While Leo Swinford was making his first attempt to revolutionise, or
perhaps pauperise, the parish under the irregular and unofficial
guidance of Miss Grey and Mab, who had, of course, no public standing at
all, though he would have been a bold Rector indeed who had disowned the
abounding services and constant help of Miss Grey--other incidents were
going on of still more importance to the conduct of this history.
Notwithstanding the indignation with which she had received the
suggestion that money was strong enough to unlock all doors and solve
all problems, it was astonishing how soon that unauthorised and
unofficial Providence of the parish found ways and means to disembarrass
Leo of a considerable sum of money, and to produce a list of
requirements for which that vulgar dross would be very useful. She
adopted all Mab’s suggestions as to the Lloyd couple and old George,
permitting that little weekly allowances should be given them to keep
them in life and comfort; and she pronounced and sealed the doom of a
group of cottages which, though they were not ugly, like Riverside,
rather the contrary, a picturesque group, making quite a feature in the
level country, were not fit to live in, as Mr. Swinford was reluctantly
brought to allow. He did not like pulling to pieces the venerable walls
and high-pitched roofs, with their growths of lichen, which were a
picture in themselves, and struggled long in the name of art against
that dire necessity. Indeed, the case was a parable, since we are all
but too willing to pull down the ugly but not uncomfortable tenements of
White the baker, though it costs us a pang to do away with the
unwholesome prettiness of our own. But while Leo’s education in the
duties of a proprietor was thus progressing, there was another young man
whose training was going on in a very different way. Jim’s Sophocles
became more and more hard upon him as the spring days grew longer, and
the east winds blew themselves out, and the sun grew warm. What was the
good of all that Greek? he asked himself, and there was reason in the
question. If he were to be sent out to a ranch it would not help him
much to know about Electra and Antigone. Less tragic heroines, and lore
less elevated, would serve the purpose of the common day; or if he went
into a merchant’s office, there is no commercial correspondence in
Greek, even if modern Greek was the least like the classic. What, then,
was the use of it? And yet the Rector would hear no reason, but kept
grinding on and on. Jim had some cause for his dissatisfaction: and he
could not have understood the reluctance of his father, once a scholar
in his time, to resign for his son all hope of the honours which Jim
neither wished for nor prized. But the Rector could not wind himself up
to the point of deciding that what he fondly hoped were his boy’s
talents should be hidden either in a ranch or in an office. He kept
hoping, as we all hope, that fate would take some turn, that some
opening would come which would still permit of a happier conclusion. And
nothing was settled from day to day, and nothing done except that
Sophocles, that sop to anxiety, that poor expedient to occupy the lad
who hated it. It is a commonplace to add that if the vexed and unhappy
Rector had contrived a means to make his son’s prospects worse and his
life more untenable, he could scarcely have hit upon a better. To send
him away had a hope in it, though it might have been destruction, but to
keep him unwilling and embittered at home, held in this treadmill of
forced and unprofitable labour, was the destruction made sure and
without hope.
Jim was too sore and vexed with this fate from which there seemed no
escape, yet too well assured that it was his own fault, and that nothing
he could do was likely to restore him to the old standing-ground in
which everything that was good was hoped and believed of him--to make
any manly protest against it. There was no such power in him, poor boy.
It was his nature to drift, and to resent the drifting, but to take no
initiative of his own. When he was upbraided, as he was so often for his
idleness and uselessness, he would make angry retorts now and then, that
he would work fast enough if he had anything to do except that beastly
Greek: but these retorts were growled out under his breath, or flung
over his shoulder as he escaped, and the angry father paid no attention
to them, and did not perceive the reason that lay underneath this angry
folly. Even when the Rector adjured him, as he did sometimes, to say
what he would do, to strike out some path of his own, poor Jim had
nothing to say. He had no path of his own; he had only an angry
perception that the one upon which he was now drifting was the worst:
but if they would only let him alone, Jim did not care otherwise much
about it. What he proposed was to do nothing at all except a little
boating and lawn tennis, or skating in winter. He did not think of the
future, nor ask anything of it. If they would but let him alone.
When a young man in the country is what he calls bullied at home, work
demanded of him which he hates, aims and purposes insisted upon which he
does not possess, it is an infinite relief to him to escape to the
society of those who will flatter and soothe, and make him feel himself
a fine fellow and a gentleman in spite of all. Such was the company in
the ‘Blue Boar’ where the Rector’s son was thought much of, and his
opinions greatly looked up to, notwithstanding a conviction on the part
of the honest tradespeople who frequented the parlour that it was a
thousand pities he ever came there. They asked themselves why didn’t his
father look to it, and see that Mr. Jim had summut to do, and friends of
his own kind--in the same breath with which they flattered him as the
nicest young gentleman, and considered it a pleasure to hear what he
thought of things; but it was a long time before any one among them
could make up his mind to utter the words which were on all their lips,
and to tell Mr. Jim that the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ though it was
so respectable, was not the place for a young gentleman; and in the
meantime the incense of their admiration and pride in his companionship
was balm to the youth, notwithstanding his own knowledge that he ought
not to be there.
And there was another place which was becoming still more agreeable to
poor Jim. Since that first visit when she called him in, in the
darkening, he had paid many visits at the schoolroom to Mrs. Brown. He
could not go anywhere without passing the door, and in the evening, when
it was not very easy to see who went or came, she was almost always
there, looking out, breathing the air as she said, after the day’s work,
and keeping a watch for Jim. He was flattered by this watch for him even
more than by the admiration of the shopkeepers, and yet at the same time
half ashamed. For there was no depravity about the boy, and these
attentions on the part of a woman who was no longer young embarrassed
him greatly, and gave him a sense of danger which, however, in her
presence was entirely soothed and smoothed away. There was a sense of
danger but still more a sense of ridicule, which seized him whenever he
left her, and made him resolve with a blush never to go near her again.
And, yet again, there was safety too. Had Mrs. Brown had a daughter, a
girl whom he might have fallen in love with, whom people might have
talked about, Jim felt that the circumstances would have been quite
different; then, indeed, it would have been a duty to have stayed away:
but a woman who might be his mother! If she liked to talk to him it was
ridiculous, but it couldn’t be any harm. Nobody thought it anything
wrong that Osborne the curate should pay long visits to Miss Grey, and
take tea with her, and all that; and why not Jim to Mrs. Brown who was
much more amusing, and who had no society? She was a capital one to
talk; she had been a great deal about the world; she knew hundreds of
people: and there was always a comfortable chair ready for him, and she
had an art in manufacturing drinks which nobody Jim knew was equal to.
It never occurred to him to inquire why she looked out for him in the
evenings, and made those exquisite drinks for him. It was ridiculous,
but it was not disagreeable, and in the evening as he prowled along,
unwilling to go into the dull familiar house, where there was reproach
more or less veiled in every eye, where even Florry, who stood by him
the most, would rush out unexpectedly with an ‘Oh, Jim! why can’t you do
something and please papa?’--there was a wonderful seduction in the
sight or half-sight, for it was generally dark, of Mrs. Brown’s handsome
head looking out from the door. ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden; I hope you
are coming in a little to cheer me up.’ It was said so low that,
supposing somebody else to be passing, which was very rare, it could
reach no other ear but Jim’s. Sometimes he resisted the call; sometimes
when she was not at the door he went in of himself. It was all quite
easy and irregular, and out of the way. The entrance to Mrs. Brown’s
house was close to a lane which led to the Rectory, and thus it was easy
for him to dart in without being observed. Once, he felt sure, Osborne
passing had turned half-back to stare, and saw where he was going.
Confound that fellow! but, what did it matter what Osborne saw? He had
never been friendly with Jim, never showed any relish for his society,
which had rankled in the young man’s breast, though he was too proud
ever to have breathed a consciousness of the fact. But, whatever he was,
the curate was not a sneak who would go off to the Rectory and betray
what he had seen. Jim dived into the doorway, however, with an
accelerated pace of which he was ashamed; and the ridicule of it came
over him with a keener heat and flush. A woman old enough to be his
mother! But what was the difference? That fellow Osborne would go off
all the same to little Nelly Grey.
‘Oh, Mr. Jim, what a pleasure to see you!’ cried Mrs. Brown. ‘I had
almost given up hope: for it is near the Rectory dinner, isn’t it, and
you will be wanted at home----’
‘Oh, I am not such a good little boy as all that,’ said Jim, with an
uneasy laugh; ‘I am not so afraid of being late.’
‘That’s very bad, very bad,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘I am sure the young
ladies are always in time and punctual; they come to see me sometimes,
you know, and they always recommend punctuality. It’s a great virtue. I
have all the ladies to come to see me, but I sometimes think, Mr. Jim,
if they were to know----’
‘I don’t know what, I am sure,’ said Jim, growing very red, yet looking
at her steadily; ‘there is nothing I could tell that would make them
less respectful to you, Mrs. Brown--only that you were once in a better
position, and better off than you are now; my mother and the rest may be
a little narrow, but they would never think the less of you for that.’
Mrs. Brown was not a woman who was easily disconcerted; she could have
borne the assault of all the ladies of the parish and given them as
good, nay, much more than they could have given her: for though Mrs.
Plowden had a good steady command of words when she was scolding the
servants at the Rectory, she never could have stood for a moment before
the much more nimble and fiery tongue of the schoolmistress. But before
Jim’s assertion of her irreproachableness and conviction that her only
disadvantage was that she had seen better days, Mrs. Brown was utterly
silenced; she could not answer the boy a word; she was a woman quite
ready to laugh at the idea of innocence in a young man, but when she was
thus brought face to face with it, instead of laughing she was struck
dumb; she could not make him any reply; she pretended to be busy with
the lamp, raising and then lowering the light, and then she left the
room altogether without a word. Poor Jim felt that he must have offended
her by this untoward allusion to better days. Did she think by any
chance that he was taunting her with her poverty, or that anybody in the
world, at least anybody at Watcham, could think the less of her? Perhaps
he ought not even to have said that; he ought to have made sure that it
went without saying, a certainty that it was half an offence to put into
words. As, however, he sat pondering this in doubt and fear, Mrs. Brown
came back all smiles, bringing that familiar tall glass foaming high
with the drink which nobody in Watcham could compound--nobody he had
ever known before.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you were angry; and here you come like--like
Hebe, you know--with nectar in your hand.’
‘I am rather an elderly Hebe,’ she said, ‘but it’s a pretty comparison
all the same. If I were young and blooming instead of being old and
dried up, I should have made you a curtsey for your compliment; but
there’s this compensation, Mr. Jim, that a Hebe of seventeen, which is,
I believe, the right age, would probably not know how to make up a drink
like this. Taste it, and tell me if it isn’t the very nicest I have made
for you yet?’
‘It is nectar,’ said Jim fervently; ‘but,’ he added, ‘do you know, I
wish you wouldn’t make me such delicious things to drink. Why should I
give you all this trouble, and’--he paused, and added,
embarrassed--‘expense too?’
Mrs. Brown laughed and clapped her hands. ‘Expense, too!’ she cried;
‘how good! Oh, you don’t know how I get the materials, and how little
they cost me; people I used to employ in--in what you call my better
days, are so faithful to me. As you say, Mr. Jim, the world isn’t at all
such a hard place as one thinks; and even the ladies of the parish--but
you do amuse me so with your stories of the parish--it’s such an odd
little world, isn’t it? Tell me, what are they saying about Leo
Swinford? Has any one made up her mind to marry him? That’s what I
expect to hear every day.’
‘I don’t know anybody that wants to marry him,’ said Jim. ‘I suppose he
must take the first step in anything of that kind.’
‘Do you think so, really?’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Now, do you know, I am not
at all so sure of that; the ladies will think of it first, I’ll promise
you. He is a nice young man, with a good estate; and he hadn’t been a
week in the parish, I’ll answer for it, before two or three ladies had
settled who was to have him--and as for the young ones themselves----
Oh, my dear Mr. Jim, you are too good-hearted; you don’t think, then, of
the plans and schemes that may be laid for you?’
‘Me!’ said Jim, with a blush; and then he shook his head. ‘Nobody
approves of me enough to make any plans about me.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ she said airily; ‘but Leo Swinford is a
new man, and he’s got a quantity of money. Now, answer me my question,
for I’ve known him all his life, and I take an interest in him: who is
going to marry him? Does your----’ She paused, and the mischief in her
eyes yielded to alarm for a moment. However much a youth may be in your
bonds, and capable of guidance, yet it is possible that he may rebel if
you question him about his mother; so she changed what she was about to
say. ‘Does your--aunt,’ she proceeded, ‘Lady William, don’t you know, as
everybody calls her--think of him for her little fat girl? Oh, I beg
your pardon; I think she is a very nice little girl, but she is fat;
when she grows older she will fine down.’
Jim’s delicacy was not offended by this statement. He laughed. ‘Yes,’ he
said, ‘Mab is fat; but she is a nice little girl for all that.’
‘A dear little girl,’ said Mrs. Brown; ‘she comes and gives me advice
about the children. You would think she was seventy instead of
seventeen. Well, is she to be the bride. Have the parish ladies given
their votes for her?’
‘For Mab!’ Jim repeated with wonder. ‘Mab’s not that kind of girl at
all. She does not go in for--for marrying or so forth. She’s too young.
She thinks of her garden, and of boating, and that sort of thing. She is
a very jolly girl. She has got a will of her own, just. The ladies might
give their votes as much as they please, it would not matter for that.’
‘Of course I may be mistaken,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘I am the poor
schoolmistress. I don’t judge the gentry from their own point of view as
you do. I have to look up from such a very, very long way down.’ She
laughed, and Jim laughed too, though he did not quite know why. ‘But I
know that he is always at Lady William’s. What a little cottage she
lives in to be a lady of title, Mr. Jim; not very much bigger than
mine!’
‘Aunt Emily is not rich,’ said Jim, with a little uneasiness, feeling
that he ought not to be discussing his relation.
‘Poor lady; but if she marries her daughter to Leo Swinford? I know he
is there almost every day.’
‘Yes, so I hear,’ said Jim, ‘but I don’t believe he thinks of marrying
any one. He goes to see Aunt Emily. He goes for a good talk. There are
not many people to talk to here.’
‘To talk to a middle-aged lady, when there are plenty of young ones? Oh
no, Mr. Jim, you must not try to persuade me of that.’
‘But,’ said Jim, stammering a little, ‘it’s quite true. What difference
is there? just as I come to see you, and Osborne--but perhaps that’s not
quite the same thing.’
‘Osborne----’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Oh, the curate, the good young curate.
As you come to see me--thank you, Mr. Jim, how nice you are!--Leo goes
and sits with your dear aunt. And Mr. Osborne--to whom does Mr. Osborne
go? Oh, I owe him something; he is so nice to me about the school. Tell
me where he goes to have his talk.’
‘Well, perhaps it’s not quite the same thing,’ said Jim, confused;
‘Miss Grey, you know she is almost like another curate, she knows as
much about the parish; but if he goes and has tea with her, I don’t
quite see, don’t you know, what anybody could say--how anybody could
object--or what is out of the way, don’t you know, in me----’
‘Going to sit a little in the evening with Mrs. Brown,’ said the
schoolmistress with a burst of laughter, clapping her hands. ‘And quite
right too; the analogy is perfect. So there are three of us,’ she said,
‘whom the young men prefer. You can’t think how nice, and cheering, and
pleasant for an old person; to think of three old ladies, Lady William,
Miss Grey, and me! How much I am obliged to you, my dear Mr. Jim!’
How was she obliged to him? What had he said? Jim felt very
uncomfortable, though he could not have told why.