The village society in Sliplin was not to be despised, especially by a
girl who had no pretensions, like Katherine. When a person out of the
larger world comes into such a local society, it is inevitable that he
or she should look upon it with a more or less courteous contempt, and
that the chief members should condole with him or her upon the
inferiority of the new surroundings, and the absence of those
intellectual and other advantages which he or she is supposed to have
tasted in London, for example. But, as a matter of fact, the
intellectual advantages are much more in evidence on the lower than on
the higher ground. Lady Jane, no doubt, had her own particular box from
Mudie’s and command of all the magazines, &c., at first hand; but then
she read very little, having the Mudie books chiefly for her governess,
and glancing only at some topic of the day, some great lady’s
predilections on Society and its depravity, or some fad which happened
to be on the surface for the moment, and which everybody was expected to
be able to discuss. Whereas the Sliplin ladies read all the books, vying
with each other who should get them first, and were great in the
_Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly_, and all the more weighty
periodicals. They were members of mutual improvement societies, and of
correspondence classes, and I don’t know all what. Some of them studied
logic and other appalling subjects through the latter means, and many of
them wrote modest little essays and chronicles of their reading for the
press. When the University Extension Lectures were set up quite a
commotion was made in the little town. Mr. Stanley, the rector, and Dr.
Burnet were both on the committee, and everybody went to hear the
lectures. They were one year on the History of the Merovingians, and
another year on Crockery--I mean Pottery, or rather Ceramic Art--and a
third upon the Arctic Circle. They were thus calculated to produce a
broad general intelligence, people said, though it was more difficult to
see how they extended the system of the Universities, which seldom
devote themselves to such varied studies. But they were very popular,
especially those which were illustrated by the limelight.
All the ladies in Sliplin who had any respect for themselves attended
these lectures, and a number read up the subjects privately, and wrote
essays, the best of which were in their turn read out at subsequent
meetings for the edification of the others. I think, however, these
essays were rarely appreciated except by the families of the writers.
But it may be easily perceived that a great deal of mental activity was
going on where all this occurred.
The men of the community took a great deal less trouble in the
improvement of their minds--two or three of them came to the lectures, a
rather shame-faced minority amid the ranks of the ladies, but not one,
so far as I have heard, belonged to a mutual improvement society, or
profited by a correspondence class, or joined a Reading Union. Whether
this was because they were originally better educated, or naturally had
less intellectual enthusiasm, I cannot tell. In other places it might
have been supposed to be because they had less leisure; but that was
scarcely to be asserted in Sliplin, where nobody, or hardly anybody, had
anything to do. There was a good club, and very good billiard tables,
which perhaps supplied an alternative; but I would not willingly say
anything to the prejudice of the gentlemen, who were really, in a
general way, as intelligent as the ladies, though they did so much less
for the improvement of their minds. Now, the people whom Katherine
Tredgold had met at Steephill did none of these things--the officers and
their society as represented by Charlie Somers and Algy Scott, and their
original leader, Mrs. Seton, were, it is needless to state, absolutely
innocent of any such efforts. Therefore Katherine, as may be said, had
gained rather than lost by being so much more drawn into this
intellectually active circle when dropped by that of Lady Jane.
The chief male personages in this society were certainly the doctor and
the clergyman. Curates came and curates went, and some of them were
clever and some the reverse; but Mr. Stanley and Dr. Burnet went on for
ever. They were of course invariably of all the dinner parties, but
there the level of intelligence was not so high--the other gentlemen in
the town and the less important ones in the country coming in as a more
important element. But in the evening parties, which were popular in
Sliplin during the winter, and the afternoon-tea parties which some
people, who did not care to go out at night, tried hard to introduce in
their place, they were supreme. It was astonishing how the doctor, so
hard-worked a man, managed to find scraps of time for so many of these
assemblages. He was never there during the whole of these symposia. He
came very late or he went away very early, he put in half an hour
between two rounds, or he ran in for ten minutes while he waited for his
dog-cart. But the occasions were very rare on which he did not appear
one time or another during the course of the entertainment. Mr. Stanley,
of course, was always on the spot. He was a very dignified clergyman,
though he had not risen to any position in the Church beyond that of
Rector of Sliplin. He preached well, he read well, he looked well, he
had not too much to do; he had brought up his motherless family in the
most beautiful way, with never any entanglement of governesses or
anything that could be found fault with for a moment. Naturally, being
the father of a family, the eldest of which was twenty-two, he was not
in his first youth; but very few men of forty-seven looked so young or
so handsome and well set up. He took the greatest interest in the mental
development of the Sliplin society, presiding at the University
Extension as well as all the other meetings, and declaring publicly, to
the great encouragement of all the other students, that he himself had
“learned a great deal” from the Merovingians lectures and the Ceramic
lectures, and those on the Arctic regions.
Mr. Stanley had three daughters, and a son who was at Cambridge; and a
pretty old Rectory with beautiful rooms, and everything very graceful
and handsome about him. The young people were certainly a drawback to
any matrimonial aspirations on his part; but it was surmised that he
entertained them all the same. Miss Mildmay was one of the people who
was most deeply convinced on this subject. She had an eye which could
see through stone walls in this particular. She knew when a man
conceived the idea of asking a woman to marry him before he knew it
himself. When she decided that a thing was to be (always in this line)
it came to pass. Her judgment was infallible. She knew all the
signs--how the man was being wrought up to the point of proposing, and
what the woman’s answer was going to be--and she took the keenest
interest in the course of the little drama. It was only a pity that she
had so little exercise for her faculty in that way, for there were few
marriages in Sliplin. The young men went away and found their wives in
other regions; the young women stayed at home, or else went off on
visits where, when they had any destiny at all, they found their fate.
It was therefore all the more absorbing in its interest when anything of
the kind came her way. Stella’s affair had been outside her orbit, and
she had gained no advantage from it; but the rector and the doctor and
Katherine Tredgold were a trio that kept her attention fully awake.
There was a party in the Rectory about Christmas, at which all Sliplin
was present. It was a delightful house for a party. There was a pretty
old hall most comfortably warmed--which is a rare attraction in
halls--with a handsome oak staircase rising out of it, and a gallery
above which ran along two sides. The drawing-room was also a beautiful
old room, low, but large, with old furniture judiciously mingled with
new, and a row of recessed windows looking to the south and clothed
outside with a great growth of myrtle, with pink buds still visible at
Christmas amid the frost and snow. Inside it was bright with many lamps
and blazing fires; and there were several rooms to sit in, according to
the dispositions of the guests--the hall where the young people
gathered together, the drawing-rooms to which favoured people went when
they were bidden to go up higher, and Mr. Stanley’s study, where a group
of sybarites were always to be found, for it was the warmest and most
luxurious of all. The hall made the greatest noise, for Bertie was there
with various of his own order, home, like himself, for Christmas, and
clusters of girls, all chattering at the tops of their voices, and
urging each other to the point of proposing a dance, for which the hall
was so suitable, and quite large enough. The drawing-room was full of an
almost equally potent volume of sound, for everybody was talking, though
the individual voices might be lower in tone. But in the study it was
more or less quiet. The Rector himself had taken Katherine there to show
her some of his books. “It would be absurd to call them priceless,” he
said, “for any chance might bring a set into the market, and then, of
course, a price would be put upon them, varying according to the
dealer’s knowledge and the demand; but they are rare, and for a poor man
like me to have been able to get them at all is--well, I think that,
with all modesty, it is a feather in my cap; I mean, to get them at a
price within my means.”
“It is only people who know that ever get bargains, I think,” Katherine
said, in discharge of that barren duty of admiration and approval on
subjects we do not understand, which makes us all responsible for many
foolish speeches. Mr. Stanley’s fine taste was not quite pleased with
the idea that his last acquisition was a bargain, but he let that pass.
“Yes; I think that, without transgressing the limits of modesty, I may
allow that to be the case. It holds in everything; those who know what a
friend is attain to the best friends; those who can appreciate a noble
woman----”
“Oh!” said Katherine, a little startled, “that is carrying the principle
perhaps too far. I was thinking of china, you know, and things of that
sort--when you see an insignificant little pot which you would not give
sixpence for, and suddenly a connoisseur comes in who puts down the
sixpence in a great hurry and carries it off rejoicing--and you hear
afterwards that it was priceless, too, though not, of course,” she
added apologetically, “like your books.”
“Quite true, quite true,” said the Rector blandly; “but I maintain my
principle all the same, and the real prize sometimes stands unnoticed
while some rubbish is chosen instead. I hope,” he added in a lower tone,
“that you have good news from your sister, Miss Katherine, and at this
season of peace and forgiveness that your father is thinking a little
more kindly----”
“My father says very little on the subject,” Katherine said. She knew
what he did say, which nobody else did, and the recollection made her
shiver. It was very concise, as the reader knows.
“We must wait and hope--he has such excellent--perceptions,” said the
Rector, stumbling a little for a word, “and so much--good sense--that I
don’t doubt everything will come right.” Then he added, bending over
her, “Do you think that I could be of any use?” He took her hand for a
moment, half fatherly in his tender sympathy. “Could I help you,
perhaps, to induce him----”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Katherine, drawing her hand away; her alarm,
however, was not for anything further that the Rector might say to
herself, but in terror at the mere idea of anyone ever hearing what Mr.
Tredgold said.
“Ah, well,” he said with a sigh, “another time--perhaps another time.”
And then by way of changing the subject Katherine hurried off to a
little display of drawings on the table. Charlotte Stanley, the Rector’s
eldest daughter, had her correspondence class like the other ladies; but
it was a Drawing Union. She was devoted to art. She had made little
drawings since ever she could remember in pencil and in slate-pencil,
and finally in colour. Giotto could not have begun more spontaneously;
and she was apt to think that had she been taken up as Giotto was, she,
too, might have developed as he did. But short of that the Drawing Union
was her favourite occupation. The members sent little portfolios about
from one to another marked by pretty fictitious names. Charlotte signed
herself Fenella, though it would have been difficult to tell why; for
she was large and fair. The portfolio, with all the other ladies’
performances, was put out to delight the guests, and along with that
several drawings of her own. She came up hastily to explain them, not,
perhaps, altogether to her father’s satisfaction, but he yielded his
place with his usual gentleness.
“We send our drawings every month,” said the young artist, “and they are
criticised first and then sent round. Mr. Strange, of the Water Colour
Society, is our critic. He is quite distinguished; here is his little
note in the corner. ‘Good in places, but the sky is heavy, and there is
a want of atmospheric effect’--that is Fair Rosamond’s. Oh, yes, I know
her other name, but we are not supposed to mention them; and this is one
of mine--see what he says: ‘Great improvement, shows much desire to
learn, but too much stippling and great hardness in parts.’ I confess I
am too fond of stippling,” Charlotte said. “And then every month we have
a composition. ‘The Power of Music’ was the subject last time--that or
‘Sowing the Seed.’ I chose the music. You will think, perhaps, it is
very simple.” She lifted a drawing in which a little child in a red
frock and blue pinafore stood looking up at a bird of uncertain race in
a cage. “You see what he says,” Charlotte continued--“‘Full of good
intention, the colour perhaps a little crude, but there is much feeling
in the sketch.’ Now, feeling was precisely what I aimed at,” she said.
Katherine was no judge of drawing any more than she was of literature,
and though the little picture did not appeal to her (for there were
pictures at the Cliff, and she had lived in the same room with several
Hunts and one supreme scrap of Turner--bought a bargain on the
information that it was a safe investment many years ago--and therefore
had an eye more cultivated than she was aware of) she was impressed by
her friend’s achievement, and thought it was a great thing to employ
your time in such elevated ways. Evelyn, who was only seventeen and very
frolicsome, wrote essays for the Mutual Improvement Society. This
filled Katherine, who did nothing particular, with great respect. She
found a little knot of them consulting and arguing what they were to say
in the next paper, and she was speechless with admiration. Inferior!
Lady Jane did not think much of the Sliplin people. She had warned the
girls in the days of her ascendency not to “mix themselves up” with the
village folk, not to conduct themselves as if they belonged to the
nobodies. But Lady Jane had never, Katherine felt sure, written an essay
in her life. She had her name on the Committee of the University
Extension centre at Sliplin, but she never attended a lecture. She it
was who was inferior, she and her kind: if intellect counted for
anything, surely, Katherine thought, the intellect was here.
And then Dr. Burnet, came flying in, bringing a gust of fresh air with
him. Though he had but a very short time to spare, he made his way to
her through all the people who detained him. “I am glad to see you here;
you don’t despise the village parties,” he said.
“Despise them!--but I am not nearly good enough for them. I feel so
small and so ignorant--they are all thinking of so many things--essays
and criticisms and I don’t know what. It is they who should despise me.”
“Oh, I don’t think very much of the essays--nor would you if you saw
them,” Dr. Burnet said.
“I tell you all,” said Miss Mildmay, “though you are so grand with your
theories and so forth, it is the old-fashioned girls who know nothing
about such nonsense that the gentlemen like best.”
“The gentlemen--what gentlemen?” said Katherine, not at all comforted by
this side of the question, and, indeed, not very clear what was meant.
“Oh, don’t pretend to be a little fool,” said Miss Mildmay. She was
quite anxious to promote what she considered to be Katherine’s two
chances--the two strings she had to her bow--but to put up with this
show of ignorance was too much for her. She went off angrily to where
her companion sat, yawning a little over an entertainment which
depended so entirely for its success upon whether you had someone nice
to talk to or not. “Kate Tredgold worries me,” she said. “She pretends
she knows nothing, when she is just as well up to it as either you or
I.”
“I am up to nothing,” said Mrs. Shanks; “I only know what you say; and I
don’t believe Mr. Tredgold would give his daughter and only heiress to
either of them--if Stella is cut off, poor thing----”
“Stella will not be cut off,” said Miss Mildmay. “Mark my words. He’ll
go back to her sooner or later; and what a good thing if Katherine had
someone to stand by her before then!”
“If you saw two straws lying together in the road you would think there
was something between them,” cried Mrs. Shanks, yawning more than ever.
“Oh, Ruth Mildmay, fancy our being brought out on a cold night and
having to pay for the Midge and all that, and nothing more in it than to
wag our heads at each other about Katherine Tredgold’s marriage, if it
ever comes off!”
“Let me take you in to supper,” said the rector, approaching with his
arm held out.
And then Mrs. Shanks felt that there was compensation in all things. She
was taken in one of the first, she said afterwards; not the very
first--she could not expect that, with Mrs. Barry of Northcote present,
and General Skelton’s wife. The army and the landed gentry naturally
were first. But Miss Mildmay did not follow till long after--till the
doctor found her still standing in a corner, with that grim look of
suppressed scorn and satirical spectatorship with which the proud
neglected watch the vulgar stream pressing before them.
“Have you not been _in_ yet?” the doctor said.
“No,” said Miss Mildmay. “You see, I am not young to go with the girls,
nor married to go with the ladies who are at the head of society. I only
stand and look on.”
“That is just my case,” said Dr. Burnet. “I am not young to go with the
girls, nor married to disport myself with Mrs. Barry or such magnates.
Let us be jolly together, for we are both in the same box.”
“Don’t you let that girl slip through your fingers,” said Miss Mildmay
solemnly, as she went “in” on his arm.
“Will she ever come within reach of my fingers?” the doctor said,
shaking his head.
“You are not old, like that Stanley man; you’ve got no family dragging
you back. I should not stand by if I were you, and let her be seduced
into this house as the stepmother!” said Miss Mildmay with energy.
“Don’t talk like that in the man’s house. He is a good man, and we are
just going to eat his sandwiches.”
“If there are any left,” Miss Mildmay said.