Chapter IV: Book I: Halfway House (2)

She owned to that gladly. “I was sure of it,” he said. “You betrayed yourself at the school-treat. Not so much by what you did—though you worked nobly—as by what was done to you. I watched the children; they could not let you alone. They must touch you—children express themselves by their _antennæ_. Again I envy you, Miss Middleham.”

At this point Mr. Soames most happily, if abruptly, intervened. We were to go in. Mr. Germain started, ha’d for his mental balance, poised so for an uncertain moment, and then broke away as desired. “My stout commander! Ha, yes. I am ready. Lead, leader, and I follow.” He bowed to his late captive, left her rosily confused, and bent himself to his duty in the field.

He faced the bowling of the lower end, with carefully adjusted glasses and a resolute chin. He out-lived four balls, and actually hit two of them, but forgot to run the first—to the discomfiture of Wilcox, the saddler, who did run for it, and lost his wicket. The second he ran when he should not, though Soames’s hand and “No! No!” pealed coming disaster; and then he walked back to the tent, and thence to the Rectory garden, while Duplessis, joining Soames, made vigourous practice of the Cromberton bowling. His enthusiasm held out to the end; he marked every ball, cheered every notch. He was impartial—the fall of Soames’s wicket received his plaudits, the hundred on the telegraph got no more. For so sedate a personage he was in great spirits; he rallied the Rector on his timidity, urged Lord Cantacute to put James to the blush. He went so far, even, as to congratulate Duplessis upon his 76 not out; and when all was over reverted more than once during a leisurely stroll among the box-edged walks to the pleasures of village life. He deplored his “great, shut-up Southover.” We were too fond of our fenced enclosures. According to Tacitus the trick must be inveterate, but just now there were signs of its losing hold. Our American kindred would have none of it—a park-pale, even a garden hedge was an offence against public conscience over there. The convenience of _appartements_ was gaining upon London, and in the country allotments were recalling the old days of the common fields. Well, he was good Liberal enough to welcome the breaking down of our grudging defences. Why should an Englishman’s house be his castle, while England, surrounded by its briny moat, was sufficient castle for us all? Merry England! England might be merry enough if Englishmen could forget themselves, and remember each other. Mrs. James did not agree with him, and shortly said so, but Lord Cantacute, who may have seen further than she cared to look, said it would never do. “It’s been tried over and over again, you know. You can’t mix people up, because they won’t meet you. If you go and make a fuss with a fellow, you’ll gratify him, you know; but what will he do? Will he make a fuss with his next-door neighbour? Not he! He’ll kick him. You’ve made him feel that he’s somebody, d’you see? So he can afford himself the luxury. No, no, Germain. I wish you were right—you ought to be—but you’re not.”

“There’s a queer kind of fellow,” his lordship went on, while Mr. Germain seemed to be holding his opinion firmly in his clasped hands behind his back, “who lives in a tilt-cart and mends kettles when the fancy takes him. Paints a good picture, too, and has plenty to say for himself. Hertha found him at that the other day, out riding—but the kettles were not far off, and the sawder bubbling in a pot on a fire. From what she says, he’s come as near to your standard as any one. No hedges there. And he’s a gentleman, mind you. Hertha says that’s clear. But look at the difference. He steps down you see. You are for pulling ’em up. That don’t do, as I say.”

Mr. Germain explained himself. “I deny the imputation; I cannot admit the possibility. Pulling up, my dear Cantacute! How can you pull up, when there is no eminence? I spoke of enclosures, of artificial barriers—a very different matter.”

“Same thing,” said my lord. “We didn’t plant ’em. They grew.”

“I met to-day again,” said Mr. Germain, pointedly to his sister-in-law, “your Miss Middleham—a charming girl—with whom I gave myself the pleasure of some little talk during the interval allowed me by my stalwart friend Soames. I became a hedge-breaker, my dear Constantia, deliberately”—Lord Cantacute’s shrewd eye being upon him, he turned to the attack—“and I can assure you that I found her in every respect worthy of my homage, in every respect. We discussed her art——”

“What’s that?” asked the lord.

“The art of teaching, my dear friend. I maintained that it was the finest art—and Miss Middleham quite agreed with me.”

Mrs. James asked him tartly what else Mary Middleham could have done, or been supposed to do. Lord Cantacute contented himself by saying that he believed she was a nice young woman.

“There are, at any rate, no hedges about her,” said Mrs. James.

V
HOW TO BREAK A HEDGE

Mr. John Germain, of Southover House, in Berkshire—since it is time to be particular about him—was five years older than his brother—a man of fifty, of habits as settled as his income, and like his income, too, mostly in land. Yet he had literary tastes, a fine library, for instance, of which the nucleus only had been inherited, and the rest selected, bound, and mostly read by himself. He was said to have corresponded with the late Mr. Herbert Spencer, and when he was in town invariably to lunch at the Athenæum, sometimes in the company of that philosopher. In person he was tall, distinguished, very erect, very lean, near-sighted, impassive, and leisurely in his movements. One could not well imagine him running for a train—and indeed the appointments of his household service must have precluded the possibility. His coachman had been with him five-and-twenty years, his butler thirty, and the rest to correspond. I believe there was not an upper servant in his employ who had not either seen him grow up or been so seen by himself. He lived mostly in the country, upon his estate, and there fulfilled its duties as he conceived them to be—was Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Deputy-Lieutenant, had been Sheriff, was Chairman of the Board of Guardians. At these things he worked, to lesser incumbencies he stooped, to meet them halfway and no more—as if he deprecated the fashion which insisted on them. Thus he was patron of sport rather than sportsman, subscribed liberally to the hounds, but never hunted, offered excellent shooting to his county, but never handled a gun. A very dignified man—with his high, fastidious face—you had to look hard to discern the character he was. He masked his features as he subdued his movements to express deliberately measured advance; and yet, in his own way and within his own limits, he had never failed of having what he wanted, as he wanted it. And if he had to pay, as we mostly do, he paid without turning a visible hair. I say that with the remembrance of his marriage to Lady Di Wymondesley in my mind.

That had, at first, seemed a stroke of Fortune with which he was not to cope. He had married her—when she was the fashion of the day, the day’s last expression—early in life, so soon as he had gone down from Cambridge and entered upon his inheritance. She had brought him little money—but he wanted none of her money; he wanted her, as every enthusiast for the ideal then did. A beautiful, haggard, swift, violent creature, tearing life to tatters that she might find some excitement in the lining, there came a year when Clytemnestra threatened to be her proper name—that year when her husband returned from a solitary tour in Palestine, Syria, and the Trojan plain, and when Ægisthus, they say, had not been wanting, to make the trio of them. But he, this immovable, triple-armoured man of thirty—he was no more—had shown what his fibre was when he had lived Ægisthus down, lived him out of Berks, out of his clubs, out of London, out of England, and then had set himself to work to live the devil out of his Clytemnestra. What he suffered will never be known, for he took good care of that; and what she may have suffered can hardly be guessed, for she talked too much and too bitterly to be believed. There’s no doubt that these were terrible years; there were fifteen of them, and of every one you would have sworn it must be the last. Providence finally justified that wonderful grit in the man—that panoply of esteem which no sword could bite on—by breaking Lady Di’s back in the hunting-field.

He had been forty when that crowning mercy came to him, and had spent the ten following years in getting his affairs into order. Changing outwardly none of his habits, such as his yearly visit to London, his yearly visit to Misperton Rectory, he was none the less conscious of a departed zest; his panoply was frayed if not rent; and wherever he was during those ten orderly years carried his hope about with him—a treasured, if dim, a real, if undefined, presence. He called it Hestia, and wrote verses about it in secret; he had a positive taste for certain forms of poetry—the Court pastoral, the shepherd-in-satin, beribboned lamb sort of poetry—but not a soul knew that, not even his butler. Hestia was not a woman—at least, she had no members; she appeared in his verses unwooing and unwooed. She was, rather, the vision of an Influence; she was an Aura, a rhythm, a tone. She involved, implied, a domestic calm which had never been his, though Southover’s walls were fair and many; she was a melodious beat added to his ordered goings; at her touch the clockwork of Southover chimed silvern instead of steely. The hope of this Hestia, if I may say so, he carried always about with him at the half-cock. It was the secret of his life. You would never have suspected him of a musical ear; yet there it was. You would have said that any spring of poetry in him would have been sealed at the fount by that panoply which could turn a sword-edge—but no! The eye of such a man may never betray its content and his heart be incapable of voicing its desire. But what heart covets eye will hold, and ear strain after. The man will burn within and make no sign—to fellow man.

And now, the stateliest hedge-breaker that ever, surely, wrought in Somerset, Mr. Germain proceeded on his declared purpose with an absence of parade which, while it robbed it of all sting, must also have threatened its value. Unless you shout Liberty as you trample barriers down, the prisoners may well remain within their pinfolds. There was no shouting in Misperton Brand. It was Mr. Germain’s habit to take breakfast in his own room and keep a solitary morning. He was not visible to the Rectory party until luncheon time; after tea he was accustomed also to withdraw himself until dinner. During these times of seclusion, as I collect, he devoted himself to the emancipation of Miss Middleham.

Sobered as such a young lady could not fail to be by the unimpeachable testimony of Thursday’s school treat and Saturday’s cricket, it was on the Monday following that a series of encounters began, which struck, excited, and ended by enthralling her. Walking to her work in the mornings, she must needs overtake him, returning late in the evenings, behold him strolling a few yards in front of her. This may be done once and be a transient glory, twice and be for remembrance—a comfort when things go awry; let it happen three times, and you will be frightened. After that it may colour each day beforehand as it comes. Miss Middleham had reached the stage where her heart began to beat as she approached the corner of Love-lane, at the end of which stood The Sanctuary behind its defences of laurela, white gates and laurustinus—when another shock was given her, one of those shocks which you get when you put two and two together, as the saying is. It did not take her a second to do the sum—but it had to be done.

On this occasion lessons had been rolling for an hour—long enough to discover how hot it was and how interesting a bee in a window could make himself; more than long enough for Tommy to yawn and squeak his slate-pencil, for Elsie to sigh and look appealingly at Miss Middleham—when the door opened and papa appeared, and behind papa, tall and benevolent, Mr. Germain, the great gentleman from the Rectory.

At this sudden invasion of her sanctuary, Miss Middleham rose startled in her place, and her hand unconsciously sought her side. As Dian surprised with her nymphs might have covered her unveiled breast, so she her heart. At least, so the visitor interpreted the act. If the children stared clear-eyed, Miss Middleham’s fine eyes were misty. Altogether a pretty commotion without and within.

Mr. Nunn—Mr. T. Albert Nunn, as he was pleased to sign himself—was a hale, elderly, and plump gentleman, in colouring rather like a greenhouse plant, so vividly white and feathery was he in the whiskers, so fleshily pink in the cheeks. He now showed considerable elation, though modesty rode it, as it were, on the curb.

“Miss Middleham—pray let me not disturb you. Mr. Germain, Sir, our preceptress, Miss Middleham—who is so kind as to take charge of my nestlings—ha, Sir! my motherless babes—” As he waved them into acquaintance with each other Miss Middleham became deeply suffused, but Mr. Germain was ready to help her.

“Miss Middleham and I are old acquaintances,” he said. “Indeed, I presume upon that at the moment.” He turned to her, excusing himself. “Mr. Nunn assured me that we should not disturb you, and I hope you will support him. You know my interest in educational matters——”

“Yes, Mr. Germain,” she said, faintly. “You have spoken of it.”

“I thought it due to you, when I learned what an honourable charge you profess, that you should know me an admirer of it from afar—unfortunately from afar. Your little pupils, too, I have met—” Mr. Nunn, who had a good ear for sentiment, had his cue.

“My motherless—! Ha, Miss Middleham, what can we show Mr. Germain—what have we of interest? My Gertrude, now, writes a good essay—I have heard you say so. Hey?”

“Very good, indeed, Mr. Nunn,” said Miss Middleham, while Miss Gertrude swallowed hard.

“I should enjoy a sight of it of all things,” said Mr. Germain; so the essay was produced—in all its round and becapitalled script, with Miss Middleham’s corrections in red ink. “The Character of John Lackland, King of England.”

Mr. Germain read between the lines, studied the corrections, and mused as he read. At the end, it happened there was a model essay in the teacher’s hand, not hard to discover as the teacher’s composition. He read this, too, and interpreted it in the light of his vision of the girl. He read into it her confident, natural voice, saw behind it her trim figure, her expressive eyes and softly rich colour. The entire absence of anything remarkable in itself gave him no dismay. He was not looking for that, but for confirmation of his emotions, for a reasoned basis to them. It was clear to him in a moment that the Kings of England were counters in a game—a game, to the teacher, only a shade less dreary, because much more familiar, than to her pupils. This was what he wanted to find. It corroborated his first vision: the vision held. Had she shown talent, to say nothing of genius, for her profession, he would have been greatly disconcerted. Handing the book back, he patted Miss Gertrude on the head for a quick little pupil, and her beaming parent on the back, in a manner of speaking, for possessing her. “You are happy, Mr. Nunn,” he said, “in your children’s promise, and I am sure that their instructress may be satisfied with their performance.”

“You are very good, Sir,” replied Mr. Nunn. “It is naturally gratifying to me—highly gratifying—when a gentleman in your position takes notice of my little brood. Ha! my little seed-plots, as I may truly say. Miss Middleham reports favourably of progress—steady progress. I hear that little Margaret’s sewing is somewhat remarkable——”

But Mr. Germain did not pursue his researches, having no need.

Heaven and Earth! he thought, as he had intended all along to think, were ever labours more jejune compelled upon a fresh and budding young life? Was ever yoke more galling laid upon yearling shoulders? To set a being so delicate at liberty, there can be no hammer and pick laid to the barrier; nay, it must be rather by enlarging from within. The butterfly lies so in a prison house, his iris wings close-folded to his sides. Break into the shell, you either crash the filmy thing, or usher it untimely into a chill world. No, no. Breathe tenderness, shed warmth about the lovely prisoner; it grows in grace and strength to free itself. Then be at hand to see the dawning of life, share in the contemplative ecstasy of a God, rejoice with Him in a fair work—behold it very good!

“What is exquisite here,” he told himself as he thought of Mary standing at her work, “is the bending to the yoke, and the resiliency, the strain for release which is irrepressible in so ardent and strong a nature. I remember the proud youths in the Panathenaic frieze, the noble maidens bearing baskets on their heads. Obedience, willingness, patience on the curb—can anything be more beautiful? You ride a perfect horse; he throbs under your hand. A touch will guide him, but brutality will make a mad thing of him. The gentle hand, the gentle hand! He who is privileged enough to have that in his gift, within his faculty, is surely blessed above his fellows!

“And does not that quality of beauty, indeed, depend upon the curb? Can it exist, as such, without it? No: the head cannot bow so meekly without the burden laid, the neck cannot spring until it has been bent. Ah, but the curb is wielded by the hand, and must never be in unwise or brutal employ. Here there is not brutality, but a stupidity beyond belief, something horrible to me, and deeply touching, that one so young, so highly graced, so little advantaged, should be drudging to prepare for others a lot no better than her own—drudging without aptitude, without reason, without hope to realize or ambition to gratify—desiring merely to live and grow and be happy! Horrible, most horrible. Surely so fair a spirit should be more thriftily expended! Transplant that sweet humour, that really beautiful submissiveness into a room more gracious, an atmosphere more appreciative, and how could it fail to thrive, to bear flower and fruit?”

Flower and fruit—ah, me! There leapt up in his heart an answering fire, and he cried to himself, “Hestia! The Hearth!”

VI
MISS MIDDLEHAM IS INVITED TO CONFIRM A VISION

The object of these sentimental and persistent excursions—circular tours, in fact, since, however far they wandered, whether to the Parthenon or to the shrouded Hestia of the Hearth, they always returned to their starting place—by no means filled the scene at Misperton Brand, which, when she crossed it at all, approved or disapproved according to taste and opportunity. Lady Cantacute had no doubt but she was a good little soul, and young Perivale would confidently wager her a girl with whom you could have fun. Her pupils adored her, Miss de Speyne had not yet realized her existence. Tristram Duplessis believed her waiting for him. The Rector had once called her a sun child, it appears; and that sounds like a compliment, but her good looks were denied. Yet “sun child” is apt, from a friendly tongue. Her colour was quick to come and go; no doubt she was burnt becomingly by the weather. She had—he might have said—a dewy freshness upon her, rather the appearance of having been newly kissed. No doubt, she had a figure, no doubt, the hot, full eyes of the South. Here her soul, if she had one, spoke to those who could hear. Excitement made her eyes to shine like large stars, apprehension opened them like a hare’s. Reproach made them loom upon you all black. If you interested her, they peered. They filled readily with tears, and could laugh like wavelets in the sun. But you can’t build a beauty upon eyes alone, and a beauty she had no claim to be. And yet she was well finished off—with small hands and feet, pointed fingers, small ears, quick nostrils, a smooth throat, running from dusk to ivory as the sun held or fainted in his chase. Then she had “pretty ways”—admitted—and there’s enough title for your sun child.

But the Rector, you see, liked her, while his wife disapproved of her fundamentally. Pretty ways, forsooth! “She’s a flirt, James, and I have no patience with Mr. Soames. The Eastward position is perfectly harmless, of course. Many clergymen adopt it—Lord Victor for one. But it was never done here, as you know very well, until Mr. Soames discovered that he could see the Sunday-school benches that way.”

The Rector shrugged with his eyebrows. “_Scandalum magnatum_, my dear, and dire nonsense at that. Soames is a good fellow with a conscience, and may say his creed in my church to whatever wall he finds helpful.”

Mrs. James retorted that a magnet was quite out of place in a church, and set him gently chuckling. That, as she knew, was final for the day; but she kept her eye steadily upon Miss Middleham, and had her small rewards. What was not discoverable could be guessed at by what was. She lighted by chance upon one crowning episode when, on a Sunday afternoon, she found her cousin Tristram declaiming Shelley’s _Prometheus_ under the apple tree in the garden of Mary’s lodging—not to the apples and birds of the bough, but to the young person herself, snug in an easy chair, her Sunday pleats neatly disposed, no ankle showing, to speak of, but—and this did stamp a fatal air of domesticity upon the whole exhibition—but _without a hat_. This, if you come to think of it, means the worst kind of behaviour, a perverted mind. Shelley was an atheist, and his _Prometheus_ was probably subversive of every kind of decency—but that is nothing beside the point of the hat, which might be missed by any man, but by no woman. For consider. If a little nursery governess were to be read to by the cousin of a person of good family—a young man who might be engaged to a peer’s daughter by a nod of the head—one might think little of it, _had there been evidence of its being an event_. But there had been none—far from that. Mrs. James knew her Misperton Brand very well; events there were hailed by young persons _in their best hats_. Here, nothing of the kind. On the contrary, there was an every-day air about it which showed that the girl was at home with Tristram, Tristram much at home with the girl. That Tristram should be at ease was nothing; it would have been ridiculous had he not been—a nursery governess! But was it not disastrous flippancy—to say no harsher thing—in Mary that she, too, could be at ease; hatless, in a rocking chair; not rocking herself—no, not that! but able to rock at any moment! The enormity was reported, and the Rector said that so long as young women wore their hats in his church he cared nothing what they did with them elsewhere. He threatened to chuckle, so no more could be said; but to Mrs. James, what had been dark surmise before was now garishly plain. The girl was——

But all this takes us far from the schoolroom where Miss Middleham was blamelessly expounding the Plantagenet Kings of England, or from the shady lime-tree walk where Mr. Germain was rhapsodizing upon yokes, submissiveness, and young necks resilient.

He met her, as had now become his habit, on the next morning, and the next. The same bewildering, gentle monologues were delivered—or he paced by her side without speaking, without constraint or any sign that betrayed he was not doing an every-day thing. He was doing a thing which held her spellbound; but shortly afterwards he did another which made her brain spin. He proposed “a little walk” in the course of that afternoon—“Let us say, at six o’clock, if that would be perfectly agreeable to you.” An appointment! It must needs be agreeable; perhaps it was. He called for her at her woodbine-covered lodging, asked for her by name, and stood uncovered in the porch until she appeared; and then they walked by field-ways some couple of miles in the direction of Stockfield Peverel.

Upon this occasion she was invited, if not directed, to talk. It was a little catechism. Mr. Germain asked her of her family and prospects, and she replied readily enough. There was neither disguise, nor pretence about what she had to tell him. She was what Mrs. James would have thought—and did think—frankly _canaille_. Her father was cashier in the London and Suburban Bank at Blackheath, and her mother was alive. This Mary was the second child of a family of six—all girls. Jane—“We call her Jinny”—was the eldest, and a typewriter in a City office: “We shall never be anything more than we are now, because we aren’t clever, and are quite poor.” Jinny was seven-and-twenty; then came herself, Mary Susan, twenty-four years ago. A hiatus represented two boys who had died in infancy—“they mean more than all of us to Mother”—and then in succession four more girls, the eldest sixteen and “finishing.” “Ready to go out in the world, just as I did.” She knew nothing of her father’s father; but had heard that he had come from the West Country, Gloucestershire, she thought. Her mother’s maiden name had been Unthank. Really, that was all—except that she had been much what she was now—a nursery governess—since she was seventeen. “Seven years—yes, a long time; but one gets accustomed to it.” He tried, but could get no more out of her concerning herself; and he remarked upon it that, so surely as she began to talk of her own affairs, she compared them with Jinny’s and allowed them to fade out in Jinny’s favour. He judged that, as a child, she had been overshadowed. Jinny’s beauty, accomplishments, audacity were much upon Mary’s tongue. Jinny knew French, and could sing French songs. She was tall—“a head taller than me”—not engaged to be married, but able to be so whenever she chose. Not easy to please, however. “Father thinks a great deal of Jinny. We are all proud of her. Perhaps you might not admire her style. Everybody looks at her in Blackheath.” Mr. Germain thought to himself that in that case, he should not admire her style.

It is not to be denied that these details had to be digested under protest. They were perfectly innocent, but they did not help the ideal. She was much more attractive when she was fluttered and whirled off her feet, rather breathless, with a good deal of colour, rather scared—as she had been at first. Now, however, she was at ease, tripping by his side, full of the charms of a dashing Jinny at Blackheath—and it came into his mind with a pang that, at this rate, she—the ideal, first-seen She—might disappear altogether behind that young lady’s whisking skirts. This he could not afford: his inquiries became more personal, and she immediately more coy. There came almost naturally into his attitude towards her an air of patronage—tender, diffident, very respectful patronage, under which she soon showed him that his interest in her was moving her pleasantly. A man of more experience than he—who had none—would have seen in a moment that the attention of the other sex was indeed her supreme interest, the mainspring of her being; would have noticed that every filament in her young frame was sensitive to that. A man of gallantry and _expertise_ could have played upon her as on a harp. Mr. Germain could not do this, but his feelings were strongly attracted. So young, so simple, so ardent a creature! he said to himself, and—“God be good to all of us!—living, breathing delicately, exquisitely, daintily indeed before my eyes upon sixty-five pounds a year!”

This fact had truly taken his breath away. Sixty-five pounds a year—mere wages—for the hire of a girl like a flower. “It was a great rise for me,” she had said. “I had never expected to earn more than £45—Jinny herself only gets a pound a week, and French is required in her office. But Mr. Nunn said that he would pay me £15 more than his usual allowance for governesses because it would not be convenient to have me in the house, and I must therefore pay for a lodging in the village. So I must think myself a very fortunate girl, to have my evenings to myself, and £15 a year into the bargain.”

Mr. Germain, reflecting upon the wages of his butler, valet, cook, head-housemaid, head-gardener, head-keeper, head-coachman, felt himself—though he did not know it—knocked off his feet. This comes of mingling interests under glamour. The beglamoured would wiselier postpone practical inquiries.

But as it was, his interest in the young girl was quickened by admiration and pity to a dangerous height. He more than admired, he respected her. To make so gallant, so enchanting a figure on sixty-five pounds a year! And oh, the scheming and shifts that the effort must involve. His fine lips twitched, his fine, benevolent eyes grew dim; he blinked and raised his brows. Summer lightning seemed to play incessantly over his pale face. “My poor child, my poor, brave child!” he murmured to himself: but aloud he said,

“You interest me extremely—I am greatly touched, somewhat moved. Believe me, I value the confidence you have shown me. I do believe I shall not be unworthy of it. I must think—I must take time to consider—a little time, to see whether I cannot—whether I might presume—Sixty-five pounds a year—God bless me, it is astounding!”

Then, to complete the enchantment, she looked quickly up at him, gave him a full quiver from those deep homes of wonder, her unsearchable eyes. “It’s wonderful to me,” she said, simply, without any pretence, “that you should interest yourself in me. I cannot understand it.”

He schooled himself to smile, to be the patron again. “What do you find so wonderful in that, my dear?”

“That you should find time—that you should care—take notice—oh, I don’t know how to say it. I’m only a poor girl, you know, a nursery governess and a dunce. I was so terrified when you came into lessons that morning—I couldn’t tell you, really. My knees knocked.”

He felt more at his ease. “That was very foolish of your knees, my dear. I was greatly interested. And pray do not think me inquisitive: that is not one of my vices. It is far from my wish to—to patronize one for whom I have so high a respect. Your poverty is as it may be—at any rate, you earn your bread; and in that you are a head and shoulders above myself. And if you are a dunce, which I cannot admit—well, that can be mended, you know. Are we not all dunces? I remember a very wise man saying once that we know nothing until we know that we know nothing. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I think so. But even then—Oh, no! It is very wonderful, I think.” And then, as he looked down at her smiling, he received again her full-orbed attack, and she said in a low voice, “Thank you for being so kind to me.” He had to turn away his head lest he should betray himself, and wreck what was to him a moment of ridiculous happiness. He could not trust himself to speak.

At the turnstile between the smithy and the Rising Sun beershop their ways should have diverged; but, although he had fallen entirely silent, he accompanied her to Orient Cottage, where she lodged. At the gate he held her hand for a minute while he somewhat breathlessly committed himself. “Let us, if you will be so good, repeat our little walk the day after to-morrow—that is, on Saturday. I leave this place on Monday, and should value another conversation with you. On Saturday you will be free, I think? Shall we then say the morning, at eleven?”

She would not allow him to see her eyes now. She murmured her “Yes—thank you,” and he went on.

“It is very kind of you. I may have something to say—but, be that as it may, to an old fogy of my sort the companionship of a young lady is flattering. I hope I may believe that I have not wearied you, since you are willing to indulge me again.”

“No, indeed, Mr. Germain. I shall be proud to come.” And then he let her hand go, and she slipped through the gate. As she entered her door she looked over her shoulder a shy good-night; he saluted her and paced slowly back to the Rectory. Combustible matter had been handled; had she been less simple or he more sure, there’s no saying what might not have been ablaze. As it was he betrayed by no outward sign at all how stirred he was, though he was not very talkative at the dinner-table. The Rectory people dined at the Park. Tristram, it was told, was off again. He had gone to Pau, at a moment’s notice, with young Lord Branleigh.

VII
MISS MIDDLEHAM HAS VISIONS OF HER OWN

As for Mary Middleham, it behoved her to cool her hot cheeks and quench the fires in her eyes as soon as she might, for within a few minutes of Mr. Germain’s departure she must set out again. She had been bidden to the Wakes for supper, and the Wakes lived five miles away. Without changing her dress, she mounted her bicycle and was off. She rode fast, but her thoughts outstripped her. She tried to look cool, but the fire throbbed and gleamed. It was not possible but she must recall every stage in the journey of the week that was passing—a week in which there had not been a day without some signal mark of Mr. Germain’s attention.

He had “noticed” her; he had “noticed” her and her peddling affairs every day since the school-treat. His interest had increased, and was increasing; she could not credit it, but still less could doubt it. What in the world did the good gentleman mean? What did he see in her, what want of such as she was? Things of the sort had happened before; Mr. Duplessis was a gentleman, but he was different, quite different. He was, to say the least of it, a younger gentleman, and age was a leveller. “Fun” was to be expected from such as he; but no more. Her conscience had to be put to sleep where Mr. Duplessis was concerned. But Mr. Germain was good and great, wise and—well, middle-aged—a landlord, almost a nobleman. There was no question of “fun” there, or of conscience either—it was all wild surmise. Could he mean anything? One answer to that only: he must. Then, what under Heaven could he mean but one thing? And that was flat absurdity—impossible of belief. And yet—! So her little careful mind, scared out of its bearings, beat and boxed the compass as her heart drove it.

She had a shrewd eye for that form of flattery which girls call “attentions”; for the education of her world cultivates the fibres of sense, and she had been upon it from her seventeenth to this her four-and-twentieth year. Never a year of the seven but her wits had been strung by some affair or another, scarcely one but she had supposed herself within hail of that hour of moment, had seen before her a point beyond which there was no seeing. “If he asks me, I must answer him. And how?” Mostly he had not; and, after a drowning interval, she had presently discovered herself heart-whole, conscience-clean, with no wounds visible, no weals or bruises to ache their reminders. Then it had all begun again—_da capo_.

She was very woman to the extremities. Nothing more feminine than she had ever been taken from the side of man, or been more strongly inclined to go back again. Nothing else in life really interested her but the attitude of men—of this man or that man—towards her. That was why work was task-work, and daily intercourse (without an implication) like meat without salt. Instinct had swallowed her up; her mind was a slave, her heart not yet born. She knew nothing whatever of passion; nobody had ever evoked that. She had been touched, interested, flattered, excited, but never in love in her whole life. Love, indeed, in its real sense, was a sealed book; but curiosity absorbed her, and she was as responsive to the flatteries of attention as a looking-glass to breath. Though she was what we call a coquette by nature, she had no vanities, no vulgar delight in flaunting her conquests before the envious. On the contrary, she was secretive, hoarded her love-affairs, preferred to be wooed in the dark. Her philosophy was really very simple and, I say, perfectly innocent. She loved to be loved, sought out, desired. If she was pretty, it was good to be claimed; if she was not, it was better. So all was for the best.

Sitting erect in her saddle, with squared shoulders, open-breasted to the fanning airs, it was clear that she was pleased, and that throbbing heart and coursing blood became her. She had never looked so well or so modest. Her lips were parted, but her eyes were veiled by those heavy lids and deep lashes which to Duplessis spoke strongly of desire, and to Mr. Germain of virgin bashfulness. A smile lay lurking at the corners of her mouth, ready to flash and dart as her thought was stirred. She was not thinking—perhaps she was incapable of it—she was playing with thought. What had he been doing with her to-day? What was he going to do with her the day after to-morrow? It was all very extraordinary. He liked her, he tried to please her—and so far well; but he was not like Mr. Duplessis, never looked at you as he did, as if he was angry that you were not a morsel. It wasn’t that at all: well then, what was it? The milestones flew by between Misperton and Whiteacre; she was received by the buxom Miss Wakes with kisses and smiles; but her questions were not solved, and her excitement must vent itself in sallies.

So it did. Young Mr. Perivale, the auctioneer’s son, was dumb before her, went down like a stricken steer. She teased him, dazzled him, inflamed his face and tied his tongue. She chattered, sang snatches of songs, scribbled on the piano, flashed and loomed, dared greatly to a point, and then turned to fly. She sat on Sally’s lap and ate apples, allowed Letty to whisper secrets in a corner and quarrel with Kitty who should have her next; sedately conscious of her good looks, she sat downcast all of a sudden and let herself be adored—and then of the suddenest she fled them all and went with Mr. Wake to visit a sick mare, to pity and to serve, to hold the twitch for him while he administered a ball. The end of such flights may be imagined; a pursuit, a capture in the shrubbery, her waist a prisoner, and a panting declaration from young Perivale of the state of his feelings.

She seemed heartless to him. She escaped his arm, and, “Oh, no, Mr. Perivale, I really couldn’t,” she told him, when he asked, “Could she care for him?” and looked to snatch a kiss. Which did she mean—that she couldn’t? Both, it seemed. She handled him lightly; but she thoroughly understood the game, and her ease was that of a skilled practitioner. Mr. Perivale was hurt, and, it may be, forgot himself. He told her fairly that her head had been turned. “That’s what it is,” he said, with hot eyes and a sore tongue, “we’re not good enough for you now. The great folks have taken you up. You think they mean something—and perhaps they do. But it’s not what you think it is.”

“I think nothing about it, I assure you,” she cried, with her head high.

“You think nothing of Mr. Germain in the cricket-field—like a codfish on a bank? Nothing of Mr. Duplessis glaring at you fit to break you? You think these very fine attentions? You’ll excuse me, Miss Middleham, but I know the world.”

“Oh, you may believe what you please of me,” said she, flushing up; “but I hope you’ll believe what I’ve told you just now.”

“I’ll accept it, whether or no—,” said Mr. Perivale, and bade her good-night. Left to herself, in the shrubbery, she shed some tears: _spretæ injuria formæ_. The result of the scene was a supper eaten in subdued silence and the prospect of five miles home, unescorted. She disliked being about in the dark; imagination pictured beauty defenceless and man ranging hungrily. There was a moon, which made it worse. You can only see how dark it is on a moonlight night. No question, however, but she must go.

She made her farewells and set out, her spirits quelled, her little joys all dashed by the quarter-hour’s strife, and a victory which seemed not worth the having. The wind had died down; it was a perfectly still night, close and hot. The very moon seemed hot—heavy, full and burnt yellow—midway up its path. Soon she too was hot, and walking up Faraway Hill got hotter. Her hair loosened and sagged on her neck; her thin muslin gown clung about her knees; she felt tumbled and blowsed, was as near cross as she could ever be, and had spirits like lead—no elation to be got out of the wonderful week, no high-heart hopes for the day after to-morrow, no wild surmises. Atop of the great hill she stopped for breath, fanned herself with her handkerchief, and put up her hair again. Then she mounted and began the short descent to Cubbingdean.

She had not gone a hundred yards before she felt the dull shock and gritty strain which betokens a punctured wheel. This seemed too much, but, dismounting, she found it too true. Disaster on the heels of discomfort; here she was with four fine miles to walk, alone, in the dark, the scorn and reproof of a young Perivale! And part of her way led over Mere Common, where gipsies often encamped, and lay abroad at this season of the year, sleeping, lurking with dogs, doing wickedness in couples. Her heart began to beat at the thought of all this—and what wickedness they might do, and how the dogs would scuffle and tear; but there was no help for it. She had passed this way but three hours ago—and how gay it had looked in the golden sunlight of the late afternoon! Ah, but then her thoughts had been golden, and music in her heart. A snatch came back of the song which had been on her lips; stale jingle it seemed to her now. There had been no gipsies, though, on the Common; comfort in that.

After Cubbingdean, where a little river runs over the road, you climb again between hedgerows and orchards; then comes a piece of woodland on either side, and beyond that you are on Mere Common, which is more than a mile across and half as much again in length. Mary tiptoed through the wood with a knocking heart and, taking breath, addressed herself to the proof before her. She had not, so far, met a living soul, unless pheasants have souls, and hares. These light-foot beasts had made her jump more than enough, and set the pulses at her temples beating like kettle-drums. Her mind was beset by terrors; she had to bite her lip sharply to keep herself to her task.

The wooded road opened, the trees thinned out; now she was on the Common, indeed, and saw the ghostly lumps of furze—each in its shroud—on either hand, with the mist irradiate upon them. She saw the ribbon of white road tapering to a point—and midway of that, beside it, dead in her way, a bright and steady light. At this apparition she stopped short, gazing in panic, her eyes wide, lips apart. Somebody was there! somebody was there—and what could she do?

She had plenty of spirit for the ordinary encounters of daylight. Over-confident young Mr. Perivale, impudent Sunday scholars, young men who took liberties, found their level; Mrs. James herself would not care to go too far. But in the dark her imagination rode her; she then became what indeed she seemed to one at least of her admirers—the hunted nymph cowering in covert, appealing only for the mercy of men. So now, before this terrible light, glimmering there steady and on the watch, her knees began to shake, her eyes to grow dim. She dared not pass it—so much she confessed; she must make a wide cast, and slip by it through the furze.

She plunged desperately in and struck out to the left of the road. Almost immediately the furze was level with her head, often over it; and she had but one arm free to fend it off. It scratched her cheeks, tore her frock, pulled her hair all about her shoulders; she felt the hairpins part and fall. As for the accursed bicycle, it seemed to be battling on its own account like a mad thing, contesting every inch of ground, clinging to every root, sticking in every hollow. Her breath went, and her strength after it, but still she fought and panted. Amazing contrast between what she had been at seven o’clock, and was now at half-past ten! Impossibly fair seemed the spent day, impossibly serene her panic heart. Bitter regret for what was so lovely and so far away started the tears again; she bit her lip, forced herself on; but at last, pushing with all her might between two ragged clumps, she was caught up sharp, felt a stinging pain on her shin, her ankle gripped by something which cut to the bone. She tottered and fell forward upon her bicycle, and as she went down the ring of fire holding her ankle bit and burned—and Mary shrieked.

She had done herself no service by her _détour_, for she heard a man cry, “Hulloa—I’m coming,” and resigned herself to utter fate. God send him kind!—what were these terrible teeth at her ankle? She felt out to reach it—a wire! She was in a hare-wire, set, no doubt by this ruffian who was coming to her now. She heard him labouring through the bushes, and held her breath; and then again he called—“Where are you? Don’t be afraid.” That was a good voice surely! That was a young man’s voice—not a gipsy’s. Comforted, perhaps interested, she crouched, holding her caught ankle, and waited.

VIII
FRIENDSHIP’S GARLAND

The beam of a lantern enveloped her and her gossamered surroundings; presently it blazed full upon her, discovered her flushed and reproachful face, curtained in hair. She saw a tall person, bareheaded, in what seemed to be white clothes, and, by a chance ray, that he was sallow, black-haired, smiling, and had black eyes. A young man! She had no fears left; she was on her own ground again.

“What under the sky are you doing here?” he said. She almost laughed.

“I’m caught in a hare-wire. It hurts very much.”

“It would, you know. Let me look.” He knelt beside her, and then his quick fingers searched for the wire. As they touched hers she felt them cool and nervous. “I’ve got it. I say! it’s nearly through your stocking. No wonder you cried—but now you know why a hare cries. Quiet now—I’ll have it off in a minute.” He dived for a knife, talking all the time. “I dare say you think that I set that wire for a hare, and caught you. You’re quite wrong. I don’t kill hares, and I don’t eat ’em; too nearly related to us, I believe. One minute more—” and he nipped the wire. “There—you are free. You can leap and you can run. Perhaps you’d care to tell me why you battle in these brakes, tearing your frock to ribbons and scratching your eyes out, when you might walk that road like a Christian lady. Just as you please—why, good Lord, you’ve got a bike! It beats cock-fighting. But don’t tell me unless you care to; perhaps it’s a secret.”

She stiffened her shoulders for the fray. “I wish to tell you because I’m ashamed of myself now. Of course, it’s not a secret. I have punctured my bicycle, and have to walk home—three miles more. And I saw your light in front of me, and was frightened.”

His eyes were as bright as her own, but much more mischievous. “Frightened?” he said. “What, of the light?”

“No, no, of course not. But some one must have lit it.”

“Do you mean to say that you were frightened of _me_? The most harmless creature on God’s earth?”

She laughed. “How could I know how harmless you were? I thought you were gipsies.”

“I couldn’t be gipsies. Perhaps I am a gipsy—I’m not sure that I know what I am. My father might, poor man—and he’s an alderman. That light, let me tell you, was going to cook my supper; and now it shall cook yours, if you’ll have some.”

An invitation suggested in that way can only have one answer from a young woman. “No, thank you. I must go on if I can. It’s dreadfully late.” He reflected.

“It’s late, but it’s not dreadful at all. These summer nights are made to live in. Look at the moon on those misty bushes! Nothing lovelier can be dreamed of by poets than the hours from now to dawn. Sightseers always go for daylight—and in July everything’s blotted up in sap green. There’s no drawing in July—I say, you might get up, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I might.” She tried, and sat down again with a wry face. “It hurts awfully.” He had watched the performance.

“I guessed it would. Well, look here. I’ll help you.” He put out his two hands, met hers, and pulled her gently up by the wrists. “Lean on my shoulder—lean as hard as you like.” So she did, because she must.

She limped by his side through the brake, and he talked on. It seemed to her afterwards that she had never heard so much talk in her life. Singular talk too—as if to himself—no hint of her in it—no affected gallantry or solicitude—no consciousness of her presence, not even of her contact; and yet, when she stumbled and clung to his shoulder, he took her round the waist and supported her whole weight with his arm, and so held her until he had her safely by his fire.

He made her sit down upon his rug, took off her shoe and told her to take her stocking off while he got a rag. She obeyed without question, and presently had her ankle in a bandage, which smelt aromatic and stung her, but gave strength and was pleasant. She was very grateful, and entirely at her ease. “I think I’m glad that I was afraid of you,” she told him. “Do you know that I’ve never been so taken care of in my life?” He was putting her shoe on at the moment, pulling tight the laces. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You are the sort that was made to be taken care of—abominably feminine. The odds are that you’ll put my picture out of my head for at least three days—so I shall have to stop here until it comes back again.”

“Then I’m very sorry—” she began, but stopped, as if puzzled.

“You need not be. I shall be perfectly happy. And it will give you a chance of biking out here to report yourself.”

Was this an invitation? Did he—? No; it was never done in that tone.

“I shall certainly come,” she said. “Perhaps you’ll show me the picture. Are you an artist?”