Chapter XI

When Jim moved a little uncertainly and heavily on to the platform at Withers he was instantly pounced upon by Mr. Bligh.

Mr. Bligh was a small, excitable man with short red hair, no eyelashes, a nose that went a little up, a chin that shelved a little down, a charming childish mouth, and the blue, swift-moving eyes of a fanatic. He was dressed in gray flannels with an open shirt and a red tie.

‘My dear fellow! My dear fellow!’ he cried with unaffected rapture. ‘I am sure it is you! I am sure it must be! I’m Bligh. Where’s dear old Atkinson? Not come, too? Well, now do you know, I call that rather shabby? And yet I don’t know—perhaps not—after all, clergyman, you know?

‘Here, porter, take this suit-case—heavy luggage in the van—oh, _no_ heavy luggage! All right, porter; this does splendidly! People ought always to travel with no luggage; travel light and you go far—Stevenson or somebody or other says that.

‘Of course, dear old Atkinson’s a saint and awfully unprejudiced in his way. Still, hang it, there’s the uniform. Now, I’m against all that. In the middle ages, you know, all very right and proper—look like crows and feel like crows—quite the thing for the middle ages, but dashes conversation now!

‘No standing up against a uniform. I’m all for no differences—down with class distinctions! We shall have heaps in common, you know! Shall we walk up from the station?’

Mr. Bligh hardly waited for Jim’s stammered consent before he dragged him down the platform and launched full tilt into a topic previously discussed with the station-master. It was difficult for Jim to follow Mr. Bligh’s conversation; it involved a cottage hospital, the station-master’s daughter, his opinion of medical men, and a promise of fresh vegetables. Then it spread to the porter and included a job down the line, and his mother’s rheumatism. A train put a momentary stop to it, but all the way to Warren Mr. Bligh kept darting off into cottages, like an intelligent fox-terrier determined that nothing should escape him.

‘I must just step in, my dear fellow—I promised Mrs. Green some fresh eggs. She’s the most delightful woman in the world, but she can’t digest anything at all except fresh eggs, and she won’t keep chickens. I think she must have a prejudice against chickens. We must go into it all some day, but we haven’t time now.

‘Oh, here’s the vicar—I must just talk to him about a meeting. I want to persuade him to lend me the church rooms for a radical meeting, and he’s a conservative, you know. So unfortunate. I thought _call_ it a lecture on the Holy Land and throw in politics like pepper; just a seasoning here and there; how would that be? I’ve been to the Holy Land——’

The vicar kept them for some time. He seemed from the first to have his suspicions of the Holy Land. He reminded Mr. Bligh that his former lecture on the Alaskan fishing rights had been red-hot socialist twaddle. Mr. Bligh did not seem at all annoyed by the severity of this reminder; he merely dragged Jim forward and said,—

‘Nonsense, my dear fellow—nonsense. What about the ark—all went in two by two, didn’t they? Where was your conservatism then? Here’s one of my new boys, Jim Barton—I forget if you’re church or chapel, Jim, but it doesn’t matter. The vicar has a charming old church; eleventh-century font—you’ll be sure to like it.’

Then he pushed Jim past the vicar, waving his hand behind him and saying,—

‘Right you are about the Holy Land. Thursday at eight!’ and started off at a violent pace, talking breathlessly all the time.

‘A new heaven and a new earth,’ Jim caught in flashes, ‘at least let us have the _earth_ now. That’s what I say—can’t _do_ much about heaven till we get there! Be a pioneer. Break new ground—don’t be afraid of what people say! Stand up to your principles.

‘I told you I was a socialist, didn’t I? All my boys are too. We take the _Leader_ and _Daily News_. My wife takes the _Morning Post_. She says we must balance.

‘She’s a most marvellous woman! You’ll like her immensely. Religious—but one can’t help that, you know. Women of her type must have religion. Religion and the _Morning Post_. But it’s of no consequence. Her heart’s absolutely in the right place—with the masses. You’ll see for yourself.

‘She comes from a very old family, the Winstantons of Alderbridge—of course you’ve heard of them? Conqueror, you know—knights in armour in the hall—family prayers—frightful prejudices—lost fortunes on the turf.

‘She absolutely dashed me in their faces. They said—very natural on their part—“Who’s Bligh?” and she said, “He’s going to be my husband.” Neat, wasn’t it? And so quiet too.

‘You wouldn’t think she’d got the head she has to look at her. All solid judgment and no noise. Moves about like a shadow, agrees with everything I say—except about the Church, of course. But I tone that down before her—I hope you won’t mind? I’m _with_ you, absolutely.

‘You say, “What’s the Church done for me” don’t you? You’re perfectly right! The whole thing is a ridiculous mix up—exploded, too—like hitting a dead cat to talk about it.

‘Bishops’ Palaces now—why, it’s comic opera—look at the Gospels—nowhere to lay their heads. Can’t imagine an archbishop with nowhere to lay his head, can you? Think of their modern bathrooms.

‘But I wouldn’t for the world hurt her feelings about them. I just keep quiet. I even had the children baptized—I’m afraid you’ll think that rather weak? You don’t? I’m so glad!

‘You see, I look at it this way. It means nothing to me at all—won’t hurt the baby to have a few drops of water spooned at it. Can’t take in the words at its age—doesn’t really mind a surplice—cake afterwards, and godfathers and godmothers with silver mugs—a nice friendly idea. No harm done—but my wife would be wretched if we didn’t do it.

‘When it comes to confirmation, of course, I really don’t know what I shall do, because that interferes with the liberty of the subject—don’t like children taking vows and all that—but perhaps they won’t? Modern children, you’ll see for yourself; but she brings them up to have extraordinary manners, reposeful very, though I was against it at first. Revolt’s such a healthy sign I’m sure you agree with me, but not——’

Mr. Bligh stopped abruptly in the middle of the road; he put his tense, lean arm on Jim’s shoulder and looked appealingly up at him as if the entire issue lay in Jim’s hands.

‘_Not_ bloodshed! I _think_, not bloodshed, don’t you?’

Jim’s head was going round and round. He had expected the schoolmaster chosen for him by Arthur to be an ominous and incomprehensible power—Mr. Bligh was incomprehensible, but he wasn’t in the least ominous.

Jim had feared that whatever he said would be wrong, and that oceans of knowledge would stare him in the face, behind barriers of displeasure. He had humbly hoped that he might break down the displeasure in time, and obtain crumbs of knowledge by perpetual efforts, but the man who confronted him in the middle of the road had no dreadful reserves of power.

Jim knew, as a dog knows, that this was a man without authority and that Mr. Bligh had in him neither protection nor any of the forces of attack. In a sense it was a relief, because there was nothing formidable in him, but Jim’s heart sank as he realised that there was nothing to be expected from him either.

Mr. Bligh would be no arbiter of justice between Jim and the other boys. There was mercy in every line of his weak, intense appearance; a passionate, blind-eyed mercy that ran into mistakes as lightly as a sparrow dips itself in and out of puddles.

Jim’s embarrassed eyes rested on him with a curious dumb hardness.

‘’Ose blood,’ he rather naturally asked, ‘don’t you want for us to shed?’

It seemed a simple question, but it wasn’t. It took them a mile and a half of perpetual explanation for Mr. Bligh to set forth, as he felt succinctly and clearly, an enlightened idea of the needs and methods of bloodless revolution.

‘But you must read Wells,’ Mr. Bligh said hurriedly, as they reached the garden gate. ‘He isn’t always sound, but he has glimmerings—and Bernard Shaw and Sydney Webb. They are “vieux jeux,” in a sense; but you ought to begin with them and take “les jeunes” afterwards; and you’ll feel perfectly at home with us, and it’ll all be quite simple.’

Then he opened the garden gate.

Jim had tried to prepare himself for luxury; he had recalled the Masters’ new bright tennis lawn and the inside of their house where there were rooms in which you didn’t need to do anything in particular; but he had never seen a garden like Warren Manor. The gate opened on a tiled Dutch pathway, between two high herbaceous borders swinging with bloom and sweetness.

In front of them swept a large velvety green lawn, and under a flowering pink May-tree Mrs. Bligh sat at a tea-table, surrounded by boys in white flannels.

Beyond the herbaceous borders rose the house itself, a solid Georgian house of purple-red brick.

Wisteria and climbing roses grew over the front of it. To Jim’s dazzled eyes it looked as if it, too, were made of flowers. Under the study window on a square of green grass stood a magnolia-tree. The heavy white buds were carved hard and perfect, line upon smooth strong line against the green-black leaves. There was no vagueness in the splendid flowers.

The tea-table was covered with Queen Anne silver and some very good old Worcester. It would never have occurred to Mrs. Bligh not to use her best possessions regularly, even out of doors. She took beauty for granted; it was her daily bread. If anything happened to what she had, it would be very tiresome, of course, and she would have to buy more.

As her husband and Jim approached her she looked up from the tea-table and smiled. She did not move, but there was something in the quality of her smile, so unexpectedly serene and strong, that Jim felt he had never been welcomed before. He wondered if he should ever be able to smile, all of a sudden, without looking silly, at some one perfectly strange?

Mrs. Bligh was dressed very simply in some light summer material which had the effect of pale sunshine. Her shady garden hat was covered with blue gauze; the colour deepened without changing the untroubled grayness of her eyes. She had long black lashes and very delicate features. Her mouth was older than the rest of her face and a little set; but the corners of it were charming when she smiled.

She had had five children and had lost two. Her voice was very low, with a curious quality of distinctness, as if she were speaking slowly in a well-learned but foreign tongue. She said,—

‘I hope you had a pleasant journey, Mr. Barton. This is Mr. Pritchard—Mr. Wivvle—Mr. Ainley. Do you take sugar in your tea?’

Her eyes, quiet, friendly, and without any hint of criticism, held Jim’s while she spoke. He said in a hoarse voice that he did take sugar; he found his throat unexpectedly dry, and his knees shook under him. Mrs. Bligh did not speak or look at him again for a long time.

All her husband’s pupils loved her. She had no curiosity and no eagerness; and she kept to perfection, in all the small crises of life, the steadiness of a person not concerned.

If Jim had dropped the cup she gave him—with a cleverness which he only afterward perceived—she would not have appeared to notice the accident, and no one would have guessed from her expression whether he had broken old Worcester or kitchen china. But she did not let him break it. Her quiet eyes deflected accidents.

Jim found himself without volition safely seated beside her in an incredibly comfortable chair. His feet felt enormously large and his hands unduly heavy; but he was anchored in a sure refuge, and cut off from the possible tactlessnesses of the outer world.

The other young men looked at him in a non-committal, friendly manner over Mrs. Bligh’s head. Whatever they may have felt was completely hidden beneath their sense of form. They took in turns the floods of Mr. Bligh’s excited companionableness as if it was a thing to which use had hardened them.

They laughed and chaffed each other over tennis. They had been playing tennis, and they were going to play again after tea. They seemed to Jim’s eyes to be incapable of anything else.

He looked at their fine hands, ostentatiously smooth and clean, and yet not weak. Wivvle in particular had hands like iron. He looked at their smooth, young faces; their controlled, untroubled eyes.

Nothing in them had been broken.

Wivvle was the handsomest; he was almost too stupid for Eton and had left to be crammed for the army. Mr. Bligh, who under all the flood of his contemporary thoughts was in command of his job, had warned the young man’s parents to give him plenty of time over Wivvle.

Wivvle would take two years to learn what another boy could grasp in six months. He knew how to behave, but he didn’t know how to concentrate, except of course upon the playing-fields of Eton.

Ainley was extremely intelligent, a dark, haughty-looking boy with a lively eye. He had delicate lungs and had been defrauded of half his school life, but three years of Switzerland had saved his health.

He was as strong now as the rest of them, as lifted above the pinch of life, and as unconcerned with anything disagreeable. He was more vivacious than the other two, but it was only in his manner; beneath it lay a solid block of conservative instincts with which neither his vivacity nor his intellect had anything whatever to do.

Pritchard had neither Wivvle’s good looks nor Ainley’s brains. He was born a gentleman and would always be rather better off than most people. He took himself very seriously and didn’t want to be bothered. The presence of Jim was decidedly a bother. If he had not been attached to Mrs. Bligh and accustomed to the coaching of her husband, he would most certainly not have submitted to the presence of a boy off a barge. He would have left the place.

The other boys thought it rather a lark, but Pritchard didn’t. He didn’t like larks out of his own class. But Mrs. Bligh held him as she held each of them, by the invisible thread of her knowledge of how to live. Barge-boys might be sprung upon Warren Manor at any moment, but she could be trusted to prevent their being a nuisance.

She was a woman who took life with gravity and presence of mind. She never underrated an obstacle or failed in the end to subdue it.

She believed in eternal verities, and used her articles of faith as carefully as if they were matches. She found the arrangements of temporary and material things—especially as regarded her husband—needed perpetual watchfulness and self-control, and she had acquired both these qualities to perfection.

Mr. Bligh adored her primarily and completely, but he adored very easily and with ardour a great many other contradictory things. Mrs. Bligh disliked ardour and she loathed contradictions, but she had never told her husband that she had these dislikes.

Her perpetual fencing with nature never passed the barrier of her rather set small mouth. She had kept the innocence of her girlhood untouched, and she neither understood nor sympathised with passion. Her husband thought her possessed of an immaculate virtue, and her submissiveness partially hid from him the reluctance of her spirit.

Mr. Bligh tried to live up to her, and it cost him a great deal; sometimes he couldn’t do it. Mrs. Bligh forgave him his lapses; but she never knew what it was that he had to forgive her. Nor did Mr. Bligh himself. His forgivenesses were always unconscious.

The centre of his wife’s heart was her religion and her children. She knew nothing beyond what she had to know. Her resentment against the dual nature of life took the form of a cloistered and preserved ignorance.

She judged inflexibly; and she had never faced the bottom of either her own or any one else’s heart.

She had made her husband successful and her children delightful.

Every one in her small world respected and admired her. She obeyed her religion as unobtrusively as she poured out tea. Her self-control was so great and so constantly successful that she had never discovered her lack of moral courage. Nor had any one else.

It would have been as difficult to convince Mrs. Bligh of sin as to break the shell of an oyster with a roseleaf. Sin was a thing she turned instinctively away from, and you can not convince any one of things which they instinctively evade; especially if they believe that there is something rather handsome in evasion.

A small boy of five sauntered out upon the lawn; he had Mr. Bligh’s red hair, and his father’s impetuosity of spirit looked out from his mother’s gray, long-lashed eyes. He darted forward when he saw Jim.

‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘are you the boy who lives in a barge?’

It was the first direct remark which had been made to Jim since he sat down to tea, and though Mr. Bligh made a quick movement to efface it, it was wholly unnecessary.

The small hand laid on Jim’s knee, the eager, uplifted face, was the most reassuring thing that had yet happened to him. His mouth took a friendly twist.

‘Yus,’ he said; ‘I was on ’er—’er name’s _The Water-Lily_, but she’s seemingly given me the slip.’

‘Oh,’ said the enthralled listener, ‘but would you—could you ever—in a most awful kindness—take me in the barge? Because you can’t be going not to live in her _always_, can you?’

‘Like a shot,’ said Jim, ‘if the river’s near enough. I marked ’er course out on the map; she passes within ten mile of Warren now an’ again. You shall ’ave a kipper cooked below like for you, and watch our Cadger—’e’s the dorg—ketch a water rat.’

‘Denis, dear, don’t be a bother,’ said Mrs. Bligh with her gentle distinctness.

Denis’ eyes were wide with delight; the intensity of it almost took his breath away; his grip on the big knee tightened.

‘Oh,’ he said, turning round to the assembled tea-party with flaming cheeks and challenging eyes, ‘isn’t this man easily—the kindest in the world?’

This testimonial broke up the tea-party. The boys strolled off to tennis—they asked Jim casually if he had brought a racket and they said ‘Really,’ when he explained he couldn’t play. They were too polite to laugh at his urging, in default of everything which he ought to have known, that he could knock a ball about at footer!

He had never had a cricket bat in his hands. They were quite kind about it, but none of them had ever eaten their meals with a young man who had never had a cricket bat in his hands. Even Mr. Bligh was dashed for a moment; only Mrs. Bligh appeared to think it was perfectly natural and even convenient. She said with her unemphatic kindness,—

‘And now you can all go and play, can’t you, while I show Mr. Barton the house?’

It seemed to Jim as if an angel had taken him by the hand and conducted him through the many mansions of another world.

Warren Manor was furnished very well. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bligh understood old furniture. It was not the kind that looks worm-eaten and black, but furniture which has the careful bloom of pricelessness and time. Everything shone with a kind of mild, fine radiance, and the carpets under their feet were as soft and deep as heather.

At first it seemed to Jim as if there were no colour in the curtains and chintzes, or in the few delicate pictures on the dull-papered walls. It took him a long time to learn the restfulness of taste, and in his private heart he reserved a terrible tenderness for turkey red and the green of billiard tables.

Mrs. Bligh made little comments as they passed from room to room—they had not the weight of explanations; but they came back to Jim afterward, as the names on a sign post haunt the cautious mind of the traveller in unknown lands.

When she left him at the door of his room she said with her faint, sweet smile,—

‘I hope you will be very happy here, and will tell me anything I can do to help you.’

She liked him; she liked his honest, troubled eyes; she liked even a little his helplessness, for she perceived that it was the helplessness of a strong man at a disadvantage; and secretly, perhaps, she liked what she then and there received, the homage of his undivided heart.

Jim could get on all right with Mr. Bligh; anybody could; but it was Mrs. Bligh who after all taught him most.

She taught him so much that in the end he wondered if any one had ever taught him more.

She was the door by which all his illusions entered.