THE town of Langborough in 1839 had not been much disturbed since the
beginning of the preceding century. The new houses were nearly all of
them built to replace others which had fallen into decay; there were no
drains; the drinking-water came from pumps; the low fever killed thirty
or forty people every autumn; the Moot Hall still stood in the middle of
the High Street; the newspaper came but once a week; nobody read any
books; and the Saturday market and the annual fair were the only events
in public local history. Langborough, being seventy miles from London
and eight from the main coach-road, had but little communication with the
outside world. Its inhabitants intermarried without crossing from other
stocks, and men determined their choice mainly by equality of fortune and
rank. The shape of the nose and lips and colour of the eyes may have had
some influence in masculine selection, but not much: the doctor took the
lawyer’s daughter, the draper took the grocer’s, and the carpenter took
the blacksmith’s. Husbands and wives, as a rule, lived comfortably with
one another; there was no reason why they should quarrel. The air of the
place was sleepy; the men attended to their business, and the women were
entirely apart, minding their household affairs and taking tea with one
another. In Langborough, dozing as it had dozed since the days of Queen
Anne, it was almost impossible that any woman should differ so much from
another that she could be the cause of passionate preference.
One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough was stirred to its depths. No
such excitement had been felt in the town since the run upon the bank in
1825, when one of the partners went up to London, brought down ten
thousand pounds in gold with him by the mail, and was met at Thaxton
cross-roads by a post-chaise, which was guarded into Langborough by three
men with pistols. A circular printed in London was received on that
spring day in 1839 by all the respectable ladies in the town stating that
a Mrs. Fairfax was about to begin business in Ferry Street as a
dressmaker. She had taken the only house to be let in Ferry Street. It
was a cottage with a front and back sitting-room, and belonged to an old
lady in Lincoln, who inherited it from her brother, who once lived in it
but had been dead forty years. Before a week had gone by four-fifths of
the population of Langborough had re-inspected it. The front room was
the shop, and in the window was a lay-figure attired in an evening robe
of rose-coloured silk, the like of which for style and fit no native lady
had ever seen. Underneath it was a card—“Mrs. Fairfax, Milliner and
Dressmaker.” The circular stated that Mrs. Fairfax could provide
materials or would make up those brought to her by her customers.
Great was the debate which followed this unexpected apparition. Who Mrs.
Fairfax was could not be discovered. Her furniture and the lay-figure
had come by the waggon, and the only information the driver could give
was that he was directed at the “George and Blue Boar” in Holborn to
fetch them from Great Ormond Street. After much discussion it was agreed
that Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the wine merchant, should call on Mrs.
Fairfax and inquire the price of a gown. Mrs. Bingham was at the head of
society in Langborough, and had the reputation of being very clever. It
was hoped, and indeed fully expected, that she would be able to penetrate
the mystery. She went, opened the door, a little bell sounded, and Mrs.
Fairfax presented herself. Mrs. Bingham’s eyes fell at once upon Mrs.
Fairfax’s dress. It was black, with no ornament, and constructed with an
accuracy and grace which proved at once to Mrs. Bingham that its maker
was mistress of her art. Mrs. Bingham, although she could not entirely
desert the linendraper’s wife, whose husband was a good customer for
brandy, had some of her clothes made in London when she stayed with her
sister in town, and, to use her own phrase, “knew what was what.”
“Mrs. Fairfax?”
A bow.
“Will you please tell me what a gown would cost made somewhat like that
in the window?”
“For yourself, madam?”
“Yes.”
“Pardon me; I am afraid that colour would not suit you.”
Mrs. Bingham was a stout woman with a ruddy complexion.
“One colour costs no more than another?”
“No, madam: twelve guineas; that silk is expensive. Will you not take a
seat?”
“I am afraid you will find twelve guineas too much for anybody here.
Have you nothing cheaper?”
Mrs. Fairfax produced some patterns and fashion-plates.
“I suppose the gown in the window is your own make?”
“My own make and design.”
“Then you are not beginning business?”
“I hope I may say that I thoroughly understand it.”
The door leading into the back parlour opened, and a little girl about
nine or ten years old entered.
“Mother, I want—”
Mrs. Fairfax, without saying a word, gently led the child into the
parlour again.
“Dear me, what a pretty little girl! Is that yours?”
“Yes, she is mine.”
Mrs. Bingham noticed that Mrs. Fairfax did not wear a widow’s cap, and
that she had a wedding-ring on her finger.
“You will find it rather lonely here. Have you been accustomed to
solitude?”
“Yes. That silk, now, would suit you admirably. With less ornament it
would be ten guineas.”
“Thank you: I must not be so extravagant at present. May I look at
something which will do for walking? You would not, I suppose, make a
walking-dress for Langborough exactly as you would have made it in
London?”
“If you mean for walking about the roads here, it would differ slightly
from one which would be suitable for London.”
“Will you show me what you have usually made for town?”
“This is what is worn now.”
Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated. She gave an order for a
walking-dress, and hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be more communicative.
“Have you any introductions here?”
“None whatever.”
“It is rather a risk if you are unknown.”
“Perhaps you have been exempt from risks: some people are obliged
constantly to encounter them.”
“‘Exempt,’ ‘encounter,”’ thought Mrs. Bingham: “she must have been to a
good school.”
“When will you be ready to try on?”
“On Friday,” and Mrs. Fairfax opened the door.
As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a French book lying on a side table.
The day following was Sunday, and Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter were at
church. They sat at the back, and all the congregation turned on
entering, looked at them, and thought about them during the service.
They went out as soon as it was over, but Mrs. Harrop, wife of the
ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, wife of the coal merchant, escaped with equal
promptitude and were close behind them.
“There isn’t a crease in that body,” said Mrs. Harrop.
On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the post-office. She took care to be there
at the dinner hour, when the postmaster’s wife generally came to the
counter.
“A newcomer, Mrs. Carter. Have you seen Mrs. Fairfax?”
“Once or twice, ma’am.”
“Has she many letters?”
The door between the office and the parlour was open.
“I’ve no doubt she will have, ma’am, if her business succeeds.”
“I wonder where she lived before she came here. It is curious, isn’t it,
that nobody knows her? Did you ever notice how her letters are stamped?”
“Can’t say as I have, ma’am.”
Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. “The smell of those onions,” she
whispered to her husband, “blows right in here.” She then altered her
tone a trifle.
“One of ’em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth postmark on it; but this is
in the strictest confidence, and I should never dream of letting it out
to anybody but you, but I don’t mind you, because I know you won’t repeat
it, and if my husband was to hear me he’d be in a fearful rage, for there
was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline at Thaxton Manor about the
letters Miss Margaret was getting, and it was found out that it was me as
told her, and some gentleman in London wrote to the Postmaster-General
about it.”
“You may depend upon me, Mrs. Carter.” Mrs. Bingham considered she had
completely satisfied her conscience when she imposed an oath of secrecy
on Mrs. Harrop, who was also self-exonerated when she had imposed a
similar oath on Mrs. Cobb.
A fortnight after the visit to the post-office there was a tea-party.
Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, the grocer’s wife, and Miss
Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on a small annuity, but most genteel,
were invited to Mrs. Bingham’s. They began to talk of Mrs. Fairfax
directly they had tasted the hot buttered toast. They had before them
the following facts: the carrier’s deposition that the goods came from
Great Ormond Street; the lay-figure and what it wore; Mrs. Fairfax’s
prices; the little girl; the wedding-ring but no widow’s weeds; the
Portsmouth postmark; the French book; Mrs. Bingham’s new gown, and
lastly—a piece of information contributed by Mrs. Sweeting and considered
to be of great importance, as we shall see presently—that Mrs. Fairfax
bought her coffee whole and ground it herself. On these facts, nine in
all, the ladies had to construct—it was imperative that they should
construct it—an explanation of Mrs. Fairfax, and it must be confessed
that they were not worse equipped than many a picturesque and successful
historian. At the request of the company, Mrs. Bingham went upstairs and
put on the gown.
“Do you mind coming to the window, Mrs. Bingham?” asked Mrs. Harrop.
Mrs. Bingham rose and went to the window. Her guests also rose. She
held her arms down and then held them up, and was surveyed from every
point of the compass.
“I thought it was a pucker, but it’s only the shadow,” observed Mrs.
Harrop.
Mrs. Cobb stroked the body and shook the skirt. Not a single
depreciatory criticism was ventured. Excepting the wearer, nobody
present had seen such a masterpiece. But although for half a lifetime we
may have beheld nothing better than an imperfect actual, we recognise
instantly the superiority and glory of the realised Ideal when it is
presented to us. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, and Miss Tarrant
became suddenly aware of possibilities of which they had not hitherto
dreamed. Mrs. Swanley, the linendraper’s wife, was degraded and deposed.
“She must have learned that in London,” said Mrs. Harrop.
“London! my dear Mrs. Harrop,” replied Mrs. Bingham, “I know London
pretty well, and how things are cut there. I told you there was a French
book on the table. Take my word for it, she has lived in Paris. She
_must_ have lived there.”
“Where is Great Ormond Street, Mrs. Bingham?” inquired Mrs. Sweeting.
“A great many foreigners live there; it is somewhere near Leicester
Square.”
Mrs. Bingham knew nothing about the street, but having just concluded a
residence in Paris from the French book, that conclusion led at once to a
further conclusion, clear as noonday, as to the quality of the people who
inhabited Great Ormond Street, and consequently to the final deduction of
its locality.
“Did you not say, Mrs. Sweeting, that she buys her coffee whole?” added
Mrs. Bingham, as if inspiration had flashed into her. “If you want
additional proof that she is French, there it is.”
“Portsmouth,” mused Mrs. Cobb. “You say, Mrs. Bingham, there are a good
many officers there. Let me see—1815—it’s twenty-four years ago since
the battle. A captain may have picked her up in Paris. I’ll be bound
that, if she ever was married, she was married when she was sixteen or
seventeen. They are always obliged to marry those French girls when they
are nothing but chits, I’ve been told—those of them, leastways, that
don’t live with men without being married. That would make her about
forty, and then he found her out and left her, and she went back to Paris
and learned dressmaking.”
“But he writes to her from Portsmouth,” said Mrs. Bingham, who had not
been told that the solitary letter from Portsmouth was addressed in a
man’s handwriting.
“He may not have broken with her altogether,” replied Mrs. Cobb. “If he
isn’t a downright brute he’ll want to hear about his daughter.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Sweeting, twitching her eyes as she was wont to do when
she was about to give an opinion which she knew would disturb any of her
friends, “you may talk as you like, but the last thing Swanley made for
me looked as if it had been to the wash and hung on me to dry. French or
English, captain or no captain, I shall go to Mrs. Fairfax. Her
character’s got nothing to do with her cut. Suppose she _is_ divorced;
judging from that body of yours, Mrs. Bingham, I shan’t have to send back
a pelisse half a dozen times to get it altered. When it comes to that
you get sick of the thing, and may just as well give it away.”
Mrs. Sweeting occupied the lowest rank in this particular section of
Langborough society. As a grocer Mr. Sweeting was not quite on a level
with the coal dealer, who was a merchant, nor with the ironmonger, who
repaired ploughs, and he was certainly below Mr. Bingham. Miss Tarrant,
never having been “connected with trade”—her father was chief clerk in
the bank—considered herself superior to all her acquaintances, but her
very small income prevented her from claiming her superiority so
effectively as she desired.
“Mrs. Sweeting,” she said, “I am surprised at you! You do not consider
what the moral effect on the lower orders of patronising a female of this
kind will be, probably an abandoned woman. The child, no doubt, was not
born in wedlock. We are sinners ourselves if we support sinners.”
“Miss Tarrant,” retorted Mrs. Sweeting, “I’m the respectable mother of
five children, and I don’t want any sermons on sin except in church. If
it wasn’t a sin of Swanley to charge me three guineas for that pelisse,
and wouldn’t take it back, I don’t know what sin.”
Mrs. Bingham, although she was accustomed to tea-table disputes, and even
enjoyed them, was a little afraid of Mrs. Sweeting’s tongue, and thought
it politic to interfere.
“I agree with you entirely, Mrs. Sweeting, about the inferiority of Mrs.
Swanley to this newcomer, but we must consider Miss Tarrant’s position in
the parish and her responsibilities. She is no doubt right from her
point of view.”
So the conversation ended, but Mrs. Fairfax’s biography, which was to be
published under authority in Langborough, was now rounded off and
complete. She was a Parisian, father and mother unknown, was found in
Paris in 1815 by Captain Fairfax, who, by her intrigues and threats of
exposure, was forced into a marriage with her. A few years afterwards he
had grounds for a divorce, but not wishing a scandal, consented to a
compromise and voluntary separation. He left one child in her custody,
as it showed signs of resemblance to its mother, to whom he gave a small
monthly allowance. She had been apprenticed as a dressmaker in Paris,
had returned thither in order to master her trade, and then came back to
England. In a very little time, so clever was she that she learned to
speak English fluently, although, as Mrs. Bingham at once noticed, the
French accent was very perceptible. It was a good, intelligible, working
theory, and that was all that was wanted. This was Mrs. Fairfax so far
as her female neighbours were concerned. To the men in Langborough she
was what she was to the women, but with a difference. When she went to
Mr. Sweeting’s shop to order her groceries, Mr. Sweeting, notwithstanding
the canonical legend of her life, served her himself, and was much
entangled by her dark hair, and was drawn down by it into a most polite
bow. Mr. Cobb, who had a little cabin of an office in his coal-yard,
hastened back to it from superintending the discharge of a lighter, when
Mrs. Fairfax called to pay her little bill, actually took off his hat,
begged her to be seated, and hoped she did not find the last lot of coals
dusty. He was now unloading some of the best Wallsend that ever came up
the river, and would take care that the next half ton should not have an
ounce of small in it.
“You’ll find it chilly where you are living, ma’am, but it isn’t damp,
that’s one comfort. The bottom of your street is damp, and down here in
a flood anything like what we had fourteen years ago, we are nearly
drowned. If you’ll step outside with me I’ll show you how high the water
rose.” He opened the door, and Mrs. Fairfax thought it courteous not to
refuse. He walked to the back of his cabin bareheaded, although the
morning was cold, and pointed out to her the white paint mark on the
wall. She, dropped her receipted bill in the black mud and stooped to
pick it up. Mr. Cobb plunged after it and wiped it carefully on his silk
pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Cobb’s bay window commanded the whole length
of the coal-yard. In this bay window she always sat and worked and
nodded to the customers, or gossiped with them as they passed. She
turned her back on Mrs. Fairfax both when she entered the yard and when
she left it, but watched her carefully. Mr. Cobb came into dinner, but
his wife bided her time, knowing that, as he took snuff, the handkerchief
would be used. It was very provoking, he was absent-minded, and forgot
his usual pinch before he sat down to his meal. For three-quarters of an
hour his wife was afflicted with painfully uneasy impatience, and found
it very difficult to reply to Mr. Cobb’s occasional remarks. At last the
cheese was finished, the snuff-box appeared, and after it the
handkerchief.
“A pretty mess that handkerchief is in, Cobb.” She always called him
simply “Cobb.”
“Yes, it was an a-a-accident. I must have a clean one. I didn’t think
it was so dirty.”
“The washing of your snuffy handkerchiefs costs quite enough as it is,
Cobb, without using them in that way.”
“What way?” said Mr. Cobb weakly.
“Oh, I saw it all, going out without your hat and standing there like a
silly fool cleaning that bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen
thought of you.”
It will already have been noticed that the question what other people
thought was always the test which was put in Langborough whenever
anything was done or anything happened not in accordance with the usual
routine, and Mrs. Cobb struck at her husband’s conscience by referring
him to his lightermen. She continued—
“And you know what she is as well as I do, and if she’d been respectable
you’d have been rude to her, as you generally are.”
“You bought that last new gown of her, and you never had one as fitted
you so well.”
“What’s that got to do with it? You may be sure I knew my place when I
went there. Fit? Yes, it did fit; them sort of women, it stands to
reason, are just the women to fit you.”
Mr. Cobb was silent. He was a mild man, and he knew by much experience
how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb was. He could not forget
Mrs. Fairfax’s stooping figure when she was about to pick up the bill.
She caused in all the Langborough males an unaccustomed quivering and
warmth, the same in each, physical, perhaps, but salutary, for the
monotony of life was relieved thereby and a deference and even a grace
were begotten which did not usually distinguish Langborough manners. Not
one of Mrs. Fairfax’s admirers, however, could say that she showed any
desire for conversation with him, nor could any direct evidence be
obtained as to what she thought of things in general. There was, to be
sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already
mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen,
passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or
disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could
be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks
and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was
punctual in her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable as the Sphinx.
The attendance at church was, of course, set down to “business
considerations,” and was held to be quite consistent with the scepticism
and loose morality deducible from the French book and the unground
coffee.
* * * * *
In speaking of the male creatures of the town we have left out Dr.
Midleton. He was forty-eight years old, and had been rector twenty
years. He had obtained high mathematical honours at Cambridge, and
became a tutor in a grammar school, but was soon presented by his college
with the living of Langborough. He was tall, spare, clean-shaven,
grey-eyed, dark-haired, thin-faced, his lips were curved and compressed,
and he stooped slightly. He was a widower with no children, and the
Rectory was efficiently kept in order by an aged housekeeper.
Tractarianism had not arisen in 1839, but he was High Church and an enemy
to all kinds of fanaticism, apt to be satirical, even in his sermons, on
the right of private judgment to interpret texts as it pleased in
ignorance of Hebrew and Greek. He was respected and feared more than any
other man in the parish. He had a great library, and had taken up
archæology as a hobby. He knew the history of every church in the
county, and more about the Langborough records than was known by the town
clerk. He was chairman of a Board of Governors charged with the
administration of wealthy trust for alms and schools. When he first took
office he found that this trust was controlled almost entirely by a man
named Jackson, a local solicitor, whose salary as clerk was £400 a year
and who had a large private practice. The alms were allotted to serve
political purposes, and the headmaster of the school enjoyed a salary of
£800 a year for teaching forty boys, of whom twenty were boarders. Mr.
Midleton—he was Mr. Midleton then—very soon determined to alter this
state of things. Jackson went about sneering at the newcomer who was
going to turn the place upside down, and having been accustomed to
interfere in the debates in the Board-room, interrupted the Rector at the
third or fourth meeting.
“You’ll get yourself in a mess if you do that, Mr. Chairman.”
“Mr. Jackson,” replied the Rector, rising slowly, “it may perhaps save
trouble if I remind you now, once for all, that I am chairman and you are
the clerk. Mr. Bingham, you were about to speak.”
It was Dr. Midleton who obtained the new Act of Parliament remodelling
the trust, whereby a much larger portion of its funds was devoted to
education. Jackson died, partly from drink and partly from spite and
vexation, and the headmaster was pensioned. The Rector was not popular
with the middle class. He was not fond of paying visits, but he never
neglected his duty, and by the poor was almost beloved, for he was
careless and intimate in his talk with them and generous to real
distress. Everybody admired his courage. The cholera in 1831 was very
bad in Langborough, and the people were in a panic at the new disease,
which was fatal in many cases within six hours after the first attack.
The Rector through that dark time was untouched by the contagious dread
which overpowered his parishioners, and his presence carried confidence
and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun, an
indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing at his gate,
was overcome by it. In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and he
began to feel what were called “premonitory symptoms.” He carried a
brandy flask in his pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy, and he
drank freely, but imagined himself worse. He was about to rush indoors
and tell Mrs. Cobb to send for the surgeon, when the Rector passed.
“Ah, Mr. Cobb! I was just about to call on you; glad to see you looking
so well when there’s so much sickness. We shall want you on the School
Committee this evening,” and then he explained some business which was to
be discussed. Mr. Cobb afterwards was fond of telling the story of this
interview.
“Would you believe it?” said he. “He spoke to me about nothing much but
the trust, but somehow my stomach seemed quieter at once. The
sinking—just _here_, you know—was dreadful before he came up, and the
brandy was no good. It was a something in his way that did it.”
Dr. Midleton was obliged to call on Mrs. Fairfax as a newcomer. He found
Mrs. Harrop there, and Mrs. Fairfax asked him to step into the back
parlour, into which no one in Langborough had hitherto been admitted.
Gowns were tried on in the shop, the door being bolted and the blind
drawn. Dr. Midleton found four little shelves of books on the cupboard
by the side of the fireplace. Some were French, but most of them were
English. Although it was such a small collection, his book-lover’s
instinct compelled him to look at it. His eyes fell upon a _Religio
Medici_, and he opened it hastily. On the fly-leaf was written “Mary
Leighton, from R. L.” He had just time, before its owner entered, to
replace it and to muse for an instant.
“Richard Leighton of Trinity: it is not a common name, but it cannot be
he—have lost sight of him for years; heard he was married, and came to no
good.”
He was able to watch her for a minute as she stood by the table giving
some directions to her child, who was sent on an errand. In that minute
he saw her as she had not been seen by anybody in Langborough. To Mrs.
Bingham and her friends Mrs. Fairfax was the substratum of a body and
skirt, with the inestimable advantage over a substratum of cane and
padding that a scandalous history of it could be invented and believed.
To Langborough men, married and single, she was a member of “the sex,” as
women were called in those days, who possessed in a remarkable degree the
power of exciting that quivering and warmth we have already observed.
Dr. Midleton saw before him a lady, tall but delicately built, with
handsome face and dark brown hair just streaked with grey, and he saw
also diffused over every feature a light which in her eyes,
forward-looking and earnest, became concentrated into a vivid, steady
flame. The few words she spoke to her daughter were sharply cut, a
delightful contrast in his ear to the dialect to which he was accustomed,
distinguished by its universal vowel and suppression of the consonants.
How he inwardly rejoiced to hear the sound of the second “t” in the word
“distinct,” when she told her little messenger that Mr. Cobb had been
“distinctly” ordered to send the coals yesterday. He remained standing
until the child had gone.
“Pray be seated,” she said. She went to the fireplace, leaned on the
mantelpiece, and poked the fire. The attitude struck him. She was about
to put some coals in the grate, but he interfered with an “Allow me,” and
performed the office for her. She thanked him simply, and sat down
opposite to him, facing the light. She began the conversation.
“It is good of you to call on me; calling on people, especially on
newcomers must be an unpleasant part of a clergyman’s duty.”
“It is so, madam, sometimes—there are not many newcomers.”
“It is an advantage in your profession that you must generally be
governed by duty. It is often easier to do what we are obliged to do,
even if it be disagreeable, than to choose our path by our likes and
dislikes.”
The bell rang, and Mrs. Fairfax went into the shop.
“Who can she be?” said the Doctor to himself. Such an experience as this
he had not known since he had been rector. Langborough did not deal in
ideas. It was content to affirm that Miss Tarrant now and then gave
herself airs, that Mrs. Sweeting had a way of her own, that Mr. Cobb
lacked spirit and was downtrodden by his wife.
She returned and sat down again.
“You know nobody in these parts, Mrs. Fairfax?”
“Nobody.”
“Yours is a bold venture, is it not?”
“It is—certainly. A good many plans were projected, of which this was
one, and there were equal difficulties in the way of all. When that is
the case we may almost as well draw lots.”
“Ah, that is what I often say to some of the weaker sort among my
parishioners. I said it to poor Cobb the other day. He did not know
whether he should do this or do that. ‘It doesn’t matter much,’ said I,
‘what you do, but do something. _Do_ it, with all your strength.’”
The Doctor was thoroughly Tory, and he slid away to his favourite
doctrine.
“Our ancestors, madam, were not such fools as we often take them to be.
They consulted the _sortes_ or lots, and at the last election—we have a
potwalloping constituency here—three parts of the voters would have done
better if they had trusted to the toss-up of a penny instead of their
reason.”
Mrs. Fairfax leaned back in her chair. Dr. Midleton noticed her
wedding-ring, and also a handsome sapphire ring. She spoke rather slowly
and meditatively.
“Life is so complicated; so few of the consequences of many actions of
the greatest moment can be foreseen, that the belief in the lot is not
unnatural.”
“You have some books, I see—Sir Thomas Browne.” He took down the volume.
“Leighton! Leighton! how odd! Was it Richard Leighton?”
“Yes.”
“Really; and you knew him?”
“He was a friend of my brother.”
“Do you know what has become of him? He was at Cambridge with me, but
was younger.”
“I have not seen him for some time. Do you mind if I open the window a
little?”
“Certainly not.”
She stood at the window for a moment, looking out on the garden, with her
hand on the top of the sash. The Doctor had turned his chair a little
and his eyes were fixed on her there with her uplifted arm. A picture
which belonged to his father instantly came back to him. He recollected
it so well. It represented a woman watching a young man in a courtyard
who is just mounting his horse. We are every now and then reminded of
pictures by a group, an attitude, or the arrangement of a landscape
which, thereby, acquires a new charm.
Suddenly the shop bell rang again, and Mrs. Fairfax’s little girl rushed
into the parlour. She had fallen down and cut her wrist terribly with a
piece of a bottle containing some hartshorn which she had to buy at the
druggist’s on her way home from Mr. Cobb’s. The blood flowed freely, but
Mrs. Fairfax, unbewildered, put her thumb firmly on the wrist just above
the wound and instructed the doctor how to use his pocket-handkerchief as
a tourniquet. As he was tying it, although such careful attention to the
operation was necessary, he noticed Mrs. Fairfax’s hands, and he almost
forgot himself and the accident.
“There is glass in the wrist,” she said. “Will you kindly fetch the
surgeon? I do not like to leave.”
He went at once, and fortunately met him in his gig.
On the third day after the mishap Dr. Midleton thought he ought to
inquire after the child. The glass had been extracted and she was doing
well. Her mother was at work in the back-parlour. She made no apology
for her occupation, but laid down her tools.
“Pray go on, madam.”
“Certainly not. I am afraid I might make a mistake with my scissors if I
were to listen to you; or, worse, if I were to pay attention to them I
should not pay attention to you.”
He smiled. “It is an art, I should think, which requires not only much
attention but practice.”
She evaded the implied question. “It is difficult to fit, but it is more
difficult to please.”
“That is true in my own profession.”
“But you are not obliged to please.”
“No, not obliged, I am happy to say. If my parishioners do not hear the
truth I have no excuse. It must be rather trying to the temper of a lady
like yourself to humour the caprices of the vulgar.”
“No; they are my customers, and even if they are unpleasant they are so
not to me personally but to their servant, who ceases to be their servant
when she ceases to be employed upon their clothes.”
“You are a philosopher, madam; that sentiment is worthy of Epictetus.”
“I have read Epictetus in Mrs. Carter’s translation.”
“You have read Epictetus? That is remarkable! I should think no other
woman in the county has read him.” He leaned forward a little and his
face was lighted up. “I have a library, madam, a large library; I should
like to show it to you, if—if it can be managed without difficulty.”
“It will give me great pleasure to see it some day. It must be a
delightful solace to you in a town like this, in which I daresay you have
but few friends. I suppose, though, you visit a good deal?”
“No; I do not visit much. I differ from my brother Sinclair in the next
parish. He is always visiting. What is the consequence?—gossip and, as
I conceive, a loss of dignity and self-respect. I will go wherever there
is trouble or wherever I am wanted, but I will not go anywhere for idle
talk.”
“I think you are right. A priest should not make himself cheap and
common. He should be representative of sacred interests superior to the
ordinary interests of life.”
“I am grateful to you, madam, very grateful to you for these
observations. They are as just as they are unusual. I sincerely hope
that we—” But there was a knock at the door.
“Come in.” It was Mrs. Harrop. “Your bell rang, Mrs. Fairfax, but maybe
you didn’t hear it as you were engaged in conversation. Good morning,
Dr. Midleton. I hope I don’t intrude?”
“No, you do not.”
He bowed to the ladies, and as he went out, the parlour-door being open,
he moved the outer door backwards and forwards.
“It would be as well, Mrs. Fairfax, to have a bell hung there which would
act properly.”
“I don’t know quite what Dr. Midleton means,” said Mrs. Harrop when he
had gone. “The bell did ring, loud enough for most people to have heard
it, and I waited ever so long.”
He walked down the street with his customary firm step, and met Mr.
Bingham who stopped him, half smiling and not quite at his ease.
“We are sorry, Doctor, you did not give Hutchings your vote for the
almshouse last Thursday; we expected you would have gone with us.”
“You expected? Why?”
“Well, you see, sir, Hutchings has always worked hard for our side.”
“I am astonished, Mr. Bingham, that you should suppose that I will ever
consent to divert the funds of a trust for party purposes.”
Mr. Bingham, although he had just determined to give the Doctor a bit of
his mind, felt his strength depart from him. His sentences lacked power
to stand upright and fell sprawling. “No offence, Doctor, I merely
wanted you to know—not so much my own views—difficulty to keep our
friends together. Short—you know Tom Short—was saying to me he was
afraid—”
“Pay no attention to fools. Good morning.”
The Doctor came in that night from a vestry meeting to which he went
after dinner. The clock was striking nine, the chimes played their tune,
and as the last note sounded the housekeeper and servants filed into the
study for prayers. Prayers over they rose and went out, and he sat down.
His habits were becoming fixed and for some years he had always read in
the evening the friends of his youth. No sermon was composed then; no
ecclesiastical literature was studied. Pope and Swift were favourites
and, curiously enough, Lord Byron. His case is not uncommon, for it
often happens that men who are forced into reserve or opposition preserve
a secret, youthful, poetic passion and are even kept alive by it. On
this particular evening, however, Pope, Byron, and Swift remained on his
shelves. He meditated.
“A wedding-ring on her finger; no widow’s weeds; he may nevertheless be
dead—I believe I heard he was—and she has discontinued that frightful
disfigurement. Leighton had the thickest crop of black hair I ever saw
on a man: what thick, black hair that child has! A lady; a reader of
books; nobody to be compared with her here.” At this point he rose and
walked about the room for a quarter of an hour. He sat down again and
took up an important paper about the Trust. He had forgotten it and it
was to be discussed the next day. His eyes wandered over it but he paid
no attention to it; and somewhat disgusted with himself he went to bed.
Mrs. Fairfax had happened to tell him that she was fond of walking soon
after breakfast before she opened her shop, and generally preferred the
lane on the west side of the Common. From his house the direct road to
the lane lay down the High Street, but about a fortnight after that
evening in his study he found himself one morning in Deadman’s Rents, a
narrow, dirty alley which led to the east side of the Common. Deadman’s
Rents was inhabited by men who worked in brickyards and coalyards, who
did odd jobs, and by washerwomen and charwomen. It contained also three
beershops. The dwellers in the Rents were much surprised to see the
Doctor amongst them at that early hour, and conjectured he must have come
on a professional errand. Every one of the Deadman ladies who was at her
door—and they were generally at their doors in the daytime—vigilantly
watched him. He went straight through the Rents to the Common, whereupon
Mrs. Wiggins, who supported herself by the sale of firewood, jam,
pickles, and peppermints, was particularly disturbed and was obliged to
go over to the “Kicking Donkey,” partly to communicate what she had seen
and partly to ward off by half a quartern of rum the sinking which always
threatened her when she was in any way agitated. When he reached the
common it struck him that for the first time in his life he had gone a
roundabout way to escape being seen. Some people naturally take to
side-streets; he, on the contrary, preferred the High Street; it was his
quarter-deck and he paraded it like a captain. “Was he doing wrong?” he
said to himself. Certainly not; he desired a little intelligent
conversation and there was no need to tell everybody what he wanted. It
was unfortunate, nevertheless, that it was necessary to go through
Deadman’s Rents in order to get it. He soon saw Mrs. Fairfax and her
little girl in front of him. He overtook her, and she showed no surprise
at seeing him.
“I have been thinking,” said he, “about what you told me”—this was a
reference to an interview not recorded. “I am annoyed that Mrs. Harrop
should have been impertinent to you.”
“You need not be annoyed. The import of a word is not fixed. If
anything annoying is said to me, I always ask myself what it means—not to
me but to the speaker. Besides, as I have told you before, shop
insolence is nothing.”
“You may be justified in not resenting it, but Mrs. Harrop cannot be
excused. I am not surprised to find that she can use such language, but
I am astonished that she should use it to you. It shows an utter lack of
perception. Your Epictetus has been studied to some purpose.”
“I have quite forgotten him. I do not recollect books, but I never
forget the lessons taught me by my own trade.”
“You have had much trouble?”
“I have had my share: probably not in excess. It is difficult for
anybody to know whether his suffering is excessive: there is no means of
measuring it with that of others.”
“Have you no friends with whom you can share it?”
“I have known but one woman intimately, and she is now dead. I have
known two or three men whom I esteemed, but close friendship between a
woman and a man, unless he is her husband, as a rule is impossible.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I am certain of it. I am speaking now of a friendship which would
justify a demand for sympathy with real sorrows.”
They continued their walk in silence for the next two or three minutes.
“We are now near the end of the lane. I must turn and go back.”
“I will go with you.”
“Thank you: I should detain you: I have to make a call on business at the
White House. Good morning.”
They parted.
Dr. Midleton presently met Mrs. Jenkins of Deadman’s Rents, who was going
to the White House to do a day’s washing. A few steps further he met Mr.
Harrop in his gig, who overtook Mrs. Fairfax. Thus it came to pass that
Deadman’s Rents and the High Street knew before nightfall that Dr.
Midleton and Mrs. Fairfax had been seen on the Common that morning. Mrs.
Jenkins protested, that “if she was to be burnt alive with fuz-faggits
and brimstone, nothink but what she witnessed with her own eyes should
pass her lips, whatsomever she might think, and although they were
a-walkin’—him with his arm round her waist—she did _not_ see him
a-kissin’ of her—how could she when they were a hundred yards off?”
The Doctor prolonged his stroll and reached home about half-past eleven.
A third of his life had been spent in Langborough. He remembered the day
he came and the unpacking of his books. They lined the walls of his
room, some of them rare, all of them his friends. Nobody in Langborough
had ever asked him to lend a single volume. The solitary scholar never
forsook his studies, but at times he sighed over them and they seemed a
little vain. They were not entirely without external effect, for Pope
and Swift in disguise often spoke to the vestry or the governors, and the
Doctor’s manners even in the shops were moulded by his intercourse with
the classic dead. Their names, however, in Langborough were almost
unknown. He had now become hardened by constant unsympathetic contact.
Suddenly a stranger had appeared who was an inhabitant of his own world
and talked his own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed
itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the relief, the
joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after long years of
imprisonment with decent people of a person before whom it is unnecessary
to stifle what we most care to express. No wonder he was excited!
But the stranger was a woman. He meditated much that morning on her
singular aptitude for reflection, but he presently began to dream over
figure, hair, eyes, hands. A picture in the most vivid colours painted
itself before him, and he could not close his eyes to it. He was
distressed to find himself the victim of this unaccustomed tyranny. He
did not know that it is impossible for a man to love a woman’s soul
without loving her body. There is no such thing as a spiritual love
apart from a corporeal love, the one celestial and the other earthly, and
the spiritual love begets a passion peculiar in its intensity. He was
happily diverted by Mr. Bingham, who called about a coming contested
election for the governorships.
Next week there was another tea-party at Mrs. Cobb’s. The ladies were in
high spirits, for a subject of conversation was assured. If there had
been an inquest, or a marriage, or a highway robbery before one of these
parties, or if the contents of a will had just been made known, or still
better, if any scandal had just come to light, the guests were always
cheerful. Now, of course, the topic was Dr. Midleton and Mrs. Fairfax.
“When I found him in that back parlour,” said Mrs. Harrop, “I thought he
wasn’t there to pay the usual call. Somehow it didn’t seem as if he was
like a clergyman. I felt quite queer: it came over me all of a sudden.
And then we know he’s been there once or twice since.”
“I don’t wonder at your feeling queer, Mrs. Harrop,” quoth Mrs. Cobb.
“I’m sure I should have fainted; and what brazen boldness to walk out
together on the Common at nine o’clock in the morning. That girl who
brought in the tea—it’s my belief that a young man goes after her—but
even they wouldn’t demean themselves to be seen at it just after
breakfast.”
“You don’t mean to say as your Deborah encourages a man, Mrs. Cobb! I
don’t know what we are a-comin’ to. You’ve always been so particular,
and she seemed so respectable. I _am_ sorry.”
Mrs. Cobb did not quite relish Mrs. Harrop’s pity.
“You may be sure, Mrs. Harrop, she was respectable when I took her, and
if she isn’t I shan’t keep her. I _am_ particular, more so than most
folk, and I don’t mind who knows it.” Mrs. Cobb threw back her cap
strings. The denial that she minded who knew it may not appear relevant,
but desiring to be spiteful she could not at the moment find a better way
of showing her spite than by declaring her indifference to the
publication of her virtues. If there was no venom in the substance of
the declaration there was much in the manner of it. Mrs. Bingham brought
back the conversation to the point.
“I suppose you’ve heard what Mrs. Jenkins says? Your husband also, Mrs.
Harrop, met them both.”
“Yes he did. He was not quite in time to see as much as Mrs. Jenkins
saw, and I’m glad he didn’t. I shouldn’t have felt comfortable if I’d
known he had. A clergyman, too! it is shocking. A nice business, this,
for the Dissenters.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Bingham, “what are we to do? I had thought of going to
her and giving her a bit of my mind, but she has got that yellow gown to
make. What is your opinion, Miss Tarrant?”
“I would not degrade myself, Mrs. Bingham, by any expostulations with
her. I would have nothing more to do with her. Could you not relieve
her of the unfinished gown? Mrs. Swanley, I am sure, under the
circumstances would be only too happy to complete it for you.”
“Mrs. Swanley cannot come near her. I should look ridiculous in her body
and one of Swanley’s skirts.”
“As to the Doctor,” continued Miss Tarrant, “I wonder that he can expect
to maintain any authority in matters of religion if he marries a
dressmaker of that stamp. It would be impossible even if her character
were unimpeachable. I am astonished, if he wishes to enter into the
matrimonial state, that he does not seek some one who would be able to
support him in his position and offer him the sympathy which a man who
has had a University education might justifiably demand.”
Mrs. Sweeting had hitherto listened in silence. Miss Tarrant provoked
her.
“It’s all a fuss about nothing, that’s my opinion. What has she done
that you know to be wrong? And as to the Doctor, he’s got a right to
please himself. I’m surprised at you, Miss Tarrant, for _you’ve_ always
stuck for him through thick and thin. As for that Mrs. Jenkins, I’ll
take my Bible oath that the last time she washed for me she stunk of gin
enough to poison me, and went away with two bits of soap in her pocket.
You may credit what she says: _I_ don’t, and never demean myself to
listen to her.”
The ladies came to no conclusion. Mrs. Bingham said that she had
suggested a round robin to Dr. Midleton, but that her husband decidedly
“discountenanced the proposal.” Within a fortnight the election of
governors was to take place. There was always a fight at these
elections, and this year the Radicals had a strong list. The Doctor,
whose term of office had expired, was the most prominent of the Tory and
Church candidates, and never doubted his success. He was ignorant of all
the gossip about him. One day in that fortnight he might have been seen
in Ferry Street. He went into Mrs. Fairfax’s shop and was invited as
before into the back parlour.
“I have brought you a basket of pears, and the book I promised you, the
_Utopia_.” He sat down. “I am afraid you will think my visits too
frequent.”
“They are not too frequent for me: they may be for yourself.”
“Ah! since I last entered your house I have not seen any books excepting
my own. You hardly know what life in Langborough is like.”
“Does nobody take any interest in archæology?”
“Nobody within five miles. Sinclair cares nothing about it: he is Low
Church, as I have told you.”
“Why does that prevent his caring about it?”
“Being Low Church he is narrow-minded, or, perhaps it would be more
correct to say, being narrow-minded he is Low Church. He is an
indifferent scholar, and occupies himself with his religious fancies and
those of his flock. He can reign supreme there. He is not troubled in
that department by the difficulties of learning and is not exposed to
criticism or contradiction.”
“I suppose it is a fact of the greatest importance to him that he and his
parishioners have souls to be saved, and that in comparison with that
fact others are immaterial.”
“We all believe we have souls to be saved. Having set forth God’s way of
saving them we have done all we ought to do. God’s way is not sufficient
for Sinclair. He enlarges it out of his own head, and instructs his
silly, ignorant friends to do the same. He will not be satisfied with
what God and the Church tell him.”
“God and the Church, according to Dr. Midleton’s account, have not been
very effective in Langborough.”
“They hear from me, madam, all I am commissioned to say, and if they do
not attend I cannot help it.”
“I have read your paper in the Archæological Transactions on the history
of Langborough Abbey. It excited my imagination, which is never excited
in reading ordinary histories. In your essay I am in company with the
men who actually lived in the time of Henry the Second and Henry the
Eighth. I went over the ruins again, and found them much more beautiful
after I understood something about them.”
“Yes: exactly what I have said a hundred times: knowledge is
indispensable.”
“If you had not pointed it out, I should never have noticed the Early
English doorway in the Chapter-house, so distinct in style from the
Refectory.”
“You noticed the brackets of that doorway: you noticed the quatrefoils in
the head? The Refectory is later by three centuries, and is exquisite,
but is not equal to the Chapter-house.”
“Yes, I noticed the brackets and quatrefoils particularly. If knowledge
is not necessary in order that we may admire, its natural tendency is to
deepen our admiration. Without it we pass over so much. In my own small
way I have noticed how my slight botanical knowledge of flowers by the
mere attention involved increases my wonder at their loveliness.”
There was the usual interruption by the shop-bell. How he hated that
bell! Mrs. Fairfax answered it, closing the parlour door. The customer
was Mrs. Bingham.
“I will not disturb you now, Mrs. Fairfax. I was going to say something
about the black trimming you recommended. I really think red would suit
me better, but, never mind, I will call again as I saw the Doctor come
in. He is rather a frequent visitor.”
“Not frequent: he comes occasionally. We are both interested in a
subject which I believe is not much studied in Langborough.”
“Dear me! not dressmaking?”
“No, madam, archæology.”
Mrs. Bingham went out once more discomfited, and Mrs. Fairfax returned to
the parlour.
“I am sure I am taking up too much of your time,” said the Doctor, “but I
cannot tell you what a privilege it is to spend a few minutes with a lady
like yourself.”
Mrs. Fairfax was silent for a minute.
“Mrs. Bingham has been here, and I think I ought to tell you that she has
made some significant remarks about you. Forgive me if I suggest that we
should partially, at any rate, discontinue our intercourse. I should be
most unhappy if your friendship with me were to do you any harm.”
The Doctor rose in a passion, planting his stick on the floor.
“When the cackling of the geese or the braying of the asses on
Langborough Common prevent my crossing it, then, and not till then, will
my course be determined by Mrs. Bingham and her colleagues.”
He sat down again with his elbow on the arm of the chair and half shading
his eyes with his hand. His whole manner altered. Not a trace of the
rector remained in him: the decisiveness vanished from his voice; it
became musical, low, and hesitating. It was as if some angel had touched
him, and had suddenly converted all his strength into tenderness, a
transformation not impossible, for strength is tenderness and tenderness
is strength.
“I shall be forty-nine years old next birthday,” he said. “Never until
now have I been sure that I loved a woman. I was married when I was
twenty-five. I had seen two or three girls whom I thought I could love,
and at last chose one. It was the arbitrary selection of a weary will.
My wife died within two years of her marriage. After her death I was
thrown in the way of women who attracted me, but I wavered. If I made up
my mind at night, I shrank back in the morning. I thought my
irresolution was mere cowardice. It was not so. It was a warning that
the time had not come. I resolved at last that there was to be no change
in my life, that I would resign myself to my lot, expect no affection,
and do the duty blindly which had been imposed upon me. But a miracle
has been wrought, and I have a perfectly clear direction: with you for
the first time in my life I am _sure_. You have known what it is to be
in a fog, unable to tell which way to turn, and all at once the cold, wet
mist was lifted, the sun came out, the fields were lighted up, the sea
revealed itself to the horizon, and your road lay straight before you
stretching over the hill. I will not shame myself by apologies that I am
no longer young. My love has remained with me. It is a passion for you,
and it is a reverence for a mind to which it will be a perpetual joy to
submit.”
“God pardon me,” she said after a moment’s pause, “for having drawn you
to this! I did not mean it. If you knew all you would forgive me. It
cannot, cannot be! Leave me.” He hesitated. “Leave me, leave me at
once!” she cried.
He rose, she took his right hand in both of hers: there was one look
straight into his eyes from her own which were filling with tears, a half
sob, her hands after one more grasp fell, and he found that he had left
the house. He went home. How strange it is to return to a familiar
chamber after a great event has happened! On his desk lay a volume of
Cicero’s letters. The fire had not been touched and was almost out: the
door leading to the garden was open: the self of two hours before seemed
to confront him. When the tumult in him began to subside he was struck
by the groundlessness of his double assumption that Mrs. Fairfax was Mrs.
Leighton and that she was free. He had made no inquiry. He had noticed
the wedding-ring, and he had come to some conclusion about it which was
supported by no evidence. Doubtless she could not be his: her husband
was still alive. At last the hour for which unconsciously he had been
waiting had struck, and his true self, he not having known hitherto what
it was, had been declared. But it was all for nothing. It was as if
some autumn-blooming plant had put forth on a sunny October morning the
flower of the year, and had been instantaneously blasted and cut down to
the root. The plant might revive next spring, but there could be no
revival for him. There could be nothing now before him but that same
dull duty, duty to the dull, duty without enthusiasm. He had no example
for his consolation. The Bible is the record of heroic suffering: there
is no story there of a martyrdom to monotony and life-weariness. He was
a pious man, but loved prescription and form: he loved to think of
himself as a member of the great Catholic Church and not as an isolated
individual, and he found more relief in praying the prayers which
millions had before him than in extempore effusion; humbly trusting that
what he was seeking in consecrated petitions was all that he really
needed. “In proportion as your prayers are peculiar,” he once told his
congregation in a course of sermons on Dissent, “they are worthless.”
There was nothing, though, in the prayer-book which met his case. He was
in no danger from temptation, nor had he trespassed. He was not in want
of his daily bread, and although he desired like all good men to see the
Kingdom of God, the advent of that celestial kingdom which had for an
instant been disclosed to him was for ever impossible.
The servant announced Mrs. Sweeting, who was asked to come in.
“Sit down, Mrs. Sweeting. What can I do for you?”
“Well, sir, perhaps you may remember—and if you don’t, I do—how you
helped my husband in that dreadful year 1825. I shall never forget that
act of yours, Dr. Midleton, and I’d stick up for you if Mrs. Bingham and
Mrs. Harrop and Mrs. Cobb and Miss Tarrant were to swear against you and
you a-standing in the dock. As for that Miss Tarrant, there’s that
a-rankling in her that makes her worse than any of them, and if you don’t
know what it is, being too modest, forgive me for saying so, I do.”
“But what’s the matter, Mrs. Sweeting?”
“Matter, sir! Why, I can hardly bring it out, seeing that I’m only the
wife of a tradesman, but one thing I will say as I ain’t like the serpent
in Genesis, a-crawling about on its belly and spitting poison and biting
people by their heels.”
“You have not yet told me what is wrong.”
“Dr. Midleton, you shall have it, but recollect I come here as your
friend: leastways I hope you’ll forgive me if I call myself so, for if
you were ill and you were to hold up your finger for me not another soul
should come near you night nor day till you were well again or it had
pleased God Almighty to take you to Himself. Dr. Midleton, there’s a
conspiracy.”
“A what?”
“A conspiracy: that’s right, I believe. You are acquainted with Mrs.
Fairfax. To make a long and a short of it, they say you are always going
there, more than you ought, leastways unless you mean to marry her, and
that she’s only a dressmaker, and nobody knows where she comes from, and
they ain’t open and free: they won’t come and tell you themselves; but
you’ll be turned out at the election the day after to-morrow.”
“But what do you say yourself?”
“Me, Dr. Midleton? Why, I’ve spoke up pretty plainly. I told Mrs. Cobb
it would be a good thing if you were married, provided you wouldn’t be
trod upon as some people’s husbands are, and I was pretty well sure you
never would be, and that you knew a lady when you saw her better than
most folk; and as for her being a dressmaker what’s that got to do with
it?”
“You are too well acquainted with me, Mrs. Sweeting, to suppose I should
condescend to notice this contemptible stuff or alter my course to please
all Langborough. Why did you take the trouble to report it to me?”
“Because, sir, I wouldn’t for the world you should think I was mixed up
with them; and if my husband doesn’t vote for you my name isn’t
Sweeting.”
“I am much obliged to you. I see your motives: you are straightforward
and I respect you.”
Mrs. Sweeting thanked him and departed. His first feeling was wrath.
Never was there a man less likely to be cowed. He put on his hat and
walked to his committee-room, where he found Mr. Bingham.
“No doubt, I suppose, Mr. Bingham?”
“Don’t know, Doctor; the Radicals have got a strong candidate in Jem
Casey. Some of our people will turn, I’m afraid, and split their votes.”
“Split votes! with a fellow like that! How can there be any splitting
between an honest man and a rascal?”
“There shouldn’t be, sir, but—” Mr. Bingham hesitated—“I suppose there
may be personal considerations.”
“Personal considerations! what do you mean? Let us have no more of these
Langborough tricks. Out with it, Bingham! Who are the persons and what
are the considerations?”
“I really can’t say, Doctor, but perhaps you may not be as popular as you
were. You’ve—” but Mr. Bingham’s strength again completely failed him,
and he took a sudden turn—“You’ve taken a decided line lately at several
of our meetings.”
The Doctor looked steadily at Mr. Bingham, who felt that every corner of
his pitiful soul was visible.
“The line I have taken you have generally supported. That is not what
you mean. If I am defeated I shall be defeated by equivocating
cowardice, and I shall consider myself honoured.”
The Doctor strode out of the room. He knew now that he was the common
property of the town, and that every tongue was wagging about him and a
woman, but he was defiant. The next morning he saw painted in white
paint on his own wall—
“My dearly beloved, for all you’re so bold,
To-morrow you’ll find you’re left out in the cold;
And, Doctor, the reason you need not to ax,
It’s because of a dressmaker—Mrs. F—fax.”
He was going out just as the gardener was about to obliterate the
inscription.
“Leave it, Robert, leave it; let the filthy scoundrels perpetuate their
own disgrace.”
The result of the election was curious. Two of the Church candidates
were returned at the top of the poll. Jem Casey came next. Dr. Midleton
and the other two Radical and Dissenting candidates were defeated. There
were between seventy and eighty plumpers for the two successful
Churchmen, and about five-and-twenty split votes for them and Casey, who
had distinguished himself by his coarse attacks on the Doctor. Mr.
Bingham had a bad cold, and did not vote. On the following Sunday the
church was fuller than usual. The Doctor preached on behalf of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. He did not allude directly to
any of the events of the preceding week, but at the close of his sermon
he said—“It has been frequently objected that we ought not to spend money
on missions to the heathen abroad as there is such a field of labour at
home. The answer to that objection is that there is more hope of the
heathen than of many of our countrymen. This has been a nominally
Christian land for centuries, but even now many deadly sins are not
considered sinful, and it is an easier task to save the savage than to
convince those, for example, whose tongue, to use the words of the
apostle, is set on fire of hell, that they are in danger of damnation. I
hope, therefore, my brethren, that you will give liberally.”
On Monday Langborough was amazed to find Mrs. Fairfax’s shop closed. She
had left the town. She had taken a post-chaise on Saturday and had met
the up-mail at Thaxton cross-roads. Her scanty furniture had
disappeared. The carrier could but inform Langborough that he had orders
to deliver her goods at Great Ormond Street whence he brought them. Mrs.
Bingham went to London shortly afterwards and called at Great Ormond
Street to inquire for Mrs. Fairfax. Nobody of that name lived there, and
the door was somewhat abruptly shut in her face. She came back convinced
that Mrs. Fairfax was what Mrs. Cobb called “a bad lot.”
“Do you believe,” said she, “that a woman who gives a false name can be
respectable? We want no further proof.”
Nobody wanted further proof. No Langborough lady needed any proof if a
reputation was to be blasted.
“It’s an _alibi_,” said Mrs. Harrop. “That’s what Tom Cranch the poacher
did, and he was hung.”
“An _alias_, I believe, is the correct term,” said Miss Tarrant. “It
means the assumption of a name which is not your own, a most
discreditable device, one to which actresses and women to whose
occupation I can only allude, uniformly resort. How thankful we ought to
be that our respected Rector’s eyes must now be opened and that he has
escaped the snare! It was impossible that he could be permanently
attracted by vice and vulgarity. It is singular how much more acute a
woman’s perception often is than a man’s. I saw through this creature at
once.”
* * * * *
Eighteen months passed. The doctor one day was unpacking a book he had
bought at Peterborough. Inside the brown paper was a copy of the
_Stamford Mercury_, a journal which had a wide circulation in the
Midlands. He generally read it, but he must have omitted to see this
number. His eye fell on the following announcement—“On the 24th June
last, Richard Leighton, aged 44 years.” The notice was late, for the
date of the paper was the 18th November. The next afternoon he was in
London. He had been to Great Ormond Street before and had inquired for
Mrs. Fairfax, but could find no trace of her. He now called again.
“You will remember,” he said, “my inquiry about Mrs. Fairfax: can you
tell me anything about Mrs. Leighton?” He put his hand in his pocket and
pulled out five shillings.
“She isn’t here: she went away when her husband died.”
“He died abroad?”
“Yes.”
“Where has she gone?”
“Don’t know quite: her friends wouldn’t have anything to do with her.
She said she was going to Plymouth. She had heard of something in the
dressmaking line there.”
He handed over his five shillings, procured a substitute for next Sunday,
and went to Plymouth. He wandered through the streets but could see no
dressmaker’s shop which looked as if it had recently changed hands. He
walked backwards and forwards on the Hoe in the evening: the Eddystone
light glimmered far away on the horizon; and the dim hope arose in him
that it might be a prophecy of success, but his hope was vain. It came
into his mind that it was not likely that she would be there after dusk,
and he remembered her preference for early exercise. The first morning
was a failure, but on the second—it was sunny and warm—he saw her sitting
on a bench facing the sea. He went up unobserved and sat down. She did
not turn towards him till he said “Mrs. Leighton!” She started and
recognised him. Little was spoken as they walked home to her lodgings, a
small private house. On her way she called at a large shop where she was
employed and obtained leave of absence until after dinner.
“At last!” said the doctor when the door was shut.
She stood gazing in silence at the dull red cinder of the dying fire.
“You put the advertisement in the _Stamford Mercury_?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I did not see it until a day or two ago.”
“I had better tell you at once. My husband, whom you knew, was convicted
of forgery, and died at Botany Bay.” Her eyes still watched the red
cinders.
The Doctor’s countenance showed no surprise, for no news could have had
any power over the emotion which mastered him. The long, slow years were
fulfilled. Long and slow and the fulfilment late, but the joy it brought
was the greater. Youthful passion is sweet, but it is not sweeter than
the discovery when we begin to count the years which are left to us, and
to fear there will be nothing in them better than in those which preceded
them that for us also love is reserved.
Mrs. Leighton was obliged to go back to her work in the afternoon, but
she gave notice that night to leave in a week.
In a couple of months Langborough was astounded at the news of the
Rector’s marriage with a Mrs. Leighton whom nobody in Langborough knew.
The advertisement in the _Stamford Mercury_ said that the lady was the
widow of Richard Leighton, Esq., and eldest daughter of the late
Marmaduke Sutton, Esq. Langborough spared no pains to discover who she
was. Mrs. Bingham found out that the Suttons were a Devonshire family,
and she ascertained from an Exeter friend that Mr. Marmaduke Sutton was
the son of an Honourable, and that Mrs. Leighton was consequently a
high-born lady. She had married as her first husband a man who had done
well at Cambridge, but who took to gambling and drink, and treated her
with such brutality that they separated. At last he forged a signature
and was transported. What became of his wife afterwards was not known.
Langborough was not only greatly moved by this intelligence, but was much
perplexed. Miss Tarrant’s estimate of the Doctor was once more reversed.
She was decidedly of opinion that the marriage was a scandal. A woman
who had consented to link herself with such a reprobate as the convict
must have been from the beginning could not herself have possessed any
reputation. Living apart, too, was next door to divorce, and who could
associate with a creature who had been divorced? No doubt she was
physically seductive, and the doctor had fallen a victim to her snares.
Miss Tarrant, if she had not known so well what men are, would never have
dreamed that Dr. Midleton, a scholar and a divine, could surrender to
corporeal attractions. She declared that she could no longer expect any
profit from his ministrations, and that she should leave the parish.
Miss Tarrant’s friends, however, did not go quite so far, and Mrs. Harrop
confessed to Mrs. Cobb that “she for one wouldn’t lay it down like Medes
and Persians, that we should have nothing to do with a woman because her
husband had made a fool of himself. I’m not a Mede nor a Persian, Mrs.
Cobb. I say let us wait and see what she is like.”
Mrs. Bingham was of the same mind. She dwelt much to herself on the fact
that Mrs. Midleton’s great-grandfather must have been a lord. She
secretly hoped that as a wine merchant’s wife she might obtain admission
into a “sphere,” as she called it, from which the other ladies in the
town might be excluded. Mrs. Bingham already foretasted the bliss of an
invitation to the rectory to meet Lady Caroline from Thaxton Manor; she
already foretasted the greater bliss of not meeting her intimate friends
there, and that most exquisite conceivable bliss of telling them
afterwards all about the party.
Mrs. Midleton and her husband returned on a Saturday afternoon. The road
from Thaxton cross-roads did not lie through the town: the carriage was
closed and nobody saw her. When they came to the rectory the Doctor
pointed to the verse in white paint on the wall, “It shall be taken out,”
he said, “before to-morrow morning: to-morrow is Sunday.” He was
expected to preach on that day and the church was crammed a quarter of an
hour before the service began. At five minutes to eleven a lady and
child entered and walked to the rector’s pew. The congregation was
stupefied with amazement. Mouths were agape, a hum of exclamations
arose, and people on the further side of the church stood up.
It was Mrs. Fairfax! Nobody had conjectured that she and Mrs. Leighton
were the same person. It was unimaginable that a dressmaker should have
had near ancestors in the peerage. It was more than a year and a half
since she left the town. Mrs. Carter was able to say that not a single
letter had been addressed to her, and she was almost forgotten.
A few days afterwards Mrs. Sweeting had a little note requesting her to
take tea with the Rector and his wife. Nobody was asked to meet her.
Mrs. Bingham had called the day before, and had been extremely
apologetic.
“I am afraid, Mrs. Midleton, you must have thought me sometimes very rude
to you.”
To which Mrs. Midleton replied graciously, “I am sure if you had been it
would have been quite excusable.”
“Extremely kind of you to say so, Mrs. Midleton.”
Mrs. Cobb also called. “I’ll just let her see,” said Mrs. Cobb to
herself; and she put on a gown which Mrs. Midleton as Mrs. Fairfax had
made for her.
“You’ll remember this gown, Mrs. Midleton?”
“Perfectly well. It is not quite a fit on the shoulders. If you will
let me have it back again it will give me great pleasure to alter it for
you.”
By degrees, however, Mrs. Midleton came to be loved by many people in
Langborough. Mr. Sweeting not long afterwards died in debt, and Mrs.
Sweeting, the old housekeeper being also dead, was taken into the rectory
as her successor, and became Mrs. Midleton’s trusted friend.