"I HAD a hope . . . I have a hope," these words of his aunt's echoed
often through Howard's brain, in the wakeful night which followed.
Nothing was plain to himself except the fact that things were tangled;
the anxious exaltation which came to him from his talk with his aunt
cleared off like the dying away of the flush of some beaded liquor. "I
must see into this--I must understand what is happening--I must
disentangle it," he said again and again to himself. He was painfully
conscious, as he thought and thought, of his own deep lack both of
moral courage and affection. He liked nothing that was not easy--easy
triumph, easy relations. Somehow the threads of life had knotted
themselves up; he had slipped so lightly into his place here, he had
taken up responsibilities as he might have taken up a flower; he had
meant to be what he called frank and affectionate all round, and now he
felt that he was going to disappoint everyone. Not till the daylight
began to outline the curtain-rifts did he fall asleep; and he woke with
that excited fatigue which comes of sleeplessness.
He came down, he breakfasted alone in the early morning freshness. The
house was all illumined by the sun, but it spread its beauties in vain
before him. The trap came to the door, and when he came out he found to
his surprise that Jack was standing on the steps talking to the
coachman. "I thought I would like to come to the station with you,"
said Jack. Howard was pleased at this. They got in together, and one by
one the scenes so strangely familiar fled past them. Howard looked long
at the Vicarage as he passed, wondering whether Maud was perhaps
looking out. That had been a clumsy, stupid business--his talk with
her! Presently Jack said, "Look here, I am going to say again that I
was perfectly hateful yesterday. I don't know what came over me--I was
thinking aloud."
"Oh, it doesn't matter a bit!" said Howard; "it was my fault really. I
have mismanaged things, I think; and it is good for me to find that
out."
"No, but you haven't," said Jack. "I see it all now. You came down
here, and you made friends with everyone. That was all right; the fact
simply is that I have been jealous and mean. I expected to have you all
to myself--to run you, in fact; and I was vexed at finding you take an
interest in all the others. There, it's better out. I am entirely in
the wrong. You have been awfully good all round, and we shall be
precious dull now that you are going. The truth is that we have been
squabbling over you."
"Well, Jack," said Howard, smiling, "it's very good of you to say this.
I can't quite accept it, but I am very grateful. There WAS some truth
in what you said--but it wasn't quite the whole truth; and anyhow you
and I won't squabble--I shouldn't like that!"
Jack nodded and smiled, and they went on to talk of other things; but
Howard was pleased to see that the boy hung about him, determined to
make up for his temper, looked after his luggage, saw him into the
train, and waved him a very ingenuous farewell, with a pretence of
tears.
The journey passed in a listless dream for Howard, but everything faded
before the thought of Maud. What could he do to make up for his
brutality? He could not see his way clear. He had a sense that it was
unfair to claim her affection, to sentimentalise; and he thought that
he had been doubly wrong--wrong in engaging her interest so quickly,
wrong in playing on her unhappiness just for his own enjoyment, and
doubly wrong in trying to disengage their relation so roughly. It was a
mean business; and yet though he did not want to hold her, he could not
bear to let her go.
As he came near Cambridge and in sight of the familiar landscape, the
wide fields, the low lines of far-off wolds, he was surprised to find
that instead of being depressed, a sense of comfort stole over him, and
a feeling of repose. He had crammed too many impressions and emotions
into his visit; and now he was going back to well-known and peaceful
activities. The sight of his rooms pleased him, and the foregathering
with the three or four of his colleagues was a great relief. Mr.
Redmayne was incisive and dogmatic, but evidently pleased to see him
back. He had not been away, and professed that holidays and change of
scene were distracting and exhausting. "It takes me six weeks to
recover from a holiday," he said. He had had an old friend to stay with
him, a country parson, and he had apparently spent his time in
elaborate manoeuvres to see as little of his guest as possible. "A
worthy man, but tedious," he said, "wonderfully well preserved--in
body, that is; his mind has entirely gone to pieces; he has got some
dismal notions in his head about the condition of the agricultural
poor; he thinks they want uplifting! Now I am all for the due
subordination of classes. The poor are there, if I may speak plainly,
to breed--that is their first duty; and their only other duty that I
can discover, is to provide for the needs of men of virtue and
intelligence!"
Later on, Howard was left alone with him, and thought that it would
please the old man to tell him of the change in his own position.
"I am delighted to hear it," said Mr. Redmayne: "a landed proprietor,
that's a very comfortable thing! Now how will that affect your position
here? Ah yes, I see--only the heir-apparent at present. Well, you will
probably find that the estate has all been run on very sentimental
lines by your worthy aunt. You take my advice, and put it all on a
business-like footing. Let it be clear from the first that you won't
stand any nonsense. Ideas!" said Mr. Redmayne in high disdain, "that's
the curse of the country. Ideas everywhere, about the empire, about
civic rights and duties, about religion, about art"--he made a long
face as though he had swallowed medicine. "Let us all keep our distance
and do our work. Let us have no nonsense about the brotherhood of man.
I hope with all my heart, Howard, that you won't permit anything of
that kind. I don't feel as sure of you as I should like; but this will
be a very good thing for you, if it shows you that all this stuff will
not do in practice. I'm an honest Whig. Let everyone have a vote, and
let them give their votes for the right people, and then we shall get
on very well."