THE PARK GATE.
He had however one considerate, even friendly parishioner, it
seemed, whom it became him at least to thank for his openness. He
ceased to pace the room, sat down at his writing-table, and
acknowledged Mr. Polwarth's letter, expressing his obligation for
its contents, and saying that he would do himself the honour of
calling upon him that afternoon, in the hope of being allowed to say
for himself what little could be said, and of receiving counsel in
regard to the difficulty wherein he found himself. He sent the note
by his land-lady's boy, and as soon as he had finished his lunch,
which meant his dinner, for he could no longer afford to dull his
soul in its best time for reading and thinking, he set out to find
Park Gate, which he took for some row of dwellings in the suburbs.
Going in the direction pointed out, and finding he had left all the
houses behind him, he stopped at the gate of Osterfield Park to make
further inquiry. The door of the lodge was opened by one whom he
took, for the first half second, to be a child, but recognized the
next as the same young woman whose book he had picked up in the
fields a few months before. He had never seen her since, but her
deformity and her face together had made it easy to remember her.
"We have met before," he said, in answer to her courtesy and smile,
"and you must now do me a small favour if you can."
"I shall be most happy, sir. Please come in," she answered.
"I am sorry I cannot at this moment, as I have an engagement. Can
you tell me where Mr. Polwarth of the Park Gate lives?"
The girl's smile of sweetness changed to one of amusement as she
repeated, in a gentle voice through which ran a thread of suffering,
"Come in, sir, please. My uncle's name is Joseph Polwarth, and this
is the gate to Osterfield Park. People know it as the Park-gate."
The house was not one of those trim, modern park-lodges, all angles
and peaks, which one sees everywhere now-a-days, but a low cottage,
with a very thick, wig-like thatch, into which rose two astonished
eyebrows over the stare of two half-awake dormer-windows. On the
front of it were young leaves and old hips enough to show that in
summer it must be covered with roses.
Wingfold entered at once, and followed her through the kitchen, upon
which the door immediately opened, a bright place, with stone floor,
and shining things on the walls, to a neat little parlour, cozy and
rather dark, with a small window to the garden behind, and a smell
of last year's roses.
"My uncle will be here in a few minutes," she said, placing a chair
for him. "I would have had a fire here, but my uncle always talks
better amongst his books. He expected you, but my lord's steward
sent for him up to the new house."
He took the chair she offered him, and sat down to wait. He had not
much of the gift of making talk--a questionable accomplishment,
--and he never could approach his so-called inferiors but as his
equals, the fact being that in their presence he never felt any
difference. Notwithstanding his ignorance of the lore of
Christianity, Thomas Wingfold was, in regard to some things, gifted
with what I am tempted to call a divine stupidity. Many of the
distinctions and privileges after which men follow, and of the
annoyances and slights over which they fume, were to the curate
inappreciable: he did not and could not see them.
"So you are warders of the gate here, Miss Polwarth?" he said,
assuming that to be her name, and rightly, when the young woman, who
had for a moment left the room, returned.
"Yes," she answered, "we have kept it now for about eight years,
sir.--It is no hard task. But I fancy there will be a little more to
do when the house is finished."
"It is a long way for you to go to church."
"It would be, sir; but I do not go," she said.
"Your uncle does."
"Not very often, sir."
She left the door open and kept coming and going between the kitchen
and the parlour, busy about house affairs. Wingfold sat and watched
her as he had opportunity with growing interest.
She had the full-sized head that is so often set on a small body,
and it looked yet larger from the quantity of rich brown hair upon
it--hair which some ladies would have given their income to
possess. Clearly too it gave pleasure to its owner, for it was
becomingly as well as carefully and modestly dressed. Her face
seemed to Wingfold more interesting every fresh peep he had of it,
until at last he pronounced it to himself one of the sweetest he had
ever seen. Its prevailing expression was of placidity, and something
that was not contentment merely: I would term it satisfaction, were
I sure that my reader would call up the very antipode of
SELF-satisfaction. And yet there were lines of past and shadows of
present suffering upon it. The only sign however that her poor
crooked body was not at present totally forgotten, was a slight shy
undulation that now and then flickered along the lines of her
sensitive mouth, seeming to indicate a shadowy dim-defined thought,
or rather feeling, of apology, as if she would disarm prejudice by
an expression of sorrow that she could not help the pain and
annoyance her unsightliness must occasion. Every feature in her thin
face was good, and seemed, individually almost, to speak of a loving
spirit, yet he could see ground for suspecting that keen expressions
of a quick temper could be no strangers upon those delicately
modelled forms. Her hands and feet were both as to size and shape
those of a mere child.
He was still studying her like a book which a boy reads by stealth,
when with slow step her uncle entered the room.
Wingfold rose and held out his hand.
"You are welcome, sir," said Polwarth, modestly, with the strong
grasp of a small firm hand. "Will you walk upstairs with me, where
we shall be undisturbed? My niece has, I hope, already made my
apologies for not being at home to receive you.--Rachel, my child,
will you get us a cup of tea, and by the time it is ready we shall
have got through our business, I daresay."
The face of Wingfold's host and new friend in expression a good deal
resembled that of his niece, but bore traces of yet greater
suffering--bodily, and it might be mental as well. It did not look
quite old enough for the whiteness of the plentiful hair that
crowned it, and yet there was that in it which might account for the
whiteness.
His voice was a little dry and husky, streaked as it were with the
asthma whose sounds made that big disproportioned chest seem like
the cave of the east wind; but it had a tone of dignity and decision
in it, quite in harmony with both matter and style of his letter,
and before Wingfold had followed him to the top of the steep narrow
straight staircase, all sense of incongruity in him had vanished
from his mind.