"So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be."
_In Memoriam_.
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The path from Thorpe Regis to Hardlands lay across two or three of those
green fields which ran in and out of the village and gave it the air of
deep retirement remarked by the few visitors who jogged in a fly from
the nearest town to see the thatched cottages, the red church, the apple
orchards, and the great myrtles which grew boldly up to the very eaves
of the houses. You might reach Hardlands in a more dignified and
deliberate fashion by driving along the old London road, and turning
into a short lane, when the iron gate would soon appear in sight; but
the most sociable and habitual means of approach was that which led
through the fields to a narrow shrubbery path, emerging from which the
long white house, with a green veranda stretching half-way across its
front, became pleasantly visible at once.
Between Hardlands and the Vicarage a very brisk communication was kept
up. The Squire and the Vicar had not indeed been friends beyond the
term of Mr Miles's residence at Thorpe, but that had now reached a
period of fifteen years; and although fifteen years at their time of
life will not balance an earlier friendship of but five, and although
there was neither similarity nor natural sympathy between the two men,
yet neighbourhood and a certain amount of isolation had formed a bond
which either of the two would have found it painful to break. Mr
Chester, moreover, had lost his wife while the Mileses were yet fresh
comers, and with two motherless girls left upon his hands it became a
natural thing to apply in his perplexity to Mrs Miles, a woman in whom,
whatever else might lack strength, it was not the sweet tenderness of
motherly instincts. Winifred and little Bessie were at least as much in
the Vicarage nursery as their own, sharing all things with Marion and
Anthony; and if, as they grew older, a half-unconscious change took
place in their relationships, it had not been the means of loosening the
intimacy, or diminishing the number of mutual visits. Bessie and her
father had that morning looked in at the Vicarage, and in the late
afternoon Marion and Anthony walked across the fields by the familiar
path along which they could have gone blindfold, towards Hardlands.
The day was one of those exhilarating days of early summer, before any
languor of great beat has stolen into its heart, and while the freshness
of spring still leaps up in breezy flutterings of leaf and bough.
Hay-making was going on vigorously, and the air was laden with the
grateful scent. There were fields yet green with cool depths of waving
grass, and others where keen shadows fell upon the smoothly shaven turf.
Here and there a foxglove reared itself upwards in the hedges, here and
there dog-roses unfolded innocent little pink and white buds. Without
any striking beauty in the landscape about Thorpe, a certain pastoral
and homely charm in the thatched cottages, the fields, the blossoming
orchards, and even in such unromantic details as the shallow duck-pond
under Widow Andrews's wall, made a more exacting demand upon the
affections of those who lived among them than could altogether be
understood by such as only looked upon them from the outside. Anthony
Miles, as he walked along with his head a little thrown back, switching
the grass with a laurel rod confiscated from Widow Andrews's little
grandson, who had been caught by the brother and sister, as they passed,
using it as an instrument of torture upon a smaller and weaker
companion, was not thinking of the familiar objects with any conscious
sense of admiration, and yet they were affecting him pleasantly; so
that, although he might have said many other places were filling his
heart at this time,--for there is an age with both men and women when
place has even more power than people,--it is likely that, had he known
the truth about himself, he would, after all, have found Thorpe in the
warmest corner; old sleepy stupid Thorpe with its hay-ricks, its bad
farming, and its broad hedges cumbering the land, against which he was
at this moment inveighing to Marion.
"Did you ever see anything cut up like these half-dozen acres? There's
one slice taken out, and here's another; a hedge six foot across at the
bottom if it's an inch, and a row of useless elms sucking all the
goodness out of the ground. I don't believe there's a richer bit of
soil in all England, and they can do no more than get a three-cornered
mouthful of pasture out of it for one old cow."
"O Anthony, why can't you let things alone, when they don't concern you?
My father has allowed you to have your own way about the paddock, and
you surely need not tease Mr Chester to death over his hedges."
"That is so like a woman, who can never see anything beyond her own
shadow. Can't you understand that it would be for the good of Thorpe if
the ground that feeds people's mouths were better drained and if there
were more of it?"
"So this is to be the next hobby, is it?"
"Farming? Hum, I don't know. If I could induce old Chester to go in
for a few experiments, it might be worth while, perhaps, to get up the
subject. But everything is on such an absurdly small scale here, that
it would be hardly possible to do anything satisfactory."
"And you really mean that you would be willing for all your schemes to
resolve themselves into the miserable mediocrity of settling down at
Thorpe and improving the hedges of the district!" said Marion
indignantly.
"One might do a good deal in that way," Anthony answered, with a
mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he looked at his sister. Any one who
had seen him at that moment must have been struck with the extreme
boyishness of his appearance. It might have been the curly light brown
hair, or, more likely, the slight figure and sloping shoulders, but
something there was which had changed but little for the last ten years,
and kept him a boy still. Marion looked years older. He was always
irritating her by his quick changes, his enthusiasm, his projects for
the good of other people. So long as he might have his own way in the
doing, there was nothing that he would not have done.
Marion had small sympathy for such notions; she clung to what was her
own with a passion and a wilfulness which made her blind to what she
would not see, but she did not care to go out of that circle. Yet
people said that the brother and sister were alike, and to a certain
extent the world's judgments were correct, as the world's judgments
often are, only that a hundred little things too subtile for so large a
beholder made a gulf between the two. He provoked her constantly as he
was provoking her now.
"I sometimes think you will end in doing nothing," she said, walking on
quickly.
"So do I, a dozen times a day. Who's this coming?--isn't it that fellow
Stephens? I've a bone to pick with him, I can tell him. What do you
suppose he's after now? He wants Maddox to let him have that bit of
ground close by the school to build a chapel upon. I think I see it!
Stokes gave me a hint of it, and I've been bullying Maddox all the
morning, and pretty well got his word for it at last. The canting
methodistical rascal! I wish I could see him kicked out of the place."
Anthony was speaking with great energy. He and Marion were walking
through the cool meadows, beyond which lay the softly swelling hills.
To the left, a little in front of them, the Hardlands shrubbery gate led
into a thin belt of fir-trees, but the path continued through the
meadows, until it crossed a small stream, and reached a lane branching
from the high road. People liked to turn away from the hard dust and
get into these pretty fields, where soft shadows fell gently and the
delicate cuckoo flowers grew; and Mr Chester had tacitly suffered a
right of way to be established, though he inveighed against it on every
occasion. It was a grievance with which he would not have parted for
the world, even if his own natural kind-heartedness had not been
entirely on the side of the tired wayfarers, and nobody took any notice
of it. So that even Anthony's indignation did not extend itself to the
fact that David Stephens was coming towards them along the narrow track.
"I shall go on: Winifred will be wondering what has become of us," said
Marion, who had not sufficiently forgiven her brother to be ready to
take his side in the contest. He stood still with his hand on the gate,
waiting for Stephens to pass, so determinedly, that the man as he
reached the spot stopped at once.
He was much shorter than Anthony, as short, indeed, as an ordinary-sized
boy of fourteen, and there was an actual though not very prominent
deformity of figure. Yet this warp of nature seldom struck those who
fronted him, for the head and face were so powerful and remarkable that
they irresistibly seized the attention. Even Anthony, who was as
enthusiastic in his prejudices as in his other feelings, was conscious
of something in the eyes which checked his first flow of resentment. He
would have preferred beginning with a more trenchant opening than--
"Hallo, Stephens, you're the person I wanted to see."
"Did you, sir? Well, this is the second time I've been to Thorpe
to-day."
"Yes, I know that," said Anthony, recovering himself, and feeling the
words come to him. "I've seen Maddox, he's just been at our house, and
what you're after won't do at all. Do you suppose my father would stand
one of your ranting places stuck up just under his nose? You'd better
take yourself off a few miles, for, let me tell you, Thorpe doesn't want
to see you, and you may find it a little hotter residence than you have
any fancy for."
"I am not afraid of threats, sir," said Stephens quietly.
Anthony had been speaking in an authoritative tone, as if his decision
quite set the matter at rest, and opposition irritated him as usual.
"I simply tell you what will happen if you come where you're not
wanted," he said, raising his voice. "And as to the chapel, we'll take
care that is never built. You may call it a threat if you please, but
it's one that will find itself a fact."
"Mr Miles, the word of God has borne down fiercer things than you are
like to hold over me, and it will do so yet again. I am sorry to go
against you, but I must either do that or against the inward
conviction."
"Cant," muttered Anthony wrathfully. "And so you suppose you're to have
that field?"
"Mr Maddox has as good as promised it, sir."
"You'll find him in a different mind now."
"He'll not go against his word!"
For the first time during the interview Stephens's quietness was broken
by a touch of passion. His eyes, lit up by a sudden fire, fastened
themselves anxiously upon Anthony. Anthony, who had hitherto been the
angry one of the two, felt a contemptuous satisfaction at having raised
this wrath.
"His word! Things are not done quite so easily as all that. You had
better turn and go back again, for all the good you'll get by going on."
"I should be glad of a direct answer, sir," said David, restraining
himself with an effort. "Has Mr Maddox told you downright that he will
not let us have the field?"
"Yes, he has."
Stephens's face had lost its red flush, but his eyes still held their
deep fire.
"Then God forgive you!" he said in a low passionate voice, opening out
his hands slightly, and walking away with quick steps. Anthony did not
look after him; he turned into the little path, and began to whistle
with a certain sense of pleasure in his victory which was not checked by
any pitiful misgivings.