Chapter IX: Of Magic Lanterns

It was fortunate that young Harding demanded little in the way of gaiety from Mitchelhurst. Such as it could give, however, it gave that evening, when the vicar, and a country squire who had a small place five or six miles away, came to dinner. The clergyman was a pallid, undersized man, who blinked, and twitched his lips when he was not speaking, and had a nervous trick of assenting to every proposition with an emphatic "Yes, yes." After the utterance of this formula his conscience usually awoke, and compelled him to protest, for he considered most things that were said or done in the world as at any rate slightly reprehensible. This might happen ten times in one conversation, but the assent did not fail to come as readily the tenth time as the first. It would only have been necessary to say, with a sufficient air of conviction, "You see, don't you, Mr. Pryor, that under these circumstances I was perfectly justified in cutting my grandmother's throat with a blunt knife?" to secure a fervent "Yes, yes!" in reply.

The squire was not half an inch taller, a little beardless man with withered red cheeks, and brown hair which was curiously like a wig. Barbara had doubted through two or three interviews whether it was a wig or not, and she had been pleased when he talked to her, because it gave her an excuse for looking fixedly in the direction of his head. At last he arrived one day with his hair very badly cut, and a bit of plaster on his ear, where the village barber had snipped it, after which she took no further interest in him. Happily her previous attention had given him a very high opinion of her intelligence and good taste, and Mr. Masters remained her loyal admirer. "A very sensible girl, Miss Strange," he would say, and Mr. Pryor would reply "Yes, yes," and then add doubtfully that he feared she was rather flighty, and that her indifference to serious questions was much to be regretted. This meant that Barbara would not take a class in the Sunday-school, and cared nothing about old books and tombstones.

The dinner was not a conversational success. Mr. Masters, on being introduced to Reynold Harding, was amazed at the likeness to the old family, and repeatedly exclaimed, "God bless my soul! How very remarkable!" Harding looked self-conscious and uncomfortable, and the vicar said "Yes, exactly so." The little squire's eyes kept wandering from the young man's face to the wall and back again, as if he were referring him to all the family portraits. By the time they had finished their fish the resemblance was singularly heightened. Reynold was scowling blackly, and answering in the fewest possible words, which seemed to grate against each other as he uttered them. Mr. Hayes, who did not care twopence for his young guest's feelings, looked on with indifferent eyes, and would not interfere, while Barbara made a gallant little attempt to divert attention from Reynold's ill-temper by talking with incoherent liveliness to the clergyman. As ill-luck would have it, Mr. Masters, who had more than once addressed his new acquaintance as "Mr. Rothwell," suddenly grasped the fact that he was not Rothwell at all, but Harding, and began to take an unnecessary interest in the Harding pedigree. He was so eager in his investigation that he did not see the young man's silent fury, but went on recalling different Hardings he had known or heard of. "That might be about your grandfather's time," he reckoned.

"You never knew my Hardings!" said Reynold abruptly, in so unmistakable a tone that Mr. Masters stopped short, and looked wonderingly at him, while Barbara faltered in the middle of a sentence. At that moment the remembrance of his grandfather was an intolerable humiliation to the poor fellow, tenfold worse because Barbara would understand. The dark blood had risen to his face and swollen the veins on his forehead, and his glance met hers. She coloured, and he took it as a confession that he had divined her thoughts. In truth she was startled and frightened at her hero of romance under his new aspect.

"Pryor," said Mr. Hayes sharply, "you are all wrong about that inscription in the church. Masters and I have been talking it over--eh, Masters?--and we have made up our minds that your theory won't do."

"Yes," said the vicar, and Mr. Masters chimed in, following his host's lead almost mechanically. The worthy little squire concluded that he must have said something dreadful, and wondered, as he talked, what these Hardings could have done. "I suppose some of 'em were hanged," he said to himself, and stole a glance of commiseration at Reynold, who was gloomily intent upon his plate. "People ought to let one know beforehand when there's anything disagreeable like that--why, one might talk about ropes! I shall speak to Hayes, though perhaps he doesn't know. A deucedly unpleasant young fellow, but so was John Rothwell, and it must be uncommonly uncomfortable to have anything of that kind in one's family. God bless my soul! he looked as if he were going to murder me!"

Barbara breathed again when the inscription was mentioned, recognising a safe and familiar topic, warranted to wear well. They had not ended the discussion when she left them to their wine. Mr. Masters was quicker than Reynold, and held the door open for her to pass, with a little old-fashioned bow, but he exclaimed over his shoulder as he closed it, "No, no, Pryor, you are begging the question of the date," and she went away with those encouraging words in her ears. Mr. Masters and Mr. Pryor might disagree as much as they pleased. They would never come to any harm.

Still, as she waited alone till the gentlemen should come, she could not help feeling depressed. The yellow drawing-room was more brilliantly lighted than usual, and the portrait of Anthony Rothwell chanced to be especially illuminated. Barbara sat down on a low chair, and took a book, but she turned the leaves idly, and whenever she lifted her eyes she met the painted gaze of the face that was so like Reynold. By nature she was happy enough, but her lonely life in the desolate old place, the lack of sympathy, which threw her back entirely on her own thoughts, the desires and dreams which she did not herself understand, but which sprang up and budded in the twilight of her innocent soul, had all combined to make her unnaturally imaginative. A little careless irresponsibility, a little healthy fun and excitement, would have cured her directly. But, meanwhile, the silence and decay of the great hollow house impressed her as it would not have impressed a heavier nature. She was like a butterfly in that wilderness of stone, brightening the spot on which she alighted, but failing to find the sunlight that she sought. Her moods would vary from one moment to the next, answering the subtle influences which a breath of wholesome air from the outer world would have blown away. As she sat there that evening she wished she could escape from Mitchelhurst and Mr. Harding. His angry glance had printed itself upon her memory, and it haunted her. She had been playing with his hopes, trying to awaken his ambition, thinking lightly of the Rothwell temper as a mere item in the romantic likeness, and suddenly she had caught sight of something menacing and cruel, beyond all strength of hers. She lifted her head, and Anthony Rothwell looked as if he were smiling in malicious enjoyment at her trouble. The very effort she made to keep her eyes from the picture drew them to it more certainly, till the firelit room seemed to contract about the portrait and herself, leaving no chance of escape from the ghostly _tete-a-tete_.

The sound of steps broke the spell. She threw down her book as the door opened, and could scarcely help laughing at the queer little company, the three small elderly men, and the tall young fellow who towered over them. A covert glance told her that Reynold was as pale, or paler, than usual, and she noticed that he answered in a constrained but studiously polite manner when the good-natured little squire made some remark on the chilliness of the autumn evenings. After a moment he came across to her, and stood with his elbow on the chimney-piece, looking at the blazing logs, while Anthony Rothwell smiled over his shoulder.

Barbara wondered what she should say to the pair of them, and she tormented her little lace-edged handkerchief in her embarrassment. Finally she let it fall. Young Harding stooped for it, and as he gave it back their eyes met, and he smiled.

"Are you going to play to us?" he asked.

"I wish Miss Strange would play for me at my entertainment at the schools next week," said Mr. Pryor plaintively. "Won't you be persuaded, Miss Strange?"

"I'll play for you now if you like," she answered, "but you know my uncle won't let me play at the penny readings. And really it is no loss, I am nothing of a musician."

The vicar sighed and looked across at Mr. Hayes. "I wish he would!" he said. "Couldn't you persuade him? I can't get the programme arranged properly."

"Why, haven't you got the usual people?"

"Yes, yes, I have got the usual people. But perhaps," said Mr. Pryor, not unreasonably, "it would be as well to have something a little different--a little new, you know. It is extremely kind of them, but the audience, the back benches, don't you know?--Well, I suppose they like variety."

Barbara looked gravely sympathetic.

"And it's rather awkward," Mr. Pryor continued, "young Dickson at the mill has some engagement that evening, and won't be able to sing 'Simon the Cellarer,' unless I put it the first thing."

"Why, he sings nothing else!" Miss Strange exclaimed.

"Yes, he _does_ know two other songs, I believe, but they are, in my opinion, too broadly comic for such an entertainment as this. He hummed a little bit of one in my study one evening, in a _very_ subdued manner, of course, just to give me an idea. I saw at once that it would never do. I stopped him directly, but I found myself singing the very objectionable words about the parish for days. Not _aloud_, you know, not _aloud_!"

Mr. Pryor looked sternly over the top of Miss Strange's head, and pressed his lips so tightly together that she was quite sure he was singing Mr. Harry Dickson's objectionable song to himself at that very moment.

"But why shouldn't he sing 'Simon the Cellarer' at the beginning just as well as at the end?" she questioned.

"Yes," said the vicar, "but there is my little reading, of course that must come in early--my position as the clergyman of the parish, you see. And I thought of something a little improving, a short reading out of a volume of selections I happen to have, 'Simon the Cyrenian'."

"Why, you read that before," Barbara began, and then stopped and coloured.

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I did, but I don't think they paid much attention, the back benches were rather noisy that evening, and it is a nice length, and seems very suitable. But the difficulty is how to keep 'Simon the Cellarer' and 'Simon the Cyrenian' apart on the programme. I don't know how it is to be managed, I'm sure. I thought perhaps you would play us something appropriate between the song and the reading. I'm afraid some of the audience may smile."

Reynold took his arm from the chimney-piece. "Appropriate to both Simons?" he inquired.

"Yes, just so, to both Simons. At least, not exactly that, but something by way of a transition, I suppose."

"I wonder what that would be like," Barbara speculated. "I'm really very sorry I can't help you, Mr. Pryor."

"Oh never mind," said the clergyman. "I did tell Dickson he might change the name in his song, but he wouldn't, in fact he answered rather flippantly. Well, I suppose I must find another reading, but it's a pity, when I knew of this one. Such a suitable length! Unless," he looked at Reynold, "unless your friend--"

Reynold's "No!" was charged with intense astonishment and horror. "I can't play a note," he added.

"But you could recite something," Mr. Pryor persisted. "Now that would really be very kind. Something like the 'Charge of the Light Brigade'--'Into the valley of death,' don't you know, 'Rode the six hundred'--that pleases an audience. We had a young man from Manchester once who did that very well, a _little_ too much action, perhaps, but remarkably well. Or something American--American humour. If it isn't flippant I see no objection to it; one should not be too particular, I think. And it is very popular. Not flippant, and not too broad--but I needn't say that--I feel very safe with you. I'm sure you would not select anything broad."

Harding had recoiled a step or two, and stood with a stony gaze of unspeakable scorn. "It's out of the question," he said, "I couldn't think of such a thing. It's utterly impossible. Besides, I shall be gone."

"Well, I'm very sorry," said the vicar, "I only thought perhaps you might." He turned to Barbara, "Your other friend was so very kind at our little harvest home. Mr.--I forget his name--but it was very good of him."

"Mr. Scarlett," said Barbara. She had her hand up, guarding her eyes from the flickering brightness of a log which had just burst into flame, and Reynold, looking down at her, questioned within himself whether there were not a faint reflection of the name upon her cheek. But it might be his jealous fancy.

"Yes, yes, Scarlett, so it was. A very amusing young man."

This soothed the sullen bystander a little, though he hardly knew why, unless it might be that he fancied that Barbara would not like to hear Mr. Scarlett described as a very amusing young man. But when she answered "Very amusing," with a certain slight crispness of tone, it struck him that he would have preferred that she should be indifferent.

The vicar took his leave a little later, mentioning the duties of the next day as a reason for his early departure. "Must be prepared, you know," he said as he shook hands with the squire.

Mr. Hayes came back from the door, smiling his little contemptuous smile. "That means that he has to open a drawer, and take out an old sermon," he said, turning to Mr. Masters. "Well, as I was saying----"

"Does he always preach old sermons?" Reynold asked Barbara.

"I think so. They always look very yellow, and they always seem old."

"Always preaches old sermons, and has the same old penny readings--do you go?"

"Oh yes, we always go. Uncle thinks we ought to go, only he won't let me do anything."

"Do you _want_ to do anything?"

"No," said the girl. It was a truthful answer, but her consciousness of the intense scorn in Harding's voice made it doubly prompt.

"But do you like going?"

She hesitated. "Oh yes, sometimes. I liked going to the harvest home entertainment."

"Oh!" A pause. "Did Mr. Scarlett sing 'Simon the Cellarer'?"

"No, he did not." After a moment she went on. "They are not always penny readings; a little while ago we had a magic lantern and some sacred music. They were views of the Holy Land, you know, that was why we had sacred music."

"Oh!" said Reynold again. "And did you enjoy the views of the Holy Land?"

"Well, not so very much," she owned. "They didn't get the light right at first, and they were not very distinct, so he told us all about Bethlehem, and then found out that they had put in the wrong slide, and it was the woman at the well, so they had to change her, and then he told us all about Bethlehem over again. Joppa was the best; a fly got in somewhere and ran about over the roofs of the houses--it looked as big as a cat. I shall always remember about Joppa now. Poor Mr. Pryor began quite gravely--" Barbara paused, turned her head to see that her uncle was sufficiently absorbed, and then softly mimicked the clergyman's manner. "'Joppa, or Jaffa, may be considered the port of Jerusalem. It is built on a conical eminence overhanging the sea'--and then he saw us all whispering and laughing and the fly running about. He told us it wasn't reverent; he was dreadfully cross about it. He stopped while they took Joppa out, and, I suppose, they caught the fly. Anyhow it never got in any more. Oh yes, it was rather amusing altogether."

"Was it?"

She threw her head back and looked up at him. "You are laughing at me," she said in a low voice, "but it isn't always so very amusing at home."

His face softened instantly. "I oughtn't to have laughed," he said. "I ought to know--" He could picture Barbara shut up with her smiling, selfish, unsympathetic little uncle, in the black winter evenings that were coming, all the fancies and dreams of eighteen pent within those white-panelled walls, and exhaling sadly in little sighs of weariness over book or needlework.

But he saw another picture too, a dull London sitting-room whose dreariness seemed intensely concentrated on the face of a disappointed woman. Life had held little more for him than for Barbara, but he had rejected even its dreams, and had spent his musing hours in distilling the bitterness of scorn from its sordid realities. He would not have been cheered by a magnified fly. "You are wiser than I am, Miss Strange," he said abruptly.

"What do you mean?"

"You take what you can get."

She considered for a moment. "You mean that I go to Mr. Pryor's entertainments, and hear 'Simon the----'"

"Cyrenian! Yes, and see Joppa in a magic lantern. That is very wise when the real Joppa is out of reach."

"I don't know," said Barbara hesitatingly, "that I ever very particularly wanted to go to Joppa."

"Nor I," said Harding, "but being some way off it will serve for all the unattainable places where we do want to be. 'Joppa may be considered the port of Jerusalem'--wasn't that what Mr. Pryor said?" He repeated it slowly as if the words pleased him. "And where do you really want to go?"

"To Paris," said Barbara, with a world of longing in the word. "To Paris, and then to Italy. And then--oh, anywhere! But to Paris first."

"Paris!" Harding seemed to be recording her choice. "Well, that sounds possible enough. Surely you may count on Paris one of these days, Miss Strange; and meanwhile you can have a look at it with the help of the magic lantern."

She laughed. "Not Mr. Pryor's."

"Oh no, not Mr. Pryor's. I shouldn't fancy there were any Parisian slides in his. But I suspect you have a magic lantern of your own which shows it to you whenever you please."

"Pretty often," she confessed.

The dialogue was interrupted by a tardy request for some music from Mr. Masters. Barbara went obediently to the piano, and Reynold followed her. She would rather he had stayed by the fireside; his conscientious attempts to turn the leaf at the right time confused her dreadfully, and she dared not say to him, as she might have done to another man, "I like to turn the pages for myself, please." Suppose he should be hurt or vexed? She was learning to look upon him as a kind of thundercloud, out of which, without a moment's warning, came flashes of passion, of feeling, of resolution, of fury, of scorn. She did not know what drew them down. So she accepted his attentions, and smiled her gratitude. If only ("Yes, please!" in answer to an inquiring glance)--if only he would always be too soon, or always a little too late! Instead of which he arrived at a tolerable average by virtue of the variety of his failures. Worst of all was a terrible moment of uncertainty, when, having turned too soon, he thought of turning back. "No, no!" cried Barbara.

"I'm very stupid," said Harding, "I'm afraid I put you out." "No, no," again from Barbara, while her busy fingers worked unceasingly. "Couldn't you give me just a little nod when it's time?" A brief pause, during which his eyes are fixed with agonised intensity on her head, a fact of which she is painfully conscious, though her own are riveted on the page before her. She nods spasmodically, and Reynold turns the leaf so hurriedly that it comes sliding down upon the flying hands, and has to be caught and replaced. As usual, displeasure at his own clumsiness makes him sullen and silent, and he stands back without a word when the performance is over. Mr. Masters thanks, applauds, talks a little in the style which for the last forty years or so he has considered appropriate to the young ladies of his acquaintance, and finally says good night, and bows himself out of the room.

Mr. Hayes stands on the rug, and hides a little yawn behind his little hand. "Is Masters trying to make himself agreeable?" he asks. "Let me know if I am to look out for another housekeeper, Barbara."

Barbara has no brilliant reply ready. The hackneyed joke displeases her. As her uncle speaks, she can actually see Littlemere, the village where the small squire lives; a three-cornered green, tufted with rushy grass, with a cow and half-a-dozen geese on it; a few cottages, with their week's wash hung out to dry; a round pond, green with duckweed; a small alehouse; a couple of white, treeless roads, leading away into the world, but apparently serving only for the labourers who plod out in the morning and home at night; an ugly little school-house of red brick and slate; and Littlemere Hall, square, white, and bare, set down like a large box in the middle of a dreary garden. She cannot help picturing herself there, with Mr. Masters, caught and prisoned; the idea is utterly absurd, but it is hideous, as hateful as if an actual hand were laid on her. She shrinks back and frowns. "You needn't get anybody just yet," she says.

"Very good," her uncle replies. "Give me a month's warning, that's all I ask." He yawns again, and looks at his watch. Reynold takes the hint, and his candle, and goes.

"Good riddance!" says the little man on the rug. "Of all the ill-mannered, cross-grained fellows I ever met, there goes the worst! A Rothwell! He's worse than any Rothwell, and not the genuine thing either! Can't he behave decently to my friends at my own table? What does he mean by his confounded rudeness? Masters is a better man than ever he will be!"

Barbara shuts the piano, and lays her music straight. Poor little Barbara, trying with little soft speeches and judicious silences to steer her light-winged course among these angry men, is sorely perplexed sometimes. Now as Mr. Hayes mutters something about "an unlicked cub," she thinks it best to say, "Well, uncle, it isn't for very long. Mr. Harding will soon be going away."

"Yes, he'll soon be going away, and for good too! Never will _he_ set foot inside Mitchelhurst Place again--I can tell him that! When he crosses the threshold he crosses it once for all. Never again--never again!"

This time Barbara, who is looking to the fastenings of the windows, is in no haste to speak. She feels as if she had been conspiring with Harding, and, remembering their schemes for his return, her uncle's reiterated assurances ring oddly and mockingly in her ears. "When he crosses the threshold, he crosses it once for all." No, he does not! He is going away to work, he will come back and buy the Place of Mr. Croft, he will be living there for years and years when poor Uncle Hayes is dead and gone. And she, Barbara, has done it all. With a word and a look she has given a master to Mitchelhurst.

But, being a prudent girl, she merely says "Good night."