MODEL VILLAGERS.
They went to luncheon in a secondary dining room--a comfortable apartment,
which served pleasantly for all small gatherings, and had that social air
so impossible in a stately banqueting-chamber--a perfect gem of a room,
hung with gilt leather, relieved here and there by a choice picture in a
frame of gold and ebony. Here the draperies were of a dark crimson cut
velvet, which the sunshine brightened into ruby. The only ornaments in this
room were a pair of matchless Venetian girandoles on the mantelpiece, and
a monster Palissy dish, almost as elaborate in design as the shield of
Achilles, on the oaken buffet.
The luncheon was not a very genial repast; Miss Granger maintained a polite
sulkiness; Clarissa had not yet recovered from the agitation which Mr.
Granger's most unexpected avowal had occasioned; and even the strong man
himself felt his nerves shaken, and knew that he was at a disadvantage,
between the daughter who suspected him and the woman who had all but
refused his hand. He did his utmost to seem at his ease, and to beguile
his daughter into a more cordial bearing; but there was a gloom upon that
little party of three which was palpably oppressive. It seemed in vain to
struggle against the dismal influence. Mr. Granger felt relieved when, just
at the close of the meal, his butler announced that Mr. Tillott was in the
drawing-room. Mr. Tillott was a mild inoffensive young man of High-church
tendencies, the curate of Arden.
"I asked Tillott to go round the schools with us this afternoon," Mr.
Granger said to his daughter in an explanatory tone. "I know what an
interest he takes in the thing, and I thought it would be pleasanter."
"You are very kind, papa," Miss Granger replied, with implacable stiffness;
"but I really don't see what we want with Mr. Tillott, or with you either.
There's not the least reason that we should take you away from your usual
occupations; and you are generally so busy of an afternoon. Miss Lovel and
I can see everything there is to be seen, without any escort; and I have
always heard you complain that my schools bored you."
"Well, perhaps I may have had rather an overdose of the philanthropic
business occasionally, my dear," answered Mr. Granger, with a good-humoured
laugh. "However, I have set my heart upon seeing how all your improvements
affect Miss Lovel. She has such a peculiar interest in the place, you see,
and is so identified with the people. I thought you'd be pleased to have
Tillott. He's really a good fellow, and you and he always seem to have so
much to talk about."
On this they all repaired to the drawing-room, where Mr. Tillott the curate
was sitting at a table, turning over the leaves of an illuminated psalter,
and looking altogether as if he had just posed himself for a photograph.
To this mild young man Miss Granger was in a manner compelled to relax the
austerity of her demeanour. She even smiled in a frosty way as she shook
hands with him; but she had no less a sense of the fact that her father had
out-manoeuvred her, and that this invitation to Mr. Tillott was a crafty
design whereby he intended to have Clarissa all to himself during that
afternoon.
"I am sorry you could not come to luncheon with us, Tillott," said Mr.
Granger in his hearty way. "Or are you sure, by the bye, that you have
taken luncheon? We can go back to the dining-room and hear the last news of
the parish while you wash down some game-pie with a glass or two of the old
madeira."
"Thanks, you are very good; but I never eat meat on Wednesdays or Fridays.
I had a hard-boiled egg and some cocoa at half-past seven this morning,
and shall take nothing more till sunset. I had duties at Swanwick which
detained me till within the last half-hour, or I should have been very
happy to have eaten a biscuit with you at your luncheon."
"Upon my word, Tillott, you are the most indefatigable of men; but I really
wish you High-church people had not such a fancy for starving yourselves.
So much expenditure of brain-power must involve a waste of the coarser
material. Now, Sophy, if you and Miss Lovel are ready, we may as well
start."
They went out into the sunny quadrangle, where the late roses were blooming
with all their old luxuriance. How well Clarissa remembered them in those
days when they had been the sole glory of the neglected place! In spite
of Sophia, who tried her hardest to prevent the arrangement, Mr. Granger
contrived that he and Clarissa should walk side by side, and that Mr.
Tillott should completely absorb his daughter. This the curate was by no
means indisposed to do; for, if the youthful saint had a weakness, it lay
in the direction of vanity. He sincerely admired the serious qualities of
Miss Granger's mind, and conceived that, blest with such a woman and with
the free use of her fortune, he might achieve a rare distinction for his
labours in this fold, to say nothing of placing himself on the high-road to
a bishopric. Nor was he inclined to think Miss Granger indifferent to his
own merits, or that the conquest would be by any means an impossible one.
It was a question of time, he thought; the sympathy between them was too
strong not to take some higher development. He thought of St. Francis de
Sales and Madame de Chantal, and fancied himself entrusted with the full
guidance of Miss Granger's superior mind.
They walked across the park to a small gothic gateway, which had been made
since the close of Marmaduke Lovel's reign. Just outside this stood the
chapel of Mr. Granger's building, and the new schools, also gothic, and
with that bran-new aspect against which architecture can do nothing. They
would be picturesque, perhaps, ten years hence. To-day they had the odour
of the architect's drawing-board.
Beyond the schools there were some twenty cottages, of the same modern
gothic, each habitation more or less borne down and in a manner
extinguished by its porch and chimney. If the rooms had been in reasonable
proportion to the chimneys, the cottages would have been mansions; but
gothic chimneys are pleasing objects, and the general effect was good.
These twenty cottages formed the beginning of Mr. Granger's model
village--a new Arden, which was to arise on this side of the Court. They
were for the most part inhabited by gardeners and labourers more or less
dependent on Arden Court, and it had been therefore an easy matter for Miss
Granger to obtain a certain deference to her wishes from the tenants.
The inspection of the schools and cottages was rather a tedious business.
Sophia would not let her companions off with an iota less than the
whole thing. Her model pupils were trotted out and examined in the
Scriptures--always in Kings and Chronicles--and evinced a familiarity with
the ways of Jezebel and Rehoboam that made Clarissa blush at the thought
of her own ignorance. Then there came an exhibition of plain needlework,
excruciatingly suggestive of impaired eyesight; then fancy-work, which Miss
Granger contemplated with a doubtful air, as having a frivolous tendency;
and then the school mistress's parlour and kitchen were shown, and
displayed so extreme a neatness that made one wonder where she lived; and
then the garden, where the heels of one's boots seemed a profanation;
and then, the schools and schoolhouses being exhausted, there came the
cottages.
How Clarissa's heart bled for the nice clean motherly women who were put
through their paces for Miss Granger's glorification, and were fain to
confess that their housekeeping had been all a delusion and a snare till
that young lady taught them domestic economy! How she pitied them as the
severe Sophia led the way into sacred corners, and lifted the lids of
coppers and dustholes, and opened cupboard-doors, and once, with an aspect
of horror, detected an actual cobweb lurking in an angle of the whitewashed
wall! Clarissa could not admire things too much, in order to do away with
some of the bitterness of that microscopic survey. Then there was such
cross-examination about church-going, and the shortcomings of the absent
husbands were so ruthlessly dragged into the light of day. The poor wives
blushed to own that these unregenerate spirits had still a lurking desire
for an occasional social evening at the Coach and Horses, in spite of the
charms of a gothic chimney, and a porch that was massive enough for the
dungeon of a mediaeval fortress. Miss Granger and the curate played into
each other's hands, and between the two the model villagers underwent a
kind of moral dissection. It was dreary work altogether; and Daniel Granger
had been guilty of more than one yawn before it was all over, even though
he had the new delight of being near Clarissa all the time. It was finished
at last. One woman, who in her benighted state had known Miss Lovel, had
shown herself touched by the sight of her.
"You never come anigh me now, miss," she said tenderly, "though I've knowed
you ever since you was a little girl; and it would do my heart good to see
your sweet face here once in a way."
"You've better friends now, you see, Mrs. Rice," Clarissa answered gently.
"I could do so little for you. But I shall be pleased to look in upon you
now and then."
"Do'ee, now, miss; me and my master will be right down glad to see you.
However kind new friends may be," this was said with a conciliatory curtsey
to Miss Granger, "we can't forget old friends. We haven't forgot your
goodness when my boy Bill was laid up with the fever, miss, and how you sat
beside his bed and read to him."
It was at this juncture that Sophia espied another cobweb, after which the
little party left this the last of the cottages, and walked back to the
park, Daniel Granger still by Clarissa's side. He did not make the faintest
allusion to that desperate avowal of the morning. He was indeed cruelly
ashamed of his precipitation, feeling that he had gone the very way to ruin
his cause. All that afternoon, while his daughter had been peering into
coppers and washing-tubs and dustholes, he had been meditating upon the
absurdity of his conduct, and hating himself for his folly. He was not a
man who suffered from a mean opinion of his own merits. On the contrary, in
all the ordinary commerce of life he fancied himself more than the equal of
the best among his fellow-men. He had never wished himself other than what
he was, or mistrusted his own judgment, or doubted that he, Daniel Granger,
was a very important atom in the scheme of creation. But in this case it
was different. He knew himself to be a grave middle-aged man, with none
of those attributes that might have qualified him to take a young woman's
heart by storm; and as surely as he knew this, he also knew himself to be
passionately in love. All the happiness of his future life depended on this
girl who walked by his side, with her pale calm face and deep hazel eyes.
If she should refuse him, all would be finished. He had dreamed his dream,
and life could never any more be what it had been for him. The days were
past in which he himself had been all-sufficient for his own happiness.
But, though he repented that hasty betrayal of his feelings, he did not
altogether despair. It is not easy to reduce a man of his age and character
to the humble level of a despairing lover. He had so much to bestow, and
could not separate himself in his own mind from those rich gifts of fortune
which went along with him. No, there was every chance of ultimate success,
he thought, in spite of his rashness of that morning. He had only to teach
himself patience--to bide his time.
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