Towards evening he went out. The pale sunshine of winter flickered
on his path. The wind blew the straws about. He grew more and more
melancholy. A dog of his acquaintance was chasing rabbits in a field.
He had never been known to catch one, and since his youth had never
seen one, for he was almost wholly blind. They were his form of the
eternal chimera. The dog left the field and followed with a friendly
sniff.
They came together to the rectory. Mary Carton was not in. There was a
children’s practice in the school-house. They went thither.
A child of four or five with a swelling on its face was sitting
under a wall opposite the school door, waiting to make faces at the
Protestant children as they came out. Catching sight of the dog she
seemed to debate in her mind whether to throw a stone at it or call
it to her. She threw the stone and made it run. In after times he
remembered all these things as though they were of importance.
He opened the latched green door and went in. About twenty children
were singing in shrill voices, standing in a row at the further end. At
the harmonium he recognised Mary Carton, who nodded to him and went on
with her playing. The whitewashed walls were covered with glazed prints
of animals; at the further end was a large map of Europe; by a fire at
the near end was a table with the remains of tea. This tea was an idea
of Mary’s. They had tea and cake first, afterwards the singing. The
floor was covered with crumbs. The fire was burning brightly. Sherman
sat down beside it. A child with a great deal of oil in her hair was
sitting on the end of a form at the other side.
‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘I have been sent away. At any rate they are
further from the fire. They have to be near the harmonium. I would not
sing. Do you like hymns? I don’t. Will you have a cup of tea? I can
make it quite well. See, I did not spill a drop. Have you enough milk?’
It was a cup full of milk--children’s tea. ‘Look, there is a mouse
carrying away a crumb. Hush!’
They sat there, the child watching the mouse, Sherman pondering on his
letter, until the music ceased and the children came tramping down the
room. The mouse having fled, Sherman’s self-appointed hostess got up
with a sigh and went out with the others.
Mary Carton closed the harmonium and came towards Sherman. Her face and
all her movements showed a gentle decision of character. Her glance was
serene, her features regular, her figure at the same time ample and
beautifully moulded; her dress plain yet not without a certain air of
distinction. In a different society she would have had many suitors.
But she was of a type that in country towns does not get married
at all. Its beauty is too lacking in pink and white, its nature in
that small assertiveness admired for character by the uninstructed.
Elsewhere she would have known her own beauty--as it is right that all
the beautiful should--and have learnt how to display it, to add gesture
to her calm and more of mirth and smiles to her grave cheerfulness. As
it was, her manner was much older than herself.
She sat down by Sherman with the air of an old friend. They had long
been accustomed to consult together on every matter. They were such
good friends they had never fallen in love with each other. Perfect
love and perfect friendship are indeed incompatible; for the one is a
battlefield where shadows war beside the combatants, and the other a
placid country where Consultation has her dwelling.
These two were such good friends that the most gossiping townspeople
had given them up with a sigh. The doctor’s wife, a faded beauty and
devoted romance reader, said one day, as they passed, ‘They are such
cold creatures’; the old maid who kept the Berlin-wool shop remarked,
‘They are not of the marrying sort’; and now their comings and goings
were no longed noticed. Nothing had ever come to break in on their
quiet companionship and give obscurity as a dwelling-place for the
needed illusions. Had one been weak and the other strong, one plain and
the other handsome, one guide and the other guided, one wise and the
other foolish, love might have found them out in a moment, for love is
based on inequality as friendship is on equality.
‘John,’ said Mary Carton, warming her hands at the fire, ‘I have had a
troublesome day. Did you come to help me teach the children to sing? It
was good of you: you were just too late.’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘I have come to be your pupil. I am always your
pupil.’
‘Yes, and a most disobedient one.’
‘Well, advise me this time at any rate. My uncle has written, offering
me a hundred pounds a year to begin with in his London office. Am I to
go?’
‘You know quite well my answer,’ she said.
‘Indeed I do not. Why should I go? I am contented here. I am now making
my garden ready for spring. Later on there will be trout fishing and
saunters by the edge of the river in the evening when the bats are
flickering about. In July there will be races. I enjoy the bustle. I
enjoy life here. When anything annoys me I keep away from it, that is
all. You know I am always busy. I have occupation and friends and am
quite contented.’
‘It is a great loss to many of us, but you must go, John,’ she said.
‘For you know you will be old some day, and perhaps when the vitality
of youth is gone you will feel that your life is empty and find that
you are too old to change it; and you will give up, perhaps, trying
to be happy and likeable and become as the rest are. I think I can
see you,’ she said, with a laugh, ‘a hypochondriac, like Gorman, the
retired excise officer, or with a red nose like Dr. Stephens, or
growing like Peters, the elderly cattle merchant, who starves his
horse.’
‘They were bad material to begin with,’ he answered, ‘and, besides, I
cannot take my mother away with me at her age, and I cannot leave her
alone.’
‘What annoyance it may be,’ she answered, ‘will soon be forgotten. You
will be able to give her many more comforts. We women--we all like to
be dressed well and have pleasant rooms to sit in, and a young man at
your age should not be idle. You must go away from this little backward
place. We shall miss you, but you are clever and must go and work with
other men and have your talents admitted.’
‘How emulous you would have me! Perhaps I shall be well-to-do some day;
meanwhile I only wish to stay here with my friends.’
She went over to the window and looked out with her face turned from
him. The evening light cast a long shadow behind her on the floor.
After some moments, she said, ‘I see people ploughing on the slope of
the hill. There are people working on a house to the right. Everywhere
there are people busy,’ and with a slight tremble in her voice she
added, ‘and, John, nowhere are there any doing what they wish. One has
to think of so many things--of duty and God.’
‘Mary, I didn’t know you were so religious.’
Coming towards him with a smile, she said, ‘No more did I, perhaps.
But sometimes the self in one is very strong. One has to think a great
deal and reason with it. Yet I try hard to lose myself in things about
me. These children now--I often lie awake thinking about them. That
child who was talking to you is often on my mind. I do not know what
will happen to her. She makes me unhappy. I am afraid she is not a good
child at all. I am afraid she is not taught well at home. I try hard to
be gentle and patient with her. I am a little displeased with myself
to-day, so I have lectured you. There! I have made my confession. But,’
she added, taking one of his hands in both hers and reddening, ‘you
must go away. You must not be idle. You will gain everything.’
As she stood there with bright eyes, the light of evening about her,
Sherman for perhaps the first time saw how beautiful she was, and was
flattered by her interest. For the first time also her presence did not
make him at peace with the world.
‘Will you be an obedient pupil?’
‘You know so much more than I do,’ he answered, ‘and are so much wiser.
I will write to my uncle and agree to his offer.’
‘Now you must go home,’ she said. ‘You must not keep your mother
waiting for her tea. There! I have raked the fire out. We must not
forget to lock the door behind us.’
As they stood on the doorstep the wind blew a whirl of dead leaves
about them.
‘They are my old thoughts,’ he said; ‘see, they are all withered.’
They walked together silently. At the vicarage he left her and went
homeward.
The deserted flour-store at the corner of two roads, the house that
had been burnt hollow ten years before and still lifted its blackened
beams, the straggling and leafless fruit-trees rising above garden
walls, the church where he was christened--these foster-mothers of his
infancy seemed to nod and shake their heads over him.
‘Mother,’ he said, hurriedly entering the room, ‘we are going to
London.’
‘As you wish. I always knew you would be a rolling stone,’ she
answered, and went out to tell the servant that as soon as she had
finished the week’s washing they must pack up everything, for they were
going to London.
‘Yes, we must pack up,’ said the old peasant; she did not stop peeling
the onion in her hand--she had not comprehended. In the middle of the
night she suddenly started up in bed with a pale face and a prayer to
the Virgin whose image hung over her head--she had now comprehended.