and wait for you,” she said, rising. “Now’s your chance. If there’s anything in what I’ve said to you or you’ve said to me, you’ll play as you never played before. Now just try the experiment.”
He looked at her again—steadily—in a way that he had never looked at her before.
“By God I will!” he said, and marched off to meet the man who had come in search of him for the second of the singles.
The man was cross and confounded him properly for a dam skulker. He was, of course, a particular friend of Jack Wingfield’s, or he would have frozen him with politeness.
Priscilla watched him with a considerable amount of interest, for she was far enough away from the crowds at the courts to allow of her watching him without feeling that she was being watched. She saw how he was walking—swiftly—eagerly—a foot or two ahead of the man who had found him—his head slightly bent forward, his fingers clutching the grip of his racket as though he were ready to return with fury the ball that had been served to him with a smash—as if he had made up his mind that the man who sowed the wind (within an indiarubber sphere) should reap the whirlwind—if he could.
He never looked back—that she noticed with the greatest amount of interest. If he had looked back she would have felt that she had not succeeded in her endeavour to force him to take every ounce out of himself. But now she saw that she had been successful.
Was she just too successful? That was a dreadful question which suggested itself to her. Was that the proper spirit in which he should approach his task of getting one step near to the holder of the cup? Would he not have a better chance if he had gone to the court in the tranquil spirit that was usually his—the spirit of Horatio—the man that Fortune’s buffets and awards had ta’en with equal thanks? She knew that the race is not always to the swift, nor the set to the smasher. The eager man with the racket is apt to become racketty and not precise; and she had sent him from her as full of enthusiasm as a schoolboy arriving in London with a sovereign in one pocket and in the other a ticket for the pavilion at the Oval for Surrey v, Sussex, and Ranji 75 not out the previous evening.
For a while she had a grave misgiving. She felt that after all she had misjudged the man. She had never believed that he would be capable of anything like this within half an hour of her beginning to speak to him. She had never believed in sudden conversions—thetours de forceof the brilliant evangelist; and she had fancied that it would take her several days, extending over the whole summer, to convince that man that there was something in him. And yet there he was, profane—actually profane in his enthusiasm in less than half an hour!
And the worst of it was that she had been foolish enough to allow her action in this matter to suggest that she was staking her reputation as a prophetess upon the event. That was very foolish on her part. No sibil worthy of the name would have done this. The sibil made her book with wisdom and caution, a safe hedging and an ambiguous phrase being the note of her advice.
Priscilla felt that by laying so much emphasis upon the necessity for his throwing his whole soul into his game of tennis she had jeopardized the success of her counsel to him in the matters that mattered.
She felt angry with herself when this reflection came to her; but a few minutes later she felt far angrier at the thought that she had been angry over something that was no business of hers. What did it matter to her if Jack Wingfield made a fool of himself over his tennis or anything else or everything else? How could his success affect her one way or another?
She really could make no satisfactory reply to this question that suggested itself to her; for clever and all as she was, she was as imperfectly acquainted with her own character as most other women are of theirs. The eagerness with which she had carried out her scheme of adopting theroleof a retributory Providence in respect of Mr. Kelton had not given her a hint as to what was the dominant impulse of her nature; nor had her enthusiasm in regard to the working of her father’s farm and the reform of the dairy revealed it to her; though she had been on the brink of a discovery of the truth when she had had her conversation with her friend Rosa going a-primrosing, and had said that if a man sometimes was the means of a girl’s sudden development into a woman, she was equally sure that it was a woman who made a man of a man.
She did not know that in herself was so strongly developed the instinct of woman to be a maker of men—to put forth her strength in order that they may be strong. To be the mother of a man child, to give him of the sustenance of her body, to have him by her side and to have command over him until he breaks away, as she thinks, from her control, leaving her in tears, but always ready to advise him in the taking of a wife and to advise the wife, when she is chosen, how to conduct her household—that is the best part of the nature of a woman. But the exercise of the power to influence a man, to make herself necessary to the happiness and the prosperity of a man, is the most irresistible joy that a woman can know, though she does not know it.
Priscilla Wadhurst had felt a certain satisfaction in the thought that she had the destiny of Mr. Kelton under her fingers, so far as Framsby’s concerts were concerned; and she had been greatly gratified when her father had admitted that her reform of the dairy was a step in the right direction. But what were these triumphs compared to those that she longed to effect, though she might not have part or lot in the supreme tableaux in the procession of events?
And yet, in spite of the consciousness that she had exercised her influence upon another man for his benefit, she sat there asking herself why she should feel it as a personal matter whether Jack Wingfield made a fool of himself over his tennis or in any other way?
And then she saw once again the look that had appeared on his face for more than a moment when his eyes were upon her. It had startled her, and the recollection of it gave her a little fright. But her fright quickly subsided, and she sat there losing herself and all sense of her surroundings in the thoughts that came down upon her, not like a riotous throng of fantastic things, but like a silver mist shot through with a gleam of golden light here and there, but making everything about her seem blurred—indefinite as the future seems to any one landing on the shore of a strange land.
Suddenly she sprang to her feet—almost as suddenly as he had risen when in the midst of their little chat together; only the exclamation that she gave was not the same as his. Hers was derisive, contemptuous, impatient, and there was certainly something of impatience in her walk round the courts where play was going on. She had, however, recovered herself—she had walked herself outside the atmosphere, so to speak, of whatever thoughts had irritated her—before she had come opposite the court where Jack Wingfield was playing off the second set of the “Gentlemen’s Singles”; but even if she had not done so, a few minutes of watching the game that was in progress would certainly have cleared away any wisp of mist that might have remained with her on emerging from that atmosphere of conjecture into which she had allowed herself to stray.
She slipped into the only unoccupied chair at this court. It was at the end of the third row of the seats at the side from which Jack Wingfield was serving. An elderly visitor, wearing a velvet hat built up like a pagoda, sat immediately in front of her, so that she ran no chance of being seen by him. This was what, she thought when she took the seat; but before being in it many seconds she could not help smiling at the thought of how ridiculous it was to fancy that her coming might divert his attention for a single moment from the game, to the detriment of his play. The scheme of Oriental architecture in front of her effectually hid every inch of the court and the players from her, but her seat being at the end of the row, she had only to move a few inches to one side to command a complete and perfect view of the whole; and she perceived in a moment that the man who was serving with his back to her and to the whole world and all that is therein, had become compressed into the spheroid which he held in his left hand preparatory to launching it like a thunderbolt with a twist over the net. She smiled. If the German Emperor or Mr. Roosevelt or some other commanding personality had suddenly appeared on the court, Jack Wingfield would have seen nothing of him. He had eyes only for the ball.
But for the ball he surpassed Shelley’s night in the number of eyes that he had. He was playing against a very good man—a man who, according to some newspapers, had a very good chance of winning the cup that carried with it the title of Champion of South Saxony—but Priscilla saw in a moment how things were going. It seemed to her that it was not Jack Wingfield who was serving, but quite a different person. She could not imagine that desperately alert young man who served as if his whole future were dependent upon his placing the ball on the exact inch of ground at which he aimed—she could not imagine that this was the Jack Wingfield of the shrug—the Jack Wingfield who half an hour ago had been ready to scratch to the man whom he was now playing as if he had no object in life but his defeat.
He was playing with an enthusiasm which surprised every one who was acquainted with his form, and no one more than his antagonist and himself. Glenister was his antagonist—a brilliant man, not perhaps quite so brilliant as he believed himself to be, but still as far above the average in this respect as the sapphire excels the lapis lazuli. He was a man of resource and imagination, and these qualities often stood him in good stead; but it was to his brilliancy he trusted to win his games for him. Priscilla heard the remarks that were being made by competent critics sitting just behind her; and knowing what Glenister’s play was, and seeing what Wingfield’s was, she appreciated the accuracy of the criticisms.
“Glenny as usual underrated his man,” some one remarked. “That was how he lost the first two.”
“He could beat half a dozen Wingfields any day,” was the counter. “How the mischief could he tell that Wingfield was going to play as he is now? How the——hallo! Did you see that?”
“No, what was it? (In a whisper) Confound that hat! What was it?”
“My aunt! Wingfield played the ball over his shoulder from the line, and placed it too.”
“Luck!”
“I suppose so. No one could have a ghost of a chance of doing more than getting it over. Is that Wingfield’s third?”
“His third. He won the first and Glenister pulled off the second. Now we’ll see what Glenny’s service is worth?”
And they did. They saw that its brilliancy was simply thrown away upon Wingfield. He declined to be intimidated by it. He made an attempt to return every ball, and succeeded in getting the third over; with the first and second that were served to him Glenister made fifteen and thirty. But he seemed so greatly surprised by Wingfield’s success with the third as to be quite satisfied to send it back over the net right opposite to where Wingfield was standing. Wingfield took a long aim, and Glenister, watching his eye, ran to the extreme right of the line to meet the ball; but Wingfield changed his mind and sent it to the extreme left, making his first score. The next service no human being could have returned. Forty—fifteen. The next was an easy one, and there was some splendid play before Glenister got a downward smash which he planted obliquely not two feet from the net on the left side and got his game. 2—3.
“Getting into his form, hey?” said one of the critics behind Priscilla.
“It’s the way with all of them; but Wingfield takes it out of him, all the same,” was the reply.
“He does, by George! I didn’t think that Wingfield had it in him; he always seemed to me a lazy sort of beggar—doesn’t care whether he wins or loses—doesn’t seem to know which he does. His partners in the doubles bless him unawares. That was a good serve. My aunt, it was a good serve! He’s working. Has he something on the game, do you suppose?”
“If he had he wouldn’t worry as he’s doing. Most likely some pal of his put a shilling on him and told him. But his backer would do well to hedge. That’s deuce. Glenny will take all the rest.”
But this prediction, like the many prophecies of critics, was not realized. The play on both sides was quick, firm and commonplace, and Glenister got his vantage. By two more services Wingfield got deuce and vantage; Glenister returned the third ball, and Wingfield sent it back in a tight place; but Glenister managed to get under it; he did the same with Wingfield’s return, only he placed the ball. Wingfield got at it, however, with his left, and when the other man was returning it to the bottom of the court far over his head, Wingfield jumped for it, and just managed to touch it over. His antagonist never even ran for it.
“Luck!” remarked one of the critics. “That was a lucky win for Wingfield. It might have gone anywhere.”
Score 4—2.
From that moment Glenister seemed to go all to pieces. The next game realized “game—love,” and the next “game—fifteen,” and Wingfield walked out, examining with extraordinary attention what he seemed to think was a defect in the stringing of his racket. He went straight past Priscilla without seeing her. She meant to say “Well played!” as he was passing, but when the moment came she found herself speechless. She could scarcely rise from her chair. She had no notion that her excitement could have such an effect upon her; and what was strangest of all to her was the tears in her eyes. Why on earth had the tears come to her eyes the moment after he had gone past her?
This was incomprehensible to her. There seemed to her to be no sense in it. She did not take any exception to the feeling of pride of which she was conscious, or to the whisper that sounded in her ears: “You did it—it was you—you—you who made him win, and you have now linked yourself to his success in life, and you will have to stand by him.”
That was all right; she had no idea of making any attempt to evade her responsibility. She had the instincts of a mother; was she one who would set a child on its feet in the middle of the roadway and then run away? She had talked to him so that his success in that match which he had just played had become something like the ordeal of drawing lots in the days when the Powers took care that there was no tomfoolery in the business; she had taken on her therôleof the prophetess and had in effect said to him, “Lo! this shall be a sign unto thee”—and he had accepted the hazard which she suggested to him, and had won, though the odds, as he knew, were against him.
Well, the thing having worked out so, would he not follow up the dictation of the sign? Would he not allow himself to be subjugated by the logic of the lot and hasten to work out his own emancipation with a firm hand and in a confident spirit?
Of course he would. And what then?
“Then I shall have made a man of him,” was the clarion sound that rang in her ears. That was to be her reward; the reflection that she had accomplished this—the sense of her own influence upon the life of a man. She felt at that moment that she wanted nothing more. Her woman’s instinct to be a maker of men was satisfied.
She remained in her seat for several minutes, while the crowd who had been watching the set melted away, or hung about the chairs with their comments. She listened while some asked what on earth had come over Glenister, and others what the mischief had come over Wingfield. How did it come that Wingfield had just managed to nip his set away from Paisley, who was practically an outsider, and then had licked Glenister, who had been runner-up for the cup last year, into blue fits? That was what they all wanted badly to know; and that was just what the young woman with the lace sunshade and the beautifully made dress could have told them.
But they did not address their questions to her; and when the talk about the match that had just finished melted into talk about the two players who had just taken possession of the court, she got upon her feet and walked away—straight away from all the play and from the ground and from the man.
She drove to the farm, took off her beautiful dress and hung it up, and laid away the lace sunshade, and, putting on her working overall, spent the rest of the day in the dairy, among her lactometers and test tubes.
Yes, she found that she had been quite right: the four new Jerseys were more than justifying the records of the stud book.
She reflected with satisfaction upon the circumstance that her father had bought them on her advice. His judgment as to the look of the beasts bore out all that her scientific research had made plain.