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“I did but chide in jest: the best loves use it

Sometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:

When we invite our best friends to a feast,

’Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before ’em;

There’s something sharp and salt, both to whet appetite

And make ’em taste their wine well.”

Middleton.

From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities. When such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to different occasions. A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver. Its natural appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy, heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.

On the evening of Mr. Bennett’s party, the Underham fly might have been seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the church. The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters of an hour’s drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years’ growth; upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms. Some charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful—the repose of the last daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children’s laughter in the village, the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely. Even the wrinkled face of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job expressed it, “to turn agin her mate because it warn’t pudden.” Job himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and intensely conservative in his opinions. He had begun life as a Thorpe baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place. One of his peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe. The country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to those of Thorpe. “He’ve been up thaes foorty years, and he ain’t likely to be wrong now,” was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the Milman Arms fly.

At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle in the tower. It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however, regarded it with due respect.

“True to a minit,” Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction. “Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss Marion that, without she’s pretty sharp, we sha’n’t get to Under’m by half past six, nor nothing like it.”

“She’s on the stairs now,” said Faith, reconnoitring, “and if there isn’t Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest! I’m sure it is a wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp. It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah.”

“And that doesn’t come to everybody as it do to me—with their name,” said Job. “She’s a woman who isn’t tried with a hitch in her tongue, but she’s a neat figure for a cook.”

“Well, I’m sure!” said Faith, pouting a little. “I never could see nothing in Sarah’s figure—but you’d better get down and open the door, Mr. White.”

With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in order to pick up Mr. Mannering. The delay in starting had been caused at least as much by the Vicar’s desire to hear his opinion upon a certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by Marion’s lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely, until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for it to stop. Mr. Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer’s respect for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a courteous attention to Mrs. Miles’s household difficulties would permit. Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr. Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs. Miles’s care, until the Vicar opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the person for whom they had all been waiting.

They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs. Miles coming softly down to see them off, and pulling out Marion’s skirts with a little motherly anxiety. They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone bravely on Marion’s pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows. Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and barking wildly. Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and, scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.

It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at Underham. The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss. But every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the fields, revealed a sweet homelike view—with no bold glory of form or colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit mellowed through the kindly summer nights. By and by the lanes widened, they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham. Mr. Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of pain, of wonderment. After all, it is but a world of new editions. Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should meet again, touch each other’s hands, look into each other’s eyes. But Marion had not learnt this yet.

The Bennetts’ house stood directly against the road, and the wall along which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden; the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon the warm brick. Mr. Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs. Bennett’s, treating her in every respect as though she were their own child. Miss Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and Mr. Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice, was holding forth to Mr. Bennett upon a local election.

“I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,” he was saying, “but you’ll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a pair of fools.”

“Still, one doesn’t altogether like to go against North—he as good as belongs to Underham.”

“Don’t see the value of that,” said the Squire, with a little roughness; and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down. Anthony sat between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts’ niece, Marmaduke had Marion, and Winifred’s neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman, the member. Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an added charm of novelty hung about him. Even Mrs. Featherly, next to whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking, began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony’s pleasantness.

“You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr. Anthony, of one kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it,” she said graciously.

“He earned his holiday,” said Mr. Bennett, nodding his head. “After such great things at Cambridge, a man can’t do better than take a run and let his brain have a little rest. I’m never for overwork.”

“Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry,” Miss Lovell put in on the other side. She was a pretty girl, fair, with a long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little imploring emphasis in it. “And not in Latin this time, or you really must send us a translation.”

There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while. He was conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs. Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of inquiring at what they were laughing.

“Mr. Miles is telling us such amusing things,” said Miss Lovell, with unmistakable admiration in her tone.

“Amusing things!” repeated the Squire; “I never hear anything worth listening to of any sort. Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in these days, but there’s no making head nor tail of it when all’s said. It’s speechifying and argufying, and nothing done. That’s what made half the mischief in the Crimea. We sha’n’t get anything again like the old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe there’d be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes they were fools enough to blunder into.”

In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham was bold enough to question his authority as a military man. Mrs. Bennett only said placidly—

“Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?”

“It’s a good deal more inconvenient, ma’am, to have a heap of lies talked by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Letters were letters in those days, and you didn’t get pestered by every tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery. When they came they had something in them. My mother, now. I’ve heard my father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was twelve o’clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was, rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack. My father was crippled at the time, and there wasn’t one she’d let go in her stead. Poor old mother!” said the Squire, with an involuntary softening.

“I remember your mother, Squire,” said old Mr. Featherly.

“Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed,” said Mr. Chester, strongly again.

“Well, she was, she was. People called her a little high, but no one found her so when they were in trouble. And a fine woman, too, as upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country. Miss Winifred reminds me of her in many ways.”

The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile. But he shook his head at the old clergyman’s last remark.

“Winifred’s not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when she died.”

“She carries her head in the same fashion, though,” persisted Mr. Featherly. “And there’s something that reminds me.”

It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head with a little touch of stateliness. She had heard a good many of the flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their effect upon him. Something in his nature courted the pleasant popularity and the spoiling. Is it women only who care for such pretty things? He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was not without its influence. Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable that, although a woman who loves—even unconsciously—sets herself, often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly understand him. What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said to have been needful. If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or become bitter and morose. Perhaps there are two sides even to faults, and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little scornfully, as Mr. Featherly had noticed. Anthony, on his part, was not long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause. It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went out of the dining-room.

Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.

“I have been envying your good fortune to Mr. Miles,” she said, with an innocent air of admiration. “Of course you can see all his poetry whenever you like. It must be so delightful.”

“Only I never do,” said Winifred, standing upright. “I don’t care for poetry unless it is the very best.”

Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent forth her shaft. She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony, to see how sharply he was hit. If he had looked at her he might have known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make amends. But he would not look. He saw nothing of the involuntary grace of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face. He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for the second time that evening. Ada Lovell, looking up at him with admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and, perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for the remainder of the time. Winifred made no more advances. She stood leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr. Milman joined her. Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one end. People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the bats flitted softly. Mr. Mannering was telling clever stories, and making every one laugh. The Squire called his daughter at last. He disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed Anthony she made a little pause to say gently—

“Good-night, Anthony.”

“Good-night.”

There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a disproportionate sense of heaviness. Winifred knew that she should see Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence, but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor forget the sound of his cold good-night.