Thorpe Regis

Frances Peard

"Thorpe Regis"

Chapter One.

Nowadays the word “change,” when applied to a place, seems so naturally to carry in itself the ideas of growth, enlargement, and progress, that we find a certain difficulty in adopting the word in its retrograde sense, or of recognising other steps than those which we are in the habit of looking upon as advancement. And yet, if it be true that, under the pressure of an ever-increasing population, hamlets have become towns and fishing-villages seaports, it is no less certain that the great march leaves behind it, or pushes out of its way, many stragglers too sick, too feeble, or too weary for its ranks. Thorpe Regis was such a straggler. Not to speak of those ancient days, the glories of which only its name now kept in faint remembrance, there had been a time when the great high road to London ran through its length. Twice a week the London coach lumbered up to the door of the Red Lion, changed horses, let out its stiff and cramped passengers to stretch their limbs in the paved space before the door, or refresh themselves with a tankard of foaming ale in the stuffy little bar; and then lumbered off again out of the midst of a gaping knot of ostlers and stable-men. Twice a week came the London coach back, bringing with it a stir of life and importance, the latest messenger from the great world unknown to Thorpe except through its medium,—more peremptory, more consequential, and more exacting. There was not a boy or man about the place but felt a sense of interested proprietorship in the Defiance and the Highflyer, and a pride in their respective performances. From the tiny hamlets round, lying in their green seclusions of elm-trees and apple orchards, the rustics used to make muddy pilgrimages to Thorpe, to carry an occasional letter to its post-office, and to watch the coach with steaming leaders swinging down the hill. That was the moment of triumph. A few little half-fledged boys, who were sure to be on the lookout, would hurrah feebly and set off running as fast as their legs could carry them, and a woman or two was generally at hand to cast up her eyes and exclaim at the pace; but the majority preserved a stolid, satisfied silence. That Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts as undeniable as the Church, the Squire’s house, and the Red lion itself, and needed no comment.

Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes. There arrived a day when the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion. So readily does human nature accommodate itself to added greatness, that Underham was the first to claim from Thorpe the homage which all these years it had yielded ungrudgingly, and beyond a doubt it gave additional sharpness to the stings of humiliation endured by the fallen village, to know that its sudden depression had been caused by the prosperity of its rival.

For a short time the two coaches continued to run. The Highflyer was the first to succumb, while the Defiance, acting in accordance with its name, struggled on for another six months as best it could. But—although there might be something heroic in so unequal a warfare, and a certain dogged obstinacy in the refusal to accept defeat, which appeals forcibly to our English sympathies—the result could not possibly be averted. The old people who held railway travelling to be a tempting of Providence, and would fain have clung to the old ways to the end of their days, were too few in number, and too seldom travellers at the best, to support any means of conveyance whatever. Their journeys were rare events, and the last journey of all was not far off. So gradually the struggle came to an end. Underham built, paved, started a High Street, and gathered into itself all the traffic of the district. A company was formed to cut a canal and unite the railway with the river; and there were timber-yards, black coal-wharves, and all the busy tokens of prosperity, where, in former times, thatched cottages stood in the midst of their gardens, and bees sucked the wild blossoms of the honeysuckle.

Thorpe had long ago given up competing with its neighbouring rival. The old generation which resented the passing of its glories had passed away itself; only here and there an old man, leaning against his gate, would point with trembling finger up the hill, and in a cracked and feeble voice would tell his grandchildren how the London coach once brought the news that Nelson had beaten Bony at Trafalgar, and he, as a little lad, had clipped his hands and cheered with the rest. “They doan’t get news like that thyur down to Under’m, not they,” he would end, shaking his head scornfully. But, as a rule, it was only the old people whose memories pertinaciously resented the fallen fortunes of Thorpe. To others it was, as it had always been, a pretty old-fashioned village, set in the midst of green pastures at the foot of a tolerably steep hill, with a tangled network of lanes about it, and glimpses above the high hedges of a distant purple moorland. The cottages—broken by great outer chimneys running up like buttresses—were whitewashed, with many stages of descent between the first dazzling glaze of cleanliness and the last tumble-down exposure of the red-brown cob; while the thatch, beautiful in one season of its existence, presented as many gradations as the plaster, from its crude freshness to the time when withies were bound on it to prevent the wind from ripping it off, or the rain from dropping, as it often dropped, into the low bedroom of the family. Other houses there were of a more ambitious class. A few shops kept up a struggling existence, for although, except Weeks the butcher, no Thorpe person was rash enough to depend upon a single trade, there were combinations which developed a by no means contemptible ingenuity. Draperies and groceries were disposed from the same counter, with only an occasional inconvenience resulting from homely odours of tea or candles clinging to the materials with which they had long rested in closest neighbourhood. And a triple establishment at the corner, opposite the Red Lion, where the shoemaker kept the post-office and his wife instructed the Thorpe children in a back kitchen, was sometimes treated as the centre round which the village revolved.

Looking towards the hill which had been both the glory and the ruin of Thorpe Regis, since the flatter ground about Underham had led the surveyors for the railway to report more favourably upon its situation, the church with its red stone tower lay to the right, a little way up a lane, which in the hottest weather was hardly ever known to be dry; and the Vicarage might be entered either through the churchyard, or more directly from the village by an iron gate and drive. At the time of which I am writing, the vicar was the Rev. William Miles, whose family consisted of his wife, his son, and his daughter; and the squire of the place was old Mr Chester of Hardlands.

Returning through the village and walking straight forward, instead of taking the road to Underham, a tall, ugly brick house, with a gravel sweep before it and a delightful old garden at the back, would soon be reached. It was inhabited by two brothers called Mannering, who had once been well-known London lawyers. Entering the house by three steps, a low and old-fashioned hall presented itself in singular contrast to the tastes of the day; a staircase with oak banisters fronted the door, to the left was the dining-room, and a door beyond led you into the study, where, about the hour of noon, it was very probable that the two brothers would be found together. At any rate it was so on the morning on which my story opens.

The room was one of those comfortable dens which man, without the aid of feminine taste and adornments, is occasionally so fortunate as to construct for himself. It was low and square, and had neither chintz nor flowers to relieve the dark furniture; but the Turkey carpet, although somewhat faded, had lost little of the richness of its finely blended colours; the books which lined the walls were bound with a care and finish which hinted at something approaching to bibliomania on the part of their owners; the pictures, though few, were choice, and the chairs were deep and inviting. Moreover, a summer noonday brightened whatever sombreness remained: sunshine came broadly in through a deep oriel-window, and the scent of flowers and newly mown grass mingled pleasantly with that of Russia leather and old morocco. The room was a cheerful room, although the cheerfulness might be of a subdued and old-world character; and the writing-table, while conveying certain suspicions of business transactions in the form of sundry bundles of papers docketed and tied with red tape, bore also a proof of more voluntary studies in a magnificently bound edition of Homer lying open upon the blotting-pad.

Mr Mannering, who had but just pushed his chair away from the table, was standing upon some low steps in the act of drawing another volume from his amply filled book-shelves, and turning round as he did so to answer a remark of his brother Robert’s. His slim figure was dressed with scrupulous neatness; he had slender hands,—one of which now rested on the top step, straight from the wrist, and, if one might draw an illustration from another member, as it were on tiptoe; his shoulders were a little stooping, his head bent and turned inquiringly; and his quiet voice and smile contained something of quaint humour, and were noticeable at once.

“My dear Robert,” he was saying, “can there be any use in my giving an opinion? So far as I understand the matter, you are blaming Stokes for not understanding the different natures of Gesnera elliptica and Gesnera elongata. How can I, who until this moment was ignorant of the existence in the world of any Gesnera at all, be an equitable arbiter?”

“Wrong, Charles, wrong. That is not the question; in fact, that has nothing whatever to do with the question,” said Mr Robert, resuming his hasty march up and down the room. “Stokes is a fool, and, as he never was anything else, I suppose he can’t help himself. I don’t complain of that. What I complain of is, that he should attempt to be more than a fool. Haven’t I told you fifty times,” he continued, stopping suddenly before the delinquent, “that your business is to mind my orders, and not to think that or think this, as if you were setting up for having a head on your shoulders? Haven’t I told you that, eh?—answer me, sir.”

“’Tain’t no fault of mine,” rejoined the gardener, slowly and doggedly. “If this here Gehesnear had had a quiet time and no worriting of charcoal and korkynit and such itemy nonsense, you wouldn’t ha’ seen a mossel of dry-rot in the bulb. That’s what I says, and what Mr Anthony says, too.”

“Confound your impudence, and Mr Anthony’s with it. So you have been taking him into consultation? No wonder my Gesnera has come to a bad end between your two wise heads. Charles, do you hear?”

“Mr Anthony has mastered horticulture, has he?” said Mr Mannering, turning his back upon the combatants, whose wrath was rapidly subsiding. “If the boy goes on in this fashion there must be a new science created for his benefit ere long. Well, Robert, science has always had its martyrs, and you should submit with a good grace to your Gesnera being among them. When did Mr Anthony come back?”

“Tuesday night, sir. He comed up here yesterday, but you was to Under’am.”

“I forbid his going within ten yards of the stove plants,” cried Mr Robert, hastily. “If I find him trying experiments in my hot-houses, you shall be packed off, Stokes, as surely as I have put up with your inconceivable ignorance for seven years. I’ve not forgotten what Anthony Miles’s experiments are like. Didn’t he nearly blow up Underham with the chemicals he got hold of when that idiot Salter’s back was turned? Didn’t he bribe the doctor’s assistant, and half poison poor old Miss Philippa with learning how to mix medicines, forsooth? Didn’t he upset his mother, and frighten her out of the few wits she possesses, by trying a new fashion of harnessing? And now, as if all this were not enough, my poor plants are to be the victims. I forbid his coming within the great gate,—I forbid your speaking to him while he is possessed with this mania,—I forbid his looking at my Farleyense—”

“He’ve a seen that, sir,” said Stokes, with his stolid features relaxing into a grin.

“O, he has seen that, has he?” said Mr Robert, struggling between indignation and gratified pride. “Do you hear that, Charles? Actually, before I’ve had time to give my orders. And, pray, what had Mr Anthony to say of my Farleyense?”

“He said,” replied the gardener, doling out the sentences to his impatient master with irritating slowness, “as how he had comed through Lunnon, and been to one o’ they big flower-shows they talk so much about. And he said as there were a Farlyensy there—”

“Well, well?”

“As belonged to a dook—”

“Yes,—well, what did he say? Can’t you speak?”

“As warn’t fit to hold a candle to owers,” burst out Stokes triumphantly, slapping his leg with an emphasis which made Mr Mannering, who had returned to his seat at the writing-table, start and look round in, mild expostulation. His brother was rubbing his hands, and beaming in every feature of his round face.

“To be sure, to be sure,” he said in a tone of supreme satisfaction. “Just what one would have expected. But I am glad Anthony happened to be up there just at this time, and I will say for the lad that he makes better use of his eyes than three parts of the young fellows one meets with. So it was an inferior sort of article, was it?—with fronds half the size, I’ll lay a wager. You hear, Charles, don’t you? Well, Stokes, you have been exceedingly careful to treat that Farleyense in the manner I showed you,—I knew it would answer,—here, man, here’s half a sovereign for you, and mind the earth doesn’t get too dry.”

“Thank ye, sir, thank ye,” said Stokes, prudently abstaining from the contradiction in which at another time he might have indulged.

“And, Stokes—”

“Yes, Mr Robert.”

“If Mr Anthony comes up again, just let me know. I should wish him to see one or two of the other things in the house, but I prefer showing them to him myself.”

“It’s most likely he’ll be up again to-day, sir. He wants Miss Winifred to have a look at the plant.”

“Certainly, certainly. You can send in word when they come. And, Stokes—”

Stokes, who by this time had his hand upon the door, having tucked the luckless Gesnera out of sight, turned obediently.

“No experiments, mind, no experiments.”

“No, Mr Robert ’Specially korkynit,” added the gardener in an audible whisper, as he went out. Whether or not Mr Robert heard him, it is impossible to say. Something like a red flush rose in his face, and he looked hurriedly at his brother; but Mr Mannering was sitting back in his deep chair, his elbows on its arms, his fingers joined at the tips, his eyes fixed upon the volume before him, and if the shadow of a smile just hovered about his lips, it might have been excited by some touch of subtile humour in the pages which apparently absorbed his attention. The younger brother fidgeted, went to the window, altered a slight crookedness about the blind, stood there in his favourite attitude, with his hands behind his back, and at length returned to the writing-table, and took up one of the bundles of papers which were lying upon it.

“You have written to Thompson about the mortgage, I suppose?” he said in a business-like tone which contrasted oddly with his previous bustling excitement.

“Really, Robert,” said Mr Mannering, looking up, and speaking apologetically, “I believe I have done nothing of the kind. Upon my word, I do not know where my memory is going. I had the pen in my hand to begin the letter, and something must have put the matter out of my head.”

“Never mind. If you can make room I’ll sit down at once, and give the fellow a summary of what he has to do.”

But Mr Mannering was evidently annoyed with himself.

“I am growing old, that is the truth,” he said despondingly.

“Old?—pooh! Go and look in the glass, Charles, before you talk of getting old to a man that is but three years your junior. Old?—why, there isn’t a Mannering that comes to his prime before seventy. I expect to grow younger every day, and to have a game of leap-frog with you before many years are past;—do you recollect the leap-frog in the play-ground of the Grammar school?—why, it seems but yesterday that great lout of a fellow, Hunt, went flying over my head, and struck out with his hob-nailed shoes, and caught me just across the knuckles. I can feel the sting yet. There, glance over this, and see if it will do for Thompson. I wonder where old Hunt is now.”

“I met him in the city the other day with a grandson on either side.”

“I dare say. He was always too much of a blundering blockhead to understand that the way to grow old is to have a tribe of children treading on your heels. You and I know better. Here we live, as snug a pair of cronies as is to be met with for twenty miles round, without any such sharp contrasts disturbing our equanimity.”

In answer to his brother’s cheery words, and the hand which grasped his as they were spoken, Mr Mannering shook his head a little sadly.

“Things might have been different—for you, Robert, especially. Do you think I have forgotten Margaret Hare?”

“Why should you forget, or I either? Things might have been different, as you say, but it does not follow they would have been better. Look here, Charles; we have not spoken much of Margaret Hare of late years. I don’t forget her, though I am an old blustering fellow, I don’t forget her, but I can look back and say God bless her, and thank him, too, that things are as they are. I don’t want any change, and I have never repented.”

“It does my heart good to hear you say that, Robert.”

“Well, there, it’s said and done with. Are you going to Underham to-day?”

“I promised Bennett to look in. He wants me to dine with him to-morrow.”

“That’s very well for young fellows like you, but don’t accept for me. If I go off the premises we shall be having Anthony Miles up here with an infallible compound for destroying caterpillars and all the plants into the bargain. I shall administer a lecture to-day, when he brings Miss Winifred.”

“Get her to do it.”

“I’m half afraid she does it too much already. It seems to me that love-making is more altered than leap-frog since our day, Charles,—Well, well, some things don’t change, and luckily luncheon is a permanent institution. Come, and spare Mrs Jones’s feelings.”

“I am losing my appetite,” said Mr Mannering, sighing.

“Come in, at all events.” And, with a little show of reluctance on the part of the elder, the brothers walked off to the long dining-room lying on one side of the library, and looking out upon the cheerful and sunny garden which had somehow caught the spirit of Robert Mannering’s kindliness.

Chapter Two.

“So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.”
In Memoriam.

The path from Thorpe Regis to Hardlands lay across two or three of those green fields which ran in and out of the village and gave it the air of deep retirement remarked by the few visitors who jogged in a fly from the nearest town to see the thatched cottages, the red church, the apple orchards, and the great myrtles which grew boldly up to the very eaves of the houses. You might reach Hardlands in a more dignified and deliberate fashion by driving along the old London road, and turning into a short lane, when the iron gate would soon appear in sight; but the most sociable and habitual means of approach was that which led through the fields to a narrow shrubbery path, emerging from which the long white house, with a green veranda stretching half-way across its front, became pleasantly visible at once.

Between Hardlands and the Vicarage a very brisk communication was kept up. The Squire and the Vicar had not indeed been friends beyond the term of Mr Miles’s residence at Thorpe, but that had now reached a period of fifteen years; and although fifteen years at their time of life will not balance an earlier friendship of but five, and although there was neither similarity nor natural sympathy between the two men, yet neighbourhood and a certain amount of isolation had formed a bond which either of the two would have found it painful to break. Mr Chester, moreover, had lost his wife while the Mileses were yet fresh comers, and with two motherless girls left upon his hands it became a natural thing to apply in his perplexity to Mrs Miles, a woman in whom, whatever else might lack strength, it was not the sweet tenderness of motherly instincts. Winifred and little Bessie were at least as much in the Vicarage nursery as their own, sharing all things with Marion and Anthony; and if, as they grew older, a half-unconscious change took place in their relationships, it had not been the means of loosening the intimacy, or diminishing the number of mutual visits. Bessie and her father had that morning looked in at the Vicarage, and in the late afternoon Marion and Anthony walked across the fields by the familiar path along which they could have gone blindfold, towards Hardlands.

The day was one of those exhilarating days of early summer, before any languor of great beat has stolen into its heart, and while the freshness of spring still leaps up in breezy flutterings of leaf and bough. Hay-making was going on vigorously, and the air was laden with the grateful scent. There were fields yet green with cool depths of waving grass, and others where keen shadows fell upon the smoothly shaven turf. Here and there a foxglove reared itself upwards in the hedges, here and there dog-roses unfolded innocent little pink and white buds. Without any striking beauty in the landscape about Thorpe, a certain pastoral and homely charm in the thatched cottages, the fields, the blossoming orchards, and even in such unromantic details as the shallow duck-pond under Widow Andrews’s wall, made a more exacting demand upon the affections of those who lived among them than could altogether be understood by such as only looked upon them from the outside. Anthony Miles, as he walked along with his head a little thrown back, switching the grass with a laurel rod confiscated from Widow Andrews’s little grandson, who had been caught by the brother and sister, as they passed, using it as an instrument of torture upon a smaller and weaker companion, was not thinking of the familiar objects with any conscious sense of admiration, and yet they were affecting him pleasantly; so that, although he might have said many other places were filling his heart at this time,—for there is an age with both men and women when place has even more power than people,—it is likely that, had he known the truth about himself, he would, after all, have found Thorpe in the warmest corner; old sleepy stupid Thorpe with its hay-ricks, its bad farming, and its broad hedges cumbering the land, against which he was at this moment inveighing to Marion.

“Did you ever see anything cut up like these half-dozen acres? There’s one slice taken out, and here’s another; a hedge six foot across at the bottom if it’s an inch, and a row of useless elms sucking all the goodness out of the ground. I don’t believe there’s a richer bit of soil in all England, and they can do no more than get a three-cornered mouthful of pasture out of it for one old cow.”

“O Anthony, why can’t you let things alone, when they don’t concern you? My father has allowed you to have your own way about the paddock, and you surely need not tease Mr Chester to death over his hedges.”

“That is so like a woman, who can never see anything beyond her own shadow. Can’t you understand that it would be for the good of Thorpe if the ground that feeds people’s mouths were better drained and if there were more of it?”

“So this is to be the next hobby, is it?”

“Farming? Hum, I don’t know. If I could induce old Chester to go in for a few experiments, it might be worth while, perhaps, to get up the subject. But everything is on such an absurdly small scale here, that it would be hardly possible to do anything satisfactory.”

“And you really mean that you would be willing for all your schemes to resolve themselves into the miserable mediocrity of settling down at Thorpe and improving the hedges of the district!” said Marion indignantly.

“One might do a good deal in that way,” Anthony answered, with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his sister. Any one who had seen him at that moment must have been struck with the extreme boyishness of his appearance. It might have been the curly light brown hair, or, more likely, the slight figure and sloping shoulders, but something there was which had changed but little for the last ten years, and kept him a boy still. Marion looked years older. He was always irritating her by his quick changes, his enthusiasm, his projects for the good of other people. So long as he might have his own way in the doing, there was nothing that he would not have done.

Marion had small sympathy for such notions; she clung to what was her own with a passion and a wilfulness which made her blind to what she would not see, but she did not care to go out of that circle. Yet people said that the brother and sister were alike, and to a certain extent the world’s judgments were correct, as the world’s judgments often are, only that a hundred little things too subtile for so large a beholder made a gulf between the two. He provoked her constantly as he was provoking her now.

“I sometimes think you will end in doing nothing,” she said, walking on quickly.

“So do I, a dozen times a day. Who’s this coming?—isn’t it that fellow Stephens? I’ve a bone to pick with him, I can tell him. What do you suppose he’s after now? He wants Maddox to let him have that bit of ground close by the school to build a chapel upon. I think I see it! Stokes gave me a hint of it, and I’ve been bullying Maddox all the morning, and pretty well got his word for it at last. The canting methodistical rascal! I wish I could see him kicked out of the place.”

Anthony was speaking with great energy. He and Marion were walking through the cool meadows, beyond which lay the softly swelling hills. To the left, a little in front of them, the Hardlands shrubbery gate led into a thin belt of fir-trees, but the path continued through the meadows, until it crossed a small stream, and reached a lane branching from the high road. People liked to turn away from the hard dust and get into these pretty fields, where soft shadows fell gently and the delicate cuckoo flowers grew; and Mr Chester had tacitly suffered a right of way to be established, though he inveighed against it on every occasion. It was a grievance with which he would not have parted for the world, even if his own natural kind-heartedness had not been entirely on the side of the tired wayfarers, and nobody took any notice of it. So that even Anthony’s indignation did not extend itself to the fact that David Stephens was coming towards them along the narrow track.

“I shall go on: Winifred will be wondering what has become of us,” said Marion, who had not sufficiently forgiven her brother to be ready to take his side in the contest. He stood still with his hand on the gate, waiting for Stephens to pass, so determinedly, that the man as he reached the spot stopped at once.

He was much shorter than Anthony, as short, indeed, as an ordinary-sized boy of fourteen, and there was an actual though not very prominent deformity of figure. Yet this warp of nature seldom struck those who fronted him, for the head and face were so powerful and remarkable that they irresistibly seized the attention. Even Anthony, who was as enthusiastic in his prejudices as in his other feelings, was conscious of something in the eyes which checked his first flow of resentment. He would have preferred beginning with a more trenchant opening than—

“Hallo, Stephens, you’re the person I wanted to see.”

“Did you, sir? Well, this is the second time I’ve been to Thorpe to-day.”

“Yes, I know that,” said Anthony, recovering himself, and feeling the words come to him. “I’ve seen Maddox, he’s just been at our house, and what you’re after won’t do at all. Do you suppose my father would stand one of your ranting places stuck up just under his nose? You’d better take yourself off a few miles, for, let me tell you, Thorpe doesn’t want to see you, and you may find it a little hotter residence than you have any fancy for.”

“I am not afraid of threats, sir,” said Stephens quietly.

Anthony had been speaking in an authoritative tone, as if his decision quite set the matter at rest, and opposition irritated him as usual.

“I simply tell you what will happen if you come where you’re not wanted,” he said, raising his voice. “And as to the chapel, we’ll take care that is never built. You may call it a threat if you please, but it’s one that will find itself a fact.”

“Mr Miles, the word of God has borne down fiercer things than you are like to hold over me, and it will do so yet again. I am sorry to go against you, but I must either do that or against the inward conviction.”

“Cant,” muttered Anthony wrathfully. “And so you suppose you’re to have that field?”

“Mr Maddox has as good as promised it, sir.”

“You’ll find him in a different mind now.”

“He’ll not go against his word!”

For the first time during the interview Stephens’s quietness was broken by a touch of passion. His eyes, lit up by a sudden fire, fastened themselves anxiously upon Anthony. Anthony, who had hitherto been the angry one of the two, felt a contemptuous satisfaction at having raised this wrath.

“His word! Things are not done quite so easily as all that. You had better turn and go back again, for all the good you’ll get by going on.”

“I should be glad of a direct answer, sir,” said David, restraining himself with an effort. “Has Mr Maddox told you downright that he will not let us have the field?”

“Yes, he has.”

Stephens’s face had lost its red flush, but his eyes still held their deep fire.

“Then God forgive you!” he said in a low passionate voice, opening out his hands slightly, and walking away with quick steps. Anthony did not look after him; he turned into the little path, and began to whistle with a certain sense of pleasure in his victory which was not checked by any pitiful misgivings.

Chapter Three.

“God Almighty first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures.”
Bacon’s Essays.

As Anthony emerged from the little path under the fir-trees, he saw that Winifred and Marion were in the garden, and that Winifred was gardening, her gown drawn up, gauntleted gloves on her hands, and a trowel held with which she was at work.

“We shall be ready in a minute,” she called out, nodding to him. “I am so glad you are come, for I thought you might have forgotten our walk.”

“It was too hot before,” said Anthony, strolling towards them, and stretching himself lazily upon the grass.

“And I have done no end of work. You see those bare places in the beds, over which you were so unmerciful, are quite filled. Luckily Thomas had a great many surplus plants this year.”

As she stood up, a great clump of flowering shrubs—guelder roses, pink thorn, azaleas—made a pretty and variegated background. She had drawn off her big gloves, and was beating the earth from them as she spoke, and smiling down upon him with bright pleasantness. Anthony looked at her, and a satisfied expression deepened in his eyes. He had hold of one of the ribbons of her dress, and was fingering it.

“Why don’t you always wear lilac?” was his somewhat irrelevant answer.

“You don’t attend to what I am saying,” said Winifred, a little impatiently. “I want to know what you think of the flowers, and not of my dress.”

“Why should I not talk about that as well? You have at least as much to do with the one as the other.”

“It is not what I have to do with it, but how it looks when it is done. Marion, can’t you prevent Anthony from being frivolous?”

“Don’t ask Marion,” said Anthony, biting a bit of grass. “She has been falling foul of me all the way here, though neither of us can exactly say what it has been about. My ruffled feathers want smoothing down, if you please, Winifred.”

“You don’t look ruffled a bit.”

“That is my extraordinary amiability.”

“Marion did very well to scold you, I am sure.”

“And that is the way women jump at conclusions.”

“I shall jump at the conclusion presently that you mean to go to sleep on the grass, and leave us to walk to the Red House alone.”

“I? I am ready to start this moment, and the time you have supposed to be wasted I have spent in making up my mind that a mass of amaranthus ought to replace the verbenas in that bed.”

“Amaranthus! O Anthony, they would be so gloomy.”

“Just the effect you want, when everything is too flaming.”

“No, no,” said Winifred, resolutely holding her ground. “You must find your relief at the back, for the flowers themselves can’t be too bright.”

“Now, Winifred, there are certain principles,” began Anthony, sitting upright and speaking energetically, “principles of contrast, by means of which you get a great deal more out of your brilliancy than when you run one colour into the other. I wish you would let me explain them to you.”

“Understanding the principles would never make me doubt my eyes. No, indeed, I am very sorry, but I could not sacrifice those splendid verbenas after watering them for so many evenings.”

“You should not water at all.”

Winifred looked at him, laughed, and shook her head.

“I don’t mean to give way to these horrible new theories. To begin with, they would break Thomas’s heart.”

“O, very well,” said Anthony, getting up, affronted. “Did you say you were ready to start? Marion! We are waiting.”

He marched before them in evident displeasure; Winifred, who knew that his discontent would not last long, looking at him with a little amusement. They skirted the field where the haymakers had been at work all day, and the sweet dry grass lay tossed about in fragrant swathes as the forks had dropped it. Across, between the elm-trees, the sun shone upon the canal and the Underham houses, while, beyond again, lay meadows and wooded hills, and the soft western moorland. On the other side of the nearest field was a figure on an old bay cob, with a dog standing by his side, and a man pointing. This was the Squire, too deep in consultation over some boundary annoyances to notice the little party scrambling over their stiles, and waving every now and then to attract his attention.

“Which of you are going to dine at the Bennetts’ to-morrow?”

“Papa, Anthony, and I.”

“And is Marmaduke to be there?”

“I suppose so. It depends on the trains.”

“And Mr Mannering, of course. Marion, did you ever hear that there is a romantic story about those brothers?”

“What’s that?” said Anthony, stopping and looking round.

“It was Miss Philippa who told me,” Winifred explained, “and she was not at all clear about it; but it seems that one of them was engaged to a lady, when his brother fell into a bad state of health, requiring great care for a long while, and the other gave up everything, devoted himself, nursed, prevented people from finding out how incapable he had become, and was really the means of saving his life, or his reason, or whatever was in danger. But then comes the sad part. The lady grew tired of waiting, and married some one else.”

“It is rather a complicated story. And which is the hero?”

“Mr Mannering,” Marion said, promptly.

“I believe it to have been Mr Robert,” said Anthony, in a tone of decision.

“So do I,” said Winifred, looking brightly at him, happy in fulfilling a longing against which she not infrequently fought more steadily, from thinking that it was not well for him to carry matters altogether as he liked.

Anthony smiled, and fell back a little with his good-humour restored. After all, it was a pleasant thing to be walking through the Thorpe fields with Winifred, who had a certain charm about her, harmonising with what surrounded them. In a crowded room she might have passed with little notice; but here, in the open air, with an evening breeze sweeping up from the sea, six miles distant, and fresh cool scents just touching it, the buoyancy of her step, the clearness of her voice, and the frank honesty of her eyes, were all in agreement with the country life in which she had grown to womanhood, and the outer influences of which work in proportion as we admit them. That day, also, had been full of light-hearted happiness. Anthony had returned from an absence of some months, which he had spent in travelling. He and she were in excellent accord in spite of their little passage at arms, and they were just in an easy social position towards each other, which made it seem scarcely possible that they should not always go on as smoothly. It was when they were together in what is called society that little storms arose, that Winifred’s eyes would suddenly flash, and some quick speech descend upon Anthony, in abrupt contrast to the sugared politeness which had been flowing in pleasant streams. It was natural that he should resent it. With an older experience she might have treated him differently; but her very eager longing that he should rise above what she herself despised made her impatient that he did not rise at once. It is no untrue assertion that too close knowledge is an obstacle to love. When a boy and girl grow up together, the light beats too strongly for those delicate and shadowy enchantments, those delicious surprises, those tender awakenings, by which others are led on all unconsciously. It may, now and then, lose no particle of strength because of this, but such cases are at least rare. Winifred had a hundred misgivings for Anthony, who had none for himself. It seemed to him as if nothing were out of his reach, as if neither time, nor opportunity, nor success could fail. Was he not twenty-four, with a lifetime before him? Had he not gained the Chancellor’s gold medal? He had, moreover, that sense of fellowship, which more than any other gift heartens a man for work among his kind; he was full of enthusiasm for doing good, for upholding right, for beating down wrong,—he would be an author, a reformer, a politician,—he would raise Thorpe by penny readings,—he would improve the Hardlands property by inducing the Squire to sweep away his hedges,—the church singing should be converted into harmony, ignorance into intelligence, wrong into right,—are there any limits or misgivings which trouble these young champions who leap into the arena, and believe a hundred eyes are upon them? It was Winifred who looked at him and trembled.

Mr Robert Mannering met them inside the gates.

“I saw you coming,” he said. “Well, Anthony, and so you are back from your travels, and your father says you have not yet made up your mind what new worlds you shall conquer. I congratulate you. Only, my dear boy, don’t make Stokes your prime minister. Leave pottering about amongst leaf-mould and bell-glasses to superannuated old fellows like me. Miss Winifred, I am proud to hear that you are come to see my Farleyense.”

“Anthony says it is such a fine plant.”

“It is a fine plant. It might be almost anything,” said Anthony. “I told Stokes that if I were he I should treat it differently. I wish he would let me have a turn at it for a fortnight.” Mr Mannering gave a quick gasp, and stood still to look at the speaker.

“I shall keep the key in my pocket until he is out of the place. Miss Winifred, Miss Marion,—we are old friends,—detain him at the Vicarage, at Hardlands, find some innocent occupation for him which shall not harrow old gentlemen’s pet hobbies. Set him to cure Miss Philippa’s rheumatism,—I don’t wish to be uncharitable, but by her own account it can’t be worse than it is, whereas my Farleyense—Good Heavens, I shall not sleep for a week for thinking of the peril it is in.”

“Of course, there must be a certain amount of risk,” said Anthony coolly; “but, after all, the experience gained for others is worth more than the thing itself. That always seems to me the only object in gardening. However, if you don’t care about it, sir,—that’s enough. I’m going to hunt up the tortoise.”

“Do, do, by all means. The fellow’s shell is thick enough to protect him. This way, Miss Winifred. I hope you don’t mind a few steps. You are judicious in your time, for I always think this soft late light is more becoming than any other to the plants. There,—a picture, isn’t it? I almost wish Anthony had come down after all.”

“He is too full of projects to be a safe visitor just at present,” said Winifred, shaking her head, but secretly proud in her heart.

“I’ll defy him to find a finer Farleyense anywhere, at any rate,” said Mr Mannering valiantly. He was looking at Winifred as he spoke, and thinking that Thorpe had other pretty things to show Anthony. There was a soft gloom in the house, out of which seemed to spring the delicate green feathery ferns full of still strange life, and Winifred, standing among them, had a sweet light in her eyes and a half-smile on her lips. It was not very often that people agreed she was pretty, and then they were probably thinking of the fresh colouring, the bright hair, and that indescribable fairness of youth which, even without other claim to beauty, carries with it so great a charm; but the true attraction in her face consisted in a certain nobility of expression, of which the delight would but deepen as the more fleeting fairness departed.

“Here is an exquisite little Cystopteris, Miss Marion,” said Mr Robert, beginning to bustle about, “and that is the finest hare’s-foot in the county. I want to have a look at your oak fern, but I must go into Underham to-morrow. Miss Philippa has a quarterly paper which requires signing at least five times every year.”

“Marmaduke comes to-morrow,” said Marion, who had been silent. “Can’t he sign his aunt’s papers?”

“No, I am sorry to tell you that the law makes a distinction between a man and a magistrate. So Marmaduke comes to-morrow? And he and Anthony, I have no doubt, will chalk out a fresh career for every day in the week when they get together.”

“There is not much room for what you call a career in poor Marmaduke’s case,” said Marion, drawing her gloves tightly through her hands, and keeping her head turned away, so that only a sharply cut profile could be seen. “A clerk in a merchant’s office does not look forward to anything very brilliant.”

“Unless he wins the heart of the daughter of the principal partner, and you have been so hardhearted as to cut that chance of promotion from under his feet. Well, these are the contrarieties of life, but they tumble into shape somehow at the end, so keep a good heart, my dear.”

He said it with an odd quaver in the cheery voice, although neither of the two noticed it. They were thinking of themselves with the unconscious egotism of youth. There were all sorts of tender visions flitting about among the soft shadowy ferns, and some not less tender than the rest that they were dim with age and years. Marion went on after a momentary pause:—

“I suppose his best chance lies with Mr Tregennas.”

“Yes and no, and no more than yes, I take it. If Marmaduke will stick to his business and not allow imaginary prospects to unsettle him, they may do him no harm. But it’s ill waiting for dead men’s shoes, especially if you do not step into them at the last. There is nothing so likely to sour a man’s life.”

“There cannot be doubt when he has promised,” Marion said, turning towards him with a movement which was abrupt enough to betray a little anxiety in the words.

“He has, has he?”

“Yes, indeed. Marmaduke has often told me how much Mr Tregennas said, and no one, no one could be so cruel as not to keep to his word in such a matter!”

“Not intentionally,—at least, not many men. But, my dear Miss Marion, you never will be an old lawyer, and so I don’t promise that you will ever find out how much of what we hear depends upon what we think, or how much of what we say depends upon what we believe we ought to have said. Now, you have not gone into such ecstasies as I expected over my Farleyense, but by to-morrow my imagination will have supplied all your deficiencies, and yours will make you ready to swear that you were as prettily enthusiastic as the occasion demanded.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Marion, smiling.

“Don’t do that. Have I not just explained to you the recipe for harmonising the minor discords of one’s life? There is some happy stuff in our composition—vanity, if you will—which fills up what is wanting.”

“Are you there? Shall I come down?” said Anthony’s voice from the top of the steps.

“No, no, wait a moment; we are coming, we are coming this instant,” said Mr Mannering, hurriedly. “Take care of the wet, Miss Winifred,—here we are; thank you, yes, I prefer to lock the house for the night. And how did you find the tortoise, and what did you do to him, Anthony?”

“Do to him? I did nothing,—at least, I only moved him to the sunny side of the wall, where he will be a good deal better off.”

They were strolling towards the road, Mr Mannering with his hands locked behind his back, and a twinkle of amusement about eyes and mouth.

“Thank you, my dear boy, thank you,” he said, gravely. “But I should be a good fourteen stone to carry, and, to tell the truth, I would rather stay where I am.”

“What do you mean?” said Anthony, puzzled. “Was I talking to myself? I beg your pardon,—it was the oddest idea,—do you know, just for a moment I had a feeling at the back of my neck as if I were the tortoise.”

Chapter Four.

“I did but chide in jest: the best loves use it
Sometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:
When we invite our best friends to a feast,
’Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before ’em;
There’s something sharp and salt, both to whet appetite
And make ’em taste their wine well.”
Middleton.

From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities. When such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to different occasions. A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver. Its natural appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy, heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.

On the evening of Mr Bennett’s party, the Underham fly might have been seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the church. The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters of an hour’s drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years’ growth; upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms. Some charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful,—the repose of the last daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children’s laughter in the village, the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely. Even the wrinkled face of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job expressed it, “to turn agin her mate because it warn’t pudden.” Job himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and intensely conservative in his opinions. He had begun life as a Thorpe baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place. One of his peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe. The country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to those of Thorpe. “He’ve been up thaes foorty years, and he ain’t likely to be wrong now,” was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the Milman Arms fly.

At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle in the tower. It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however, regarded it with due respect.

“True to a minit,” Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction. “Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss Marion that, without she’s pretty sharp, we sha’n’t get to Under’m by half past six, nor nothing like it.”

“She’s on the stairs now,” said Faith, reconnoitring, “and if there isn’t Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest! I’m sure it is a wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp. It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah.”

“And that doesn’t come to everybody as it do to me,—with their name,” said Job. “She’s a woman who isn’t tried with a hitch in her tongue, but she’s a neat figure for a cook.”

“Well, I’m sure!” said Faith, pouting a little. “I never could see nothing in Sarah’s figure,—but you’d better get down and open the door, Mr White.”

With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in order to pick up Mr Mannering. The delay in starting had been caused at least as much by the Vicar’s desire to hear his opinion upon a certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by Marion’s lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely, until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for it to stop. Mr Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer’s respect for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a courteous attention to Mrs Miles’s household difficulties would permit. Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs Miles’s care, until the Vicar opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the person for whom they had all been waiting.

They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs Miles coming softly down to see them off, and pulling out Marion’s skirts with a little motherly anxiety. They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone bravely on Marion’s pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows. Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and barking wildly. Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and, scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.

It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at Underham. The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss. But every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the fields, revealed a sweet homelike view,—with no bold glory of form or colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit mellowed through the kindly summer nights. By and by the lanes widened, they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham. Mr Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of pain, of wonderment. After all, it is but a world of new editions. Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should meet again, touch each other’s hands, look into each other’s eyes. But Marion had not learnt this yet.

The Bennetts’ house stood directly against the road, and the wall along which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden; the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon the warm brick. Mr Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs Bennett’s, treating her in every respect as though she were their own child. Miss Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and Mr Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice, was holding forth to Mr Bennett upon a local election.

“I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,” he was saying, “but you’ll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a pair of fools.”

“Still, one doesn’t altogether like to go against North,—he as good as belongs to Underham.”

“Don’t see the value of that,” said the Squire, with a little roughness; and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down. Anthony sat between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts’ niece, Marmaduke had Marion, and Winifred’s neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman, the member. Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an added charm of novelty hung about him. Even Mrs Featherly, next to whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking, began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony’s pleasantness.

“You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr Anthony, of one kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it,” she said graciously.

“He earned his holiday,” said Mr Bennett, nodding his head. “After such great things at Cambridge, a man can’t do better than take a run and let his brain have a little rest. I’m never for overwork.”

“Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry,” Miss Lovell put in on the other side. She was a pretty girl, fair, with a long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little imploring emphasis in it. “And not in Latin this time, or you really must send us a translation.”

There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while. He was conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of inquiring at what they were laughing.

“Mr Miles is telling us such amusing things,” said Miss Lovell, with unmistakable admiration in her tone.

“Amusing things!” repeated the Squire; “I never hear anything worth listening to of any sort. Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in these days, but there’s no making head nor tail of it when all’s said. It’s speechifying and argufying, and nothing done. That’s what made half the mischief in the Crimea. We sha’n’t get anything again like the old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe there’d be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes they were fools enough to blunder into.”

In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham was bold enough to question his authority as a military man. Mrs Bennett only said placidly,—

“Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?”

“It’s a good deal more inconvenient, ma’am, to have a heap of lies talked by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Letters were letters in those days, and you didn’t get pestered by every tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery. When they came they had something in them. My mother, now. I’ve heard my father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was twelve o’clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was, rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack. My father was crippled at the time, and there wasn’t one she’d let go in her stead. Poor old mother!” said the Squire, with an involuntary softening.

“I remember your mother, Squire,” said old Mr Featherly.

“Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed,” said Mr Chester, strongly again.

“Well, she was, she was. People called her a little high, but no one found her so when they were in trouble. And a fine woman, too, as upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country. Miss Winifred reminds me of her in many ways.”

The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile. But he shook his head at the old clergyman’s last remark.

“Winifred’s not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when she died.”

“She carries her head in the same fashion, though,” persisted Mr Featherly. “And there’s something that reminds me.”

It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head with a little touch of stateliness. She had heard a good many of the flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their effect upon him. Something in his nature courted the pleasant popularity and the spoiling. Is it women only who care for such pretty things? He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was not without its influence. Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable that, although a woman who loves—even unconsciously—sets herself, often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly understand him. What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said to have been needful. If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or become bitter and morose. Perhaps there are two sides even to faults, and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed. Anthony, on his part, was not long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause. It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went out of the dining-room.

Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.

“I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles,” she said, with an innocent air of admiration. “Of course you can see all his poetry whenever you like. It must be so delightful.”

“Only I never do,” said Winifred, standing upright. “I don’t care for poetry unless it is the very best.”

Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent forth her shaft. She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony, to see how sharply he was hit. If he had looked at her he might have known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make amends. But he would not look. He saw nothing of the involuntary grace of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face. He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for the second time that evening. Ada Lovell, looking up at him with admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and, perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for the remainder of the time. Winifred made no more advances. She stood leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr Milman joined her. Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one end. People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the bats flitted softly. Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and making every one laugh. The Squire called his daughter at last. He disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,—

“Good-night, Anthony.”

“Good-night.”

There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a disproportionate sense of heaviness. Winifred knew that she should see Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence, but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor forget the sound of his cold good-night.

Chapter Five.

”‘Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?’
‘It is a sunshine mixt with rain.’”
Sir Walter Raleigh.

Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town. It might have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe. She took a small house not far from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few women’s lives. She pinched herself to send him to a public school, and would gladly have supported him at college, but even had this been practicable for such straitened means, there were circumstances which prevented more than a secret sighing on her part. Marmaduke had, on his mother’s side, a great-uncle who was the one rich man in a poor family, and who if not actually childless was so by his own assertion to all intents and purposes, his daughter having mortally offended him by a marriage against his will. She was the Margaret Hare of whom we have heard Mr Mannering speak, for it was not until after her marriage that her father, upon an access of fortune, changed his name to “Tregennas,” and a little later, perhaps in a fit of desolation, took for his second wife and made miserable until her death an aunt of Mr Miles, the Vicar of Thorpe. The connection, although scarcely deserving of the name, was sufficient to form an additional link between the families, and Marmaduke read with the Vicar, and won Marion’s love while they were little more than girl or boy.

To Mr Tregennas—who, it must be allowed, took a certain interest in his great-nephew, if interest is proved by occasional gifts of sovereigns and somewhat arbitrary advice on the subject of his education—Marmaduke meanwhile looked as the maker of his fortunes. He was careful from the first to withhold Miss Philippa from contradicting him, as, to tell the truth, she was not disinclined to do. Odd little shoots of jealousy crop up even in the most loving. Add to this that Mr Tregennas strongly opposed her favourite college scheme, and it will not be surprising that more than once Miss Philippa would very willingly, as she expressed it, have put her foot to the ground, if only Marmaduke had not knocked that very ground from under her, by adopting his uncle’s views. And he was possessed of a certain languid self-will with which he invariably carried his point, even at the time when he appeared to yield, so that people were sometimes puzzled to reconcile cause and effect. Nevertheless, it was no doubt a severe disappointment when Mr Tregennas, instead of assisting him to enter a profession, advised his seeking employment in one of the great manufacturing firms of the north, and indeed actually applied to the heads before he had received an answer to his suggestion. Whether his will was the strongest, or his nephew’s philosophy overcame dislike, his plan was carried out, and Marmaduke had been for two years engaged in the most distasteful occupation that could have been provided for him. It was, perhaps, this very sense of ill-usage which rooted the more firmly his belief that he was to be his uncle’s heir. A grievance quickly excites the idea of compensation, and Marmaduke welded the two together so persistently that the one stood on nearly the same level as the other. The force, however, which prevented his throwing up his work had never proved sufficient to conquer his repugnance towards it, and the fact of feeling himself a victim, while it seemed to give him a right to feed upon future hopes, made it also a duty to seek alleviations in the present; so that a trifling vexation, or other change of mood, not infrequently brought about a flying visit to Thorpe and a drain upon Miss Lee’s slender resources.

He had told Marion at the dinner-party that he must see her alone the next day, and, accordingly, when he walked to the Vicarage, at a time when Mr Miles and John were likely to be absent, Marion was waiting eagerly for him. Mrs Miles, who was in the room, was made more uneasy by his increasing thinness than by her daughter’s determination to go out with him, for although no open engagement existed between the two, it was one of those events which might be expected to fell into shape at some future time, and which, if it were connected with Marion’s will, it was hopeless for her mother to resist, even had she been disinclined towards it. But Marmaduke had a gentle ease of manner pleasant to those with whom he was thrown into contact, and Mrs Miles really loved and pitied him, and was grieved at his looks.

“Does your Aunt Philippa give you porter jelly, Marmaduke?” she asked anxiously. “I wish she would. I am sure it is the very best thing. Sarah shall heat some beef-tea for you in a moment, if you will only take it.”

“Nothing will do me good while I have to work in that hole,” said Marmaduke, with a dreary intonation in his voice. “Life is simply existence. And to think that I have had two years of it already!”

Marion, who had looked at him as he spoke, did not say a word until they were out of the house, and in the deep lane, fresh with a cool beauty of water and shining cresses. Then, as they walked on, Sniff paddling beside them, she asked quietly,—“Is anything the matter?”

There was noticeable in her manner to him—at all times—a difference from her usual fashion of speaking. The abruptness, something even of the brightness, was gone, and in its place seemed to have grown a soft care, a tenderness almost like protection. And at this moment their natures might have been transposed, for Marmaduke turned upon her with an impetuosity unlike himself.

“Anything! I tell you, Marion, that what I go through is unendurable. You might know better than to ask such a question as that.”

“But why—what is it?” she persisted, with a vague trouble lest something more than she had heard was to be unfolded to her. Her loyalty to Marmaduke made her always ready to feed his self-pity, but she was afraid that he had taken some rash step.

“What good can a man do with work that he loathes?”

“You must remember to what the work will lead,” she said, relieved.

“When?—how? It is absolute folly to dream that matters going on as they are going now can ever lead to anything satisfactory. How much do you suppose that I can squeeze out of a paltry hundred and fifty a year? Even Anthony acknowledges it to be absurd, and Anthony is Utopian enough to believe that everything grows out of nothing. That may do very well for him, who will never need to prove it,” added Marmaduke, bitterly.

They were both leaning against a stile, and looking towards the cloudy distance of the moors. Marion slipped her hand softly into his.

“Surely we all heard when you went there that it would bring better things in a few years?”

“You talk of years as if they were days,” he said in the same tone. “Nobody denies it. When I have drudged at that disgustingly low business for half a dozen years, I shall probably be fifty pounds a year better off than I am now, and by the time we are both too old to take pleasure in life we shall be able to marry, and this seems to content you perfectly.”

Marion caught away her hand with a sudden movement. It made him turn to look at her, and the hurt anger in her eyes brought back his usual gentleness of manner at once. He was desirous to bind all her feelings on his side, and he knew her well enough to be aware that his shortest means of doing this was to revert to the wretchedness of his position.

“Forgive me, dearest,” he said; “you don’t know what a poor wretch a man becomes when he grinds along in one eternal round of small miseries. It is such a horrible separation from you all. And what is the good of being old Tregennas’s heir, if he can’t put his hand into his pocket and let me live like a gentleman?”

“He promised that, did he not, Marmaduke?”

“It depends upon what you call promising. He is not the man to say out honestly, ‘Marmaduke Lee, you’re my heir, and I’ll give you a fit allowance till you come into the property.’ If he had, I should not be as I am. But he said quite enough. Of course I am his heir. There isn’t a Jew in the country but would lend me a few thousands on the chance. Of course I am his heir. I wish you would make your father understand, and then he might allow us to consider ourselves engaged; at present it’s like dropping a poor wretch into a pit, and blocking up his one glimpse of blue sky. I tell you, Marion, again, I cannot endure this state of things any longer. I’ve not got it in me to toil on in that dirty hole without so much as an atom of hope to cheer one.”

They were both silent for an instant, and then Marion cried out passionately, “Toil! I would toil day and night for the joy of earning a sixpence which I could lay aside and say, ‘This is ours.’” There was such a swift leaping out of the love of her heart in word and eyes, that it seemed fire which must needs kindle whatever it touched, if only for a moment. But no answering glow passed across his pale face. He looked away again as if what she said had not any relation to his thoughts, and she presently continued more timidly. “Surely it would be the height of imprudence to give up your work? And you know that if you did so my father would be less than ever likely to consent to our engagement, than now when you are at least on the road to independence.”

“I can’t go on as I am,” he said, a little doggedly. “Mr Miles must give me something to hold by, or I shall throw up the whole concern. I have nearly done so a dozen times already.”

“Is there no way of influencing Mr Tregennas?” asked Marion, after a minute’s troubled thought.

“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. As I said before, it isn’t fair that he should leave me in such a position. It’s not as if I should have to work for my bread all the days of my life, like some poor devils. By and by I shall step into as pretty a place as you’ll find anywhere, and why I should have to do compensation now by sitting on a high stool and addling my brain over ledgers is more than I can see. If he’d only say something definite one would know what one had to go upon. But—”

“But what?”

“O, you must understand, Marion, that I can’t very well go to him and say this sort of thing!”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Well, women are queer about such matters, but I should think you might guess it’s not the way to make yourself agreeable to an old fellow who has you in his power.”

“It is only justice,” said Marion, whose cheek had flushed under the presence of an absorbing pity for Marmaduke which swept her away like a flood. “I wish I could tell him what I think.”

“You can do something better,” said Marmaduke, seeing she had reached the point to which he had been leading.

“What? Only tell me.”

“Get your father to interfere.”

She shook her head, moving her hands nervously. “You know he will not. He is so scrupulous about such matters. Over and over again I have heard him say he would never ask a favour of his uncle.”

“A favour! But I am not demanding an allowance of a thousand a year. All I want to know is how I stand. And if Mr Miles sees in black and white that I am his heir, he will no longer object to an engagement. I tell you plainly, I can’t work unless I see some end before me. Besides, one must go step by step, and if he would acknowledge my position straightforwardly, by and by other things would follow. No one is so well entitled to ask as your father. Marion, you don’t want to keep me in this misery?”

She was at no time insensible to these appeals, and perhaps less than ever on such a morning as this, when things about her were shining, dancing, singing in a burst of happy life, could she endure any weight of gloom for the man she loved best in the world. To some of us every echo of a happiness which does not at the same time fill our own souls with its music seems only discord. We cry out against it with voices that clash and jar and sadden themselves with the dissonance, when if we would be but content to listen in patience, some tender vibrations of an eternal harmony should reach us from afar, and satisfy us with their beauty. To Marion it was a positive wrong that the skylark high in the air was singing joyously; that the fresh breeze stirred into brightness the little stream which ran along the meadows; that the sound of the scythe and the chatter of the hay-making folk rose now and then with cheerful distinctness above lesser summer sounds; that Sniff was yelping with delight after the birds he was vainly chasing. Marion told him sharply to be quiet, but he only stopped for a moment, and looked at her with his head on one side at an angle of consideration, before he was off again, his little red tongue hanging out, his brown eyes on fire with excitement. Marmaduke, who was leaning moodily against the gate, waiting for Marion to speak, said at last,—

“Anthony is a lucky dog, with the world before him, and no one to please but himself. But I don’t know that such sharp contrasts are the most encouraging reflections in the world.”

The languor and depression of his voice pierced the girl’s heart like a thorn. She exclaimed impetuously,—

“Something must be done,—my father shall write,—nothing can be so bad as that you should suffer in this way.”

She put out her hand again, and he took it in his, and began to thank her in the gently caressing tones which fell easily from his lips. Her resolution, indeed, carried a greater relief to him than seemed to be contained in it. It was not only that he wanted to escape from the irksomeness of his duly toil, and believed the acknowledgment of his position the first step towards it, but he was also fretted by a wearing anxiety lest the position might never be his, and the very assumption of a certain claim on his part by Mr Miles might have a good effect, and remove a vague uneasiness, for which he could not account, of Anthony as a possible rival. Poor Marion thought it to be love for her which urged him; but although he did love her after a fashion, she was only one of the pleasant things he wanted to sweep into his net. He was full of satisfaction at the promise she had given.

“Who are these—by the watercourse?” he said. “One of them looks like Anthony.”

“And the other is Mr Chester,” said Marion, abstractedly. “Come.”

“Yes, it is the Squire. I can see his red face, and that little flourish of his stick which he gives when he is angry. They see us by this time, and we may as well hear the battle-royal, if there is one. Listen.”

Mr Chester’s loud voice came up well before him.

“I tell you, sir, I tell you your father will live to see you a carping radical yet. When a young fellow gets this sort of notions into his head, we all know what’ll be the end of it. Everything respectable goes out by the heels, and he makes a fool of himself over balloting and universal suffrage, and a heap of rascally French republicanisms. How d’ye do, Marion, how d’ye do? Glad to see you, Marmaduke. Hope you’re not infected with any of this modern rubbish?”

“No, sir, I’m a Conservative. A Liberal-Conservative,” added the young man under his breath, not expecting to be heard. But the Squire’s quick ears caught the word.

“Don’t be half anything. There’s nothing I think so poorly of as a man that can’t make up his mind. He says this on one side and that on another, till he knows no more than a teetotum where his spinning will lead him. I should have twice the opinion of Anthony if he could say straight out what he means, instead of calling himself one thing and talking himself into another.” There was a good deal of truth in the Squire’s accusation, and the clash was not one for which he had any sympathy. Anthony himself was too young not to be sore upon the charge of inconsistency. He said hotly,—

“Really, sir, I don’t know what hedges and draining have to do with the ballot. I have not been the one to say anything about it.”

“I’m only showing what these ideas lead to,” said Mr Chester, enjoying his adversary’s irritation. “I’m content to take my land as it came to me. That’s good theology, ain’t it, Marion? By the way, I forgot to tell you that young Frank Orde comes to-morrow. Come up to dinner, all of you, will you? I dare say he’s as bad as the rest, but you’ll not make me believe my father hadn’t as good common-sense as the young fellows that find fault with his farming.”

Sometimes, by talking loudly enough, a man becomes impressed with so confident a sense of triumph, that the sound of his own voice is like the salvo of guns over a victory. It was so now with the Squire, who remained in high good-humour during the rest of the walk, and gave Anthony to understand that he looked upon him as crushed and annihilated by an overwhelming weight of argument.

Chapter Six.

Marion was not the person to delay the doing of anything which she had made up her mind should be done, nor had she the faculty instinctive in many women, of approaching a critical subject with that deliberate and delicate touch of preparation which smooths the way for a more open attack. Whatever was uppermost in her mind was apt to take possession of her with so great an intensity that she had no longer the mastery of herself required for this method of handling. She did not trouble herself to join in the family conversation at luncheon, and when her father went into his study,—a small room choked with a heterogeneous collection of books and pamphlets, heaped here and thrown there in utter carelessness to dust and disorder,—Marion followed him and said abruptly,—

“Papa, something must be done to improve Marmaduke’s position. Will you write to Mr Tregennas, and point this out?”

“Write to Mr Tregennas!” said Mr Miles sharply, turning round from the papers on his table.

“What do you mean? Is Marmaduke dismissed? No? Then there cannot be anything much amiss.” He said this with a relieved air, going back to his papers. “Marion, I wish you’d just see whether that last hospital report is up stairs. Mannering tells me I’ve been down on the committee for a twelvemonth, but I cannot credit it.”

“Marmaduke has been at that hateful place for two years,” said Marion, unheeding. “It is quite unfit for him, and some one ought to point it out to his uncle.”

“What is the matter with the place?” Mr Miles asked, still searching. “Really, your mother must speak to the maids; I cannot allow them to disturb everything under pretence of tidying. I am confident I left that report on this table.”

Marion was trembling with impatience. “Papa,” she said, “you might think a little more about poor Marmaduke’s happiness.”

“Happiness? Humph! He is too young to be talking about happiness. Let him take what comes to him, and be thankful for it—” The Vicar turned suddenly round with a quick, clumsy movement, “He has not been talking nonsense to you, has he?”

The girl was standing with her back to the door, so that a clear light fell upon her. As her father spoke, a soft beautiful change came over her face, tender brightness shone in the dark eyes, the curve of the mouth was touched with tremulous joy, a faint glow on her cheek gave an indescribable look of youth, and her head bent gently with the perfection of womanly grace.

Mr Miles, who had spoken sharply, could not but be moved by this strange magic,—this mute answer,—so unlike Marion that it affected him the more. He did not know what to say; he wished he had not ceased speaking, had not looked at her, and so become aware of what—in its contrast to her usual expression—was almost a revelation. Hitherto, although he had vaguely listened to what they told him, it had been but a feeble attention he paid, considering that the children must necessarily pass through certain stages of existence, the boys going to school, running wild over cricket, coming home to snowballing, having the whooping-cough, every now and then requiring a thrashing, teasing Marion, quarrelling with her, and at last by the same law, as he imagined, falling in love with her. When Miss Philippa solemnly told him that Marmaduke had confided to her his affection, and Mrs Miles complained that Marion had lost her appetite, the Vicar half laughed at himself for so far treating it seriously as to tell Marmaduke that he was in no position to talk to his daughter of love, and, contenting himself with this prudent command, dismissed the matter from his thoughts. He had, indeed, a mind which did not occupy itself freely with many subjects at once. Those which ceased to interest him he would lay on the shelf, and forget altogether, until they would sometimes start from their unwatched seclusion in a form so grown, so changed, so great with life, that the shock gave him a sudden blow. Such a blow came now. For, looking at her so standing, with the sweet flush of girlish triumph vanquishing for the moment all care and fret, and softening the harsher lines in her face with its happy touch, the father’s awakening brought sharp remorse for his former blindness. It was not possible for him to reproach her when he felt as though reproach might so justly fall upon himself, and if she had been thinking of him at that moment she might have noticed a wistfulness in his eyes, a faltering change in his voice, as strange perhaps as that other revelation.

“How long has this been?” he said at last, not that he would have chosen the words, but that they seemed to force themselves out.

“How long have we cared for each other, do you mean?” she answered directly. “I think—always.”

He shook his head at this. That which was so new to himself in his own child must, he believed, be new-born.

“Children like you do not know your own minds,” he said, but faintly, and with a want of confidence which Marion was shrewd enough to note.

“Papa,” she said, going closer to him, “we are not children. We are not asking for anything foolish. I would give up all in the world for Marmaduke. I would bear anything for him. I should feel it my richest joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was. But of course I understand that could not be. It would not do for him to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable means support himself.” As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face, turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little backwards against the writing-table.

“We know all that,” she went on. “I have not said a word against it. But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is, chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed. Why should we not be engaged?”

Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a moment, said,—

“You are thinking only of him.”

“And of whom should I think?” she asked, vehemently.

“Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error,” said Mr Miles, speaking with a strange humility. “One has no right to live with one’s eyes shut. But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more wrong. Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which he clings of Mr Tregennas—”

“It ought not to be shadowy. It is disgraceful that he should not say more. Papa, you must write and press this upon him.”

“I!”

“Yes, indeed! There is no one else.”

“This is simply absurd, Marion,” said Mr Miles with some anger.

But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to ungenerosity.

“You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke—”

“Not to him, Marion.”

“He and I are one in such a matter, papa.”

Ah, there was the strangeness of it! His child’s life had seemed to him no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was almost opposed to them all. It was a thing so strange that the father, looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own blindness greater blame than it deserved.

“Well,” he said, sighing, “it is possible, as you say, that I have not acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one.”

“And you will write?”

“To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!”

“O, he has said it already. Tell him that he must be kinder to him, poor fellow!—that he is thrown away in his present position—”

“I cannot say that,” said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the childishness of the proposition. And as the idea struck him, he looked keenly at her again. “Child, is this really what you suppose it? Do you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife? You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you have seen nothing of the world. I ought to take you about and show you other places,” he added in grave bewilderment.

Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.

“It is too late now, papa.”