When Jim moved a little uncertainly and heavily on to the platform at
Withers he was instantly pounced upon by Mr. Bligh.
Mr. Bligh was a small, excitable man with short red hair, no eyelashes,
a nose that went a little up, a chin that shelved a little down, a
charming childish mouth, and the blue, swift-moving eyes of a fanatic.
He was dressed in gray flannels with an open shirt and a red tie.
‘My dear fellow! My dear fellow!’ he cried with unaffected rapture. ‘I
am sure it is you! I am sure it must be! I’m Bligh. Where’s dear old
Atkinson? Not come, too? Well, now do you know, I call that rather
shabby? And yet I don’t know—perhaps not—after all, clergyman, you
know?
‘Here, porter, take this suit-case—heavy luggage in the van—oh, _no_
heavy luggage! All right, porter; this does splendidly! People ought
always to travel with no luggage; travel light and you go far—Stevenson
or somebody or other says that.
‘Of course, dear old Atkinson’s a saint and awfully unprejudiced in his
way. Still, hang it, there’s the uniform. Now, I’m against all that. In
the middle ages, you know, all very right and proper—look like crows
and feel like crows—quite the thing for the middle ages, but dashes
conversation now!
‘No standing up against a uniform. I’m all for no differences—down with
class distinctions! We shall have heaps in common, you know! Shall we
walk up from the station?’
Mr. Bligh hardly waited for Jim’s stammered consent before he dragged
him down the platform and launched full tilt into a topic previously
discussed with the station-master. It was difficult for Jim to follow
Mr. Bligh’s conversation; it involved a cottage hospital, the
station-master’s daughter, his opinion of medical men, and a promise of
fresh vegetables. Then it spread to the porter and included a job down
the line, and his mother’s rheumatism. A train put a momentary stop to
it, but all the way to Warren Mr. Bligh kept darting off into cottages,
like an intelligent fox-terrier determined that nothing should escape
him.
‘I must just step in, my dear fellow—I promised Mrs. Green some fresh
eggs. She’s the most delightful woman in the world, but she can’t digest
anything at all except fresh eggs, and she won’t keep chickens. I think
she must have a prejudice against chickens. We must go into it all some
day, but we haven’t time now.
‘Oh, here’s the vicar—I must just talk to him about a meeting. I want
to persuade him to lend me the church rooms for a radical meeting, and
he’s a conservative, you know. So unfortunate. I thought _call_ it a
lecture on the Holy Land and throw in politics like pepper; just a
seasoning here and there; how would that be? I’ve been to the Holy
Land——’
The vicar kept them for some time. He seemed from the first to have his
suspicions of the Holy Land. He reminded Mr. Bligh that his former
lecture on the Alaskan fishing rights had been red-hot socialist
twaddle. Mr. Bligh did not seem at all annoyed by the severity of this
reminder; he merely dragged Jim forward and said,—
‘Nonsense, my dear fellow—nonsense. What about the ark—all went in two
by two, didn’t they? Where was your conservatism then? Here’s one of my
new boys, Jim Barton—I forget if you’re church or chapel, Jim, but it
doesn’t matter. The vicar has a charming old church; eleventh-century
font—you’ll be sure to like it.’
Then he pushed Jim past the vicar, waving his hand behind him and
saying,—
‘Right you are about the Holy Land. Thursday at eight!’ and started off
at a violent pace, talking breathlessly all the time.
‘A new heaven and a new earth,’ Jim caught in flashes, ‘at least let us
have the _earth_ now. That’s what I say—can’t _do_ much about heaven
till we get there! Be a pioneer. Break new ground—don’t be afraid of
what people say! Stand up to your principles.
‘I told you I was a socialist, didn’t I? All my boys are too. We take
the _Leader_ and _Daily News_. My wife takes the _Morning Post_. She
says we must balance.
‘She’s a most marvellous woman! You’ll like her immensely.
Religious—but one can’t help that, you know. Women of her type must
have religion. Religion and the _Morning Post_. But it’s of no
consequence. Her heart’s absolutely in the right place—with the masses.
You’ll see for yourself.
‘She comes from a very old family, the Winstantons of Alderbridge—of
course you’ve heard of them? Conqueror, you know—knights in armour in
the hall—family prayers—frightful prejudices—lost fortunes on the
turf.
‘She absolutely dashed me in their faces. They said—very natural on
their part—“Who’s Bligh?” and she said, “He’s going to be my husband.”
Neat, wasn’t it? And so quiet too.
‘You wouldn’t think she’d got the head she has to look at her. All solid
judgment and no noise. Moves about like a shadow, agrees with everything
I say—except about the Church, of course. But I tone that down before
her—I hope you won’t mind? I’m _with_ you, absolutely.
‘You say, “What’s the Church done for me” don’t you? You’re perfectly
right! The whole thing is a ridiculous mix up—exploded, too—like
hitting a dead cat to talk about it.
‘Bishops’ Palaces now—why, it’s comic opera—look at the
Gospels—nowhere to lay their heads. Can’t imagine an archbishop with
nowhere to lay his head, can you? Think of their modern bathrooms.
‘But I wouldn’t for the world hurt her feelings about them. I just keep
quiet. I even had the children baptized—I’m afraid you’ll think that
rather weak? You don’t? I’m so glad!
‘You see, I look at it this way. It means nothing to me at all—won’t
hurt the baby to have a few drops of water spooned at it. Can’t take in
the words at its age—doesn’t really mind a surplice—cake afterwards,
and godfathers and godmothers with silver mugs—a nice friendly idea. No
harm done—but my wife would be wretched if we didn’t do it.
‘When it comes to confirmation, of course, I really don’t know what I
shall do, because that interferes with the liberty of the subject—don’t
like children taking vows and all that—but perhaps they won’t? Modern
children, you’ll see for yourself; but she brings them up to have
extraordinary manners, reposeful very, though I was against it at first.
Revolt’s such a healthy sign I’m sure you agree with me, but not——’
Mr. Bligh stopped abruptly in the middle of the road; he put his tense,
lean arm on Jim’s shoulder and looked appealingly up at him as if the
entire issue lay in Jim’s hands.
‘_Not_ bloodshed! I _think_, not bloodshed, don’t you?’
Jim’s head was going round and round. He had expected the schoolmaster
chosen for him by Arthur to be an ominous and incomprehensible
power—Mr. Bligh was incomprehensible, but he wasn’t in the least
ominous.
Jim had feared that whatever he said would be wrong, and that oceans of
knowledge would stare him in the face, behind barriers of displeasure.
He had humbly hoped that he might break down the displeasure in time,
and obtain crumbs of knowledge by perpetual efforts, but the man who
confronted him in the middle of the road had no dreadful reserves of
power.
Jim knew, as a dog knows, that this was a man without authority and that
Mr. Bligh had in him neither protection nor any of the forces of attack.
In a sense it was a relief, because there was nothing formidable in him,
but Jim’s heart sank as he realised that there was nothing to be
expected from him either.
Mr. Bligh would be no arbiter of justice between Jim and the other boys.
There was mercy in every line of his weak, intense appearance; a
passionate, blind-eyed mercy that ran into mistakes as lightly as a
sparrow dips itself in and out of puddles.
Jim’s embarrassed eyes rested on him with a curious dumb hardness.
‘’Ose blood,’ he rather naturally asked, ‘don’t you want for us to
shed?’
It seemed a simple question, but it wasn’t. It took them a mile and a
half of perpetual explanation for Mr. Bligh to set forth, as he felt
succinctly and clearly, an enlightened idea of the needs and methods of
bloodless revolution.
‘But you must read Wells,’ Mr. Bligh said hurriedly, as they reached the
garden gate. ‘He isn’t always sound, but he has glimmerings—and Bernard
Shaw and Sydney Webb. They are “vieux jeux,” in a sense; but you ought
to begin with them and take “les jeunes” afterwards; and you’ll feel
perfectly at home with us, and it’ll all be quite simple.’
Then he opened the garden gate.
Jim had tried to prepare himself for luxury; he had recalled the
Masters’ new bright tennis lawn and the inside of their house where
there were rooms in which you didn’t need to do anything in particular;
but he had never seen a garden like Warren Manor. The gate opened on a
tiled Dutch pathway, between two high herbaceous borders swinging with
bloom and sweetness.
In front of them swept a large velvety green lawn, and under a flowering
pink May-tree Mrs. Bligh sat at a tea-table, surrounded by boys in white
flannels.
Beyond the herbaceous borders rose the house itself, a solid Georgian
house of purple-red brick.
Wisteria and climbing roses grew over the front of it. To Jim’s dazzled
eyes it looked as if it, too, were made of flowers. Under the study
window on a square of green grass stood a magnolia-tree. The heavy white
buds were carved hard and perfect, line upon smooth strong line against
the green-black leaves. There was no vagueness in the splendid flowers.
The tea-table was covered with Queen Anne silver and some very good old
Worcester. It would never have occurred to Mrs. Bligh not to use her
best possessions regularly, even out of doors. She took beauty for
granted; it was her daily bread. If anything happened to what she had,
it would be very tiresome, of course, and she would have to buy more.
As her husband and Jim approached her she looked up from the tea-table
and smiled. She did not move, but there was something in the quality of
her smile, so unexpectedly serene and strong, that Jim felt he had never
been welcomed before. He wondered if he should ever be able to smile,
all of a sudden, without looking silly, at some one perfectly strange?
Mrs. Bligh was dressed very simply in some light summer material which
had the effect of pale sunshine. Her shady garden hat was covered with
blue gauze; the colour deepened without changing the untroubled grayness
of her eyes. She had long black lashes and very delicate features. Her
mouth was older than the rest of her face and a little set; but the
corners of it were charming when she smiled.
She had had five children and had lost two. Her voice was very low, with
a curious quality of distinctness, as if she were speaking slowly in a
well-learned but foreign tongue. She said,—
‘I hope you had a pleasant journey, Mr. Barton. This is Mr.
Pritchard—Mr. Wivvle—Mr. Ainley. Do you take sugar in your tea?’
Her eyes, quiet, friendly, and without any hint of criticism, held Jim’s
while she spoke. He said in a hoarse voice that he did take sugar; he
found his throat unexpectedly dry, and his knees shook under him. Mrs.
Bligh did not speak or look at him again for a long time.
All her husband’s pupils loved her. She had no curiosity and no
eagerness; and she kept to perfection, in all the small crises of life,
the steadiness of a person not concerned.
If Jim had dropped the cup she gave him—with a cleverness which he only
afterward perceived—she would not have appeared to notice the accident,
and no one would have guessed from her expression whether he had broken
old Worcester or kitchen china. But she did not let him break it. Her
quiet eyes deflected accidents.
Jim found himself without volition safely seated beside her in an
incredibly comfortable chair. His feet felt enormously large and his
hands unduly heavy; but he was anchored in a sure refuge, and cut off
from the possible tactlessnesses of the outer world.
The other young men looked at him in a non-committal, friendly manner
over Mrs. Bligh’s head. Whatever they may have felt was completely
hidden beneath their sense of form. They took in turns the floods of Mr.
Bligh’s excited companionableness as if it was a thing to which use had
hardened them.
They laughed and chaffed each other over tennis. They had been playing
tennis, and they were going to play again after tea. They seemed to
Jim’s eyes to be incapable of anything else.
He looked at their fine hands, ostentatiously smooth and clean, and yet
not weak. Wivvle in particular had hands like iron. He looked at their
smooth, young faces; their controlled, untroubled eyes.
Nothing in them had been broken.
Wivvle was the handsomest; he was almost too stupid for Eton and had
left to be crammed for the army. Mr. Bligh, who under all the flood of
his contemporary thoughts was in command of his job, had warned the
young man’s parents to give him plenty of time over Wivvle.
Wivvle would take two years to learn what another boy could grasp in six
months. He knew how to behave, but he didn’t know how to concentrate,
except of course upon the playing-fields of Eton.
Ainley was extremely intelligent, a dark, haughty-looking boy with a
lively eye. He had delicate lungs and had been defrauded of half his
school life, but three years of Switzerland had saved his health.
He was as strong now as the rest of them, as lifted above the pinch of
life, and as unconcerned with anything disagreeable. He was more
vivacious than the other two, but it was only in his manner; beneath it
lay a solid block of conservative instincts with which neither his
vivacity nor his intellect had anything whatever to do.
Pritchard had neither Wivvle’s good looks nor Ainley’s brains. He was
born a gentleman and would always be rather better off than most people.
He took himself very seriously and didn’t want to be bothered. The
presence of Jim was decidedly a bother. If he had not been attached to
Mrs. Bligh and accustomed to the coaching of her husband, he would most
certainly not have submitted to the presence of a boy off a barge. He
would have left the place.
The other boys thought it rather a lark, but Pritchard didn’t. He didn’t
like larks out of his own class. But Mrs. Bligh held him as she held
each of them, by the invisible thread of her knowledge of how to live.
Barge-boys might be sprung upon Warren Manor at any moment, but she
could be trusted to prevent their being a nuisance.
She was a woman who took life with gravity and presence of mind. She
never underrated an obstacle or failed in the end to subdue it.
She believed in eternal verities, and used her articles of faith as
carefully as if they were matches. She found the arrangements of
temporary and material things—especially as regarded her
husband—needed perpetual watchfulness and self-control, and she had
acquired both these qualities to perfection.
Mr. Bligh adored her primarily and completely, but he adored very easily
and with ardour a great many other contradictory things. Mrs. Bligh
disliked ardour and she loathed contradictions, but she had never told
her husband that she had these dislikes.
Her perpetual fencing with nature never passed the barrier of her rather
set small mouth. She had kept the innocence of her girlhood untouched,
and she neither understood nor sympathised with passion. Her husband
thought her possessed of an immaculate virtue, and her submissiveness
partially hid from him the reluctance of her spirit.
Mr. Bligh tried to live up to her, and it cost him a great deal;
sometimes he couldn’t do it. Mrs. Bligh forgave him his lapses; but she
never knew what it was that he had to forgive her. Nor did Mr. Bligh
himself. His forgivenesses were always unconscious.
The centre of his wife’s heart was her religion and her children. She
knew nothing beyond what she had to know. Her resentment against the
dual nature of life took the form of a cloistered and preserved
ignorance.
She judged inflexibly; and she had never faced the bottom of either her
own or any one else’s heart.
She had made her husband successful and her children delightful.
Every one in her small world respected and admired her. She obeyed her
religion as unobtrusively as she poured out tea. Her self-control was so
great and so constantly successful that she had never discovered her
lack of moral courage. Nor had any one else.
It would have been as difficult to convince Mrs. Bligh of sin as to
break the shell of an oyster with a roseleaf. Sin was a thing she turned
instinctively away from, and you can not convince any one of things
which they instinctively evade; especially if they believe that there is
something rather handsome in evasion.
A small boy of five sauntered out upon the lawn; he had Mr. Bligh’s red
hair, and his father’s impetuosity of spirit looked out from his
mother’s gray, long-lashed eyes. He darted forward when he saw Jim.
‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘are you the boy who lives in a barge?’
It was the first direct remark which had been made to Jim since he sat
down to tea, and though Mr. Bligh made a quick movement to efface it, it
was wholly unnecessary.
The small hand laid on Jim’s knee, the eager, uplifted face, was the
most reassuring thing that had yet happened to him. His mouth took a
friendly twist.
‘Yus,’ he said; ‘I was on ’er—’er name’s _The Water-Lily_, but she’s
seemingly given me the slip.’
‘Oh,’ said the enthralled listener, ‘but would you—could you ever—in a
most awful kindness—take me in the barge? Because you can’t be going
not to live in her _always_, can you?’
‘Like a shot,’ said Jim, ‘if the river’s near enough. I marked ’er
course out on the map; she passes within ten mile of Warren now an’
again. You shall ’ave a kipper cooked below like for you, and watch our
Cadger—’e’s the dorg—ketch a water rat.’
‘Denis, dear, don’t be a bother,’ said Mrs. Bligh with her gentle
distinctness.
Denis’ eyes were wide with delight; the intensity of it almost took his
breath away; his grip on the big knee tightened.
‘Oh,’ he said, turning round to the assembled tea-party with flaming
cheeks and challenging eyes, ‘isn’t this man easily—the kindest in the
world?’
This testimonial broke up the tea-party. The boys strolled off to
tennis—they asked Jim casually if he had brought a racket and they said
‘Really,’ when he explained he couldn’t play. They were too polite to
laugh at his urging, in default of everything which he ought to have
known, that he could knock a ball about at footer!
He had never had a cricket bat in his hands. They were quite kind about
it, but none of them had ever eaten their meals with a young man who had
never had a cricket bat in his hands. Even Mr. Bligh was dashed for a
moment; only Mrs. Bligh appeared to think it was perfectly natural and
even convenient. She said with her unemphatic kindness,—
‘And now you can all go and play, can’t you, while I show Mr. Barton the
house?’
It seemed to Jim as if an angel had taken him by the hand and conducted
him through the many mansions of another world.
Warren Manor was furnished very well. Both Mr. and Mrs. Bligh understood
old furniture. It was not the kind that looks worm-eaten and black, but
furniture which has the careful bloom of pricelessness and time.
Everything shone with a kind of mild, fine radiance, and the carpets
under their feet were as soft and deep as heather.
At first it seemed to Jim as if there were no colour in the curtains and
chintzes, or in the few delicate pictures on the dull-papered walls. It
took him a long time to learn the restfulness of taste, and in his
private heart he reserved a terrible tenderness for turkey red and the
green of billiard tables.
Mrs. Bligh made little comments as they passed from room to room—they
had not the weight of explanations; but they came back to Jim afterward,
as the names on a sign post haunt the cautious mind of the traveller in
unknown lands.
When she left him at the door of his room she said with her faint, sweet
smile,—
‘I hope you will be very happy here, and will tell me anything I can do
to help you.’
She liked him; she liked his honest, troubled eyes; she liked even a
little his helplessness, for she perceived that it was the helplessness
of a strong man at a disadvantage; and secretly, perhaps, she liked what
she then and there received, the homage of his undivided heart.
Jim could get on all right with Mr. Bligh; anybody could; but it was
Mrs. Bligh who after all taught him most.
She taught him so much that in the end he wondered if any one had ever
taught him more.
She was the door by which all his illusions entered.