"They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our
interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our
character is by our interests."
Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.
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Anthony walked towards Thorpe. He was going back to the cottage, and
then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts. They
evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house,
and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he
therefore consented tacitly.
But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell,
and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was
winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion
of his reflections. He was not thinking very much of anybody except
himself, and the injustice of the world. What had he, of all men, done
to be visited as he was? He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own
uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its
very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were,
exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his
inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away.
The very foundations were shaken. For if people ceased to believe in
him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in
which he could continue to believe. He had made himself the centre of
his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own
powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to
him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest. To
his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered
nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the
monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.
Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance
upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think. He thrust
away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his
former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with
him. This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world
is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for
every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would.
But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the
wrong direction. He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of
the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so
cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had
told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have
thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open
sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden
feeling. He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all
things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr
Bennett's rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada's assurance
that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people
talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere. And then she was
pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the
days before the cloud,--which, indeed, she thought a matter of very
small consequence,--and he felt a certain gratitude towards her. There
may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to
opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon
Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was
certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently
liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too
harshly.
His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that
day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as
he drove to the door of the Bennetts' house, and went slowly up the
steps. There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the
windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for
him. In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose
up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if
it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had
surely offered no time for weariness. And yet a certain weariness
touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little
more warmth into his greeting than was usual.
"You are very late, Anthony," she said, putting her hand on his arm, and
shaking her long curl reprovingly. "Do you know that Aunt Henrietta
fancied you were not coming at all?"
"But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?"
"No, indeed. I don't think I should have spoken to you for a week if
you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don't know, that
you would have minded that. But now that you are here, you are to tell
me every single thing you have been doing."
His face darkened slightly. This small affectionate tyranny was new to
him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.
"Suppose we turn the tables," he said, with a little restraint. "What
have you been about to-day?"
"I? O, I have not been beyond the garden. I sat there and read and
thought--"
"Thought?"
"Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are
conceited enough already. O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom. Do go and look
out of that window; do, please, go!"
There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so
eager that Anthony obeyed. He rather dreaded Mr Bennett's ponderous
jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to
them.
"Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon,
after all. My wife took it into her head you'd be late, but I said, `My
dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and
the two must come together somehow.' Ha, ha! not bad, was it? And
you'd something else to draw you besides, hadn't you? Ada,--where are
you, Ada? Come, come, you'd have me believe you've never met before;
perhaps you'd like to be introduced. It's never too late to mend, is
it?"
"O Uncle Tom!" said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush. She looked very
pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony's face relaxed from the
lines which were becoming habitual. She was pretty and affectionate,
adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little
silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment. The
room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden
with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone
for a few sins of colour. It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett's
prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way,
and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which
never fails to create a friendly atmosphere. If they were apt to err on
the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners,
dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the
extent to which Mr Bennett credited him. Thus there were, on the
whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid
fret that had grown into his life--or out of his life, if you will--
worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself
in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were
rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and
gently flattered. Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought--if thinking
is not too strong an expression for the occasion--that it would be a
good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left
an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been
spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to
have no opinions on the matter. It was very likely a mistake from
beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good
reasons for all he had done. Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally
free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved
the way for the step which Ada's prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate
admiration brought about at last. No one could have suspected indolent
Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had
not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.
"It is so hot," she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step,
and sinking into an easy-chair. "One of those things they have in
India--punkahs, don't they call them?--would be very nice. Does your
mother feel the heat, Mr Miles? I really think it is quite a labour to
have to go down to dinner."
"My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,"
said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the
dining-room. "Come, Ada, it's all very well to live upon air, but when
you are as old as your aunt and I, you'll find it'll not pay. Not it,
indeed. No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim. By
the way, Miles, I haven't seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten
days. Nothing wrong, I hope?"
"I don't speak from personal knowledge," said Anthony, with the shade
again on his face, "but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering
was laid up with an attack of rheumatism."
"Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder. Any
one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the
seven. Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us
as soon as he can, and try a little variety. Or you might drive out
there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter. I've
the greatest regard for Mannering."
"Yes, indeed," assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed
hardly able to utter a contradiction.
"And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta," said Ada, cheerfully. "I want
to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers.
It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won't you?"
"Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with," said
Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance. "I'll meet you afterwards,
and hear what you have seen."
"Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one," persisted Mr Bennett, "and,
dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own! Say
to-morrow."
"To-morrow I am engaged."
"Well then, Wednesday."
"It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House," said Anthony in
an odd, unyielding tone.