Читать книгу Halfway House - Maurice Hewlett - Страница 8

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Mr. John Germain, of Southover House, in Berkshire—since it is time to be particular about him—was five years older than his brother—a man of fifty, of habits as settled as his income, and like his income, too, mostly in land. Yet he had literary tastes, a fine library, for instance, of which the nucleus only had been inherited, and the rest selected, bound, and mostly read by himself. He was said to have corresponded with the late Mr. Herbert Spencer, and when he was in town invariably to lunch at the Athenæum, sometimes in the company of that philosopher. In person he was tall, distinguished, very erect, very lean, near-sighted, impassive, and leisurely in his movements. One could not well imagine him running for a train—and indeed the appointments of his household service must have precluded the possibility. His coachman had been with him five-and-twenty years, his butler thirty, and the rest to correspond. I believe there was not an upper servant in his employ who had not either seen him grow up or been so seen by himself. He lived mostly in the country, upon his estate, and there fulfilled its duties as he conceived them to be—was Chairman of Quarter Sessions, Deputy-Lieutenant, had been Sheriff, was Chairman of the Board of Guardians. At these things he worked, to lesser incumbencies he stooped, to meet them halfway and no more—as if he deprecated the fashion which insisted on them. Thus he was patron of sport rather than sportsman, subscribed liberally to the hounds, but never hunted, offered excellent shooting to his county, but never handled a gun. A very dignified man—with his high, fastidious face—you had to look hard to discern the character he was. He masked his features as he subdued his movements to express deliberately measured advance; and yet, in his own way and within his own limits, he had never failed of having what he wanted, as he wanted it. And if he had to pay, as we mostly do, he paid without turning a visible hair. I say that with the remembrance of his marriage to Lady Di Wymondesley in my mind.

That had, at first, seemed a stroke of Fortune with which he was not to cope. He had married her—when she was the fashion of the day, the day’s last expression—early in life, so soon as he had gone down from Cambridge and entered upon his inheritance. She had brought him little money—but he wanted none of her money; he wanted her, as every enthusiast for the ideal then did. A beautiful, haggard, swift, violent creature, tearing life to tatters that she might find some excitement in the lining, there came a year when Clytemnestra threatened to be her proper name—that year when her husband returned from a solitary tour in Palestine, Syria, and the Trojan plain, and when Ægisthus, they say, had not been wanting, to make the trio of them. But he, this immovable, triple-armoured man of thirty—he was no more—had shown what his fibre was when he had lived Ægisthus down, lived him out of Berks, out of his clubs, out of London, out of England, and then had set himself to work to live the devil out of his Clytemnestra. What he suffered will never be known, for he took good care of that; and what she may have suffered can hardly be guessed, for she talked too much and too bitterly to be believed. There’s no doubt that these were terrible years; there were fifteen of them, and of every one you would have sworn it must be the last. Providence finally justified that wonderful grit in the man—that panoply of esteem which no sword could bite on—by breaking Lady Di’s back in the hunting-field.

He had been forty when that crowning mercy came to him, and had spent the ten following years in getting his affairs into order. Changing outwardly none of his habits, such as his yearly visit to London, his yearly visit to Misperton Rectory, he was none the less conscious of a departed zest; his panoply was frayed if not rent; and wherever he was during those ten orderly years carried his hope about with him—a treasured, if dim, a real, if undefined, presence. He called it Hestia, and wrote verses about it in secret; he had a positive taste for certain forms of poetry—the Court pastoral, the shepherd-in-satin, beribboned lamb sort of poetry—but not a soul knew that, not even his butler. Hestia was not a woman—at least, she had no members; she appeared in his verses unwooing and unwooed. She was, rather, the vision of an Influence; she was an Aura, a rhythm, a tone. She involved, implied, a domestic calm which had never been his, though Southover’s walls were fair and many; she was a melodious beat added to his ordered goings; at her touch the clockwork of Southover chimed silvern instead of steely. The hope of this Hestia, if I may say so, he carried always about with him at the half-cock. It was the secret of his life. You would never have suspected him of a musical ear; yet there it was. You would have said that any spring of poetry in him would have been sealed at the fount by that panoply which could turn a sword-edge—but no! The eye of such a man may never betray its content and his heart be incapable of voicing its desire. But what heart covets eye will hold, and ear strain after. The man will burn within and make no sign—to fellow man.

And now, the stateliest hedge-breaker that ever, surely, wrought in Somerset, Mr. Germain proceeded on his declared purpose with an absence of parade which, while it robbed it of all sting, must also have threatened its value. Unless you shout Liberty as you trample barriers down, the prisoners may well remain within their pinfolds. There was no shouting in Misperton Brand. It was Mr. Germain’s habit to take breakfast in his own room and keep a solitary morning. He was not visible to the Rectory party until luncheon time; after tea he was accustomed also to withdraw himself until dinner. During these times of seclusion, as I collect, he devoted himself to the emancipation of Miss Middleham.

Sobered as such a young lady could not fail to be by the unimpeachable testimony of Thursday’s school treat and Saturday’s cricket, it was on the Monday following that a series of encounters began, which struck, excited, and ended by enthralling her. Walking to her work in the mornings, she must needs overtake him, returning late in the evenings, behold him strolling a few yards in front of her. This may be done once and be a transient glory, twice and be for remembrance—a comfort when things go awry; let it happen three times, and you will be frightened. After that it may colour each day beforehand as it comes. Miss Middleham had reached the stage where her heart began to beat as she approached the corner of Love-lane, at the end of which stood The Sanctuary behind its defences of laurela, white gates and laurustinus—when another shock was given her, one of those shocks which you get when you put two and two together, as the saying is. It did not take her a second to do the sum—but it had to be done.

On this occasion lessons had been rolling for an hour—long enough to discover how hot it was and how interesting a bee in a window could make himself; more than long enough for Tommy to yawn and squeak his slate-pencil, for Elsie to sigh and look appealingly at Miss Middleham—when the door opened and papa appeared, and behind papa, tall and benevolent, Mr. Germain, the great gentleman from the Rectory.

At this sudden invasion of her sanctuary, Miss Middleham rose startled in her place, and her hand unconsciously sought her side. As Dian surprised with her nymphs might have covered her unveiled breast, so she her heart. At least, so the visitor interpreted the act. If the children stared clear-eyed, Miss Middleham’s fine eyes were misty. Altogether a pretty commotion without and within.

Mr. Nunn—Mr. T. Albert Nunn, as he was pleased to sign himself—was a hale, elderly, and plump gentleman, in colouring rather like a greenhouse plant, so vividly white and feathery was he in the whiskers, so fleshily pink in the cheeks. He now showed considerable elation, though modesty rode it, as it were, on the curb.

“Miss Middleham—pray let me not disturb you. Mr. Germain, Sir, our preceptress, Miss Middleham—who is so kind as to take charge of my nestlings—ha, Sir! my motherless babes—” As he waved them into acquaintance with each other Miss Middleham became deeply suffused, but Mr. Germain was ready to help her.

“Miss Middleham and I are old acquaintances,” he said. “Indeed, I presume upon that at the moment.” He turned to her, excusing himself. “Mr. Nunn assured me that we should not disturb you, and I hope you will support him. You know my interest in educational matters——”

“Yes, Mr. Germain,” she said, faintly. “You have spoken of it.”

“I thought it due to you, when I learned what an honourable charge you profess, that you should know me an admirer of it from afar—unfortunately from afar. Your little pupils, too, I have met—” Mr. Nunn, who had a good ear for sentiment, had his cue.

“My motherless—! Ha, Miss Middleham, what can we show Mr. Germain—what have we of interest? My Gertrude, now, writes a good essay—I have heard you say so. Hey?”

“Very good, indeed, Mr. Nunn,” said Miss Middleham, while Miss Gertrude swallowed hard.

“I should enjoy a sight of it of all things,” said Mr. Germain; so the essay was produced—in all its round and becapitalled script, with Miss Middleham’s corrections in red ink. “The Character of John Lackland, King of England.”

Mr. Germain read between the lines, studied the corrections, and mused as he read. At the end, it happened there was a model essay in the teacher’s hand, not hard to discover as the teacher’s composition. He read this, too, and interpreted it in the light of his vision of the girl. He read into it her confident, natural voice, saw behind it her trim figure, her expressive eyes and softly rich colour. The entire absence of anything remarkable in itself gave him no dismay. He was not looking for that, but for confirmation of his emotions, for a reasoned basis to them. It was clear to him in a moment that the Kings of England were counters in a game—a game, to the teacher, only a shade less dreary, because much more familiar, than to her pupils. This was what he wanted to find. It corroborated his first vision: the vision held. Had she shown talent, to say nothing of genius, for her profession, he would have been greatly disconcerted. Handing the book back, he patted Miss Gertrude on the head for a quick little pupil, and her beaming parent on the back, in a manner of speaking, for possessing her. “You are happy, Mr. Nunn,” he said, “in your children’s promise, and I am sure that their instructress may be satisfied with their performance.”

“You are very good, Sir,” replied Mr. Nunn. “It is naturally gratifying to me—highly gratifying—when a gentleman in your position takes notice of my little brood. Ha! my little seed-plots, as I may truly say. Miss Middleham reports favourably of progress—steady progress. I hear that little Margaret’s sewing is somewhat remarkable——”

But Mr. Germain did not pursue his researches, having no need.

Heaven and Earth! he thought, as he had intended all along to think, were ever labours more jejune compelled upon a fresh and budding young life? Was ever yoke more galling laid upon yearling shoulders? To set a being so delicate at liberty, there can be no hammer and pick laid to the barrier; nay, it must be rather by enlarging from within. The butterfly lies so in a prison house, his iris wings close-folded to his sides. Break into the shell, you either crash the filmy thing, or usher it untimely into a chill world. No, no. Breathe tenderness, shed warmth about the lovely prisoner; it grows in grace and strength to free itself. Then be at hand to see the dawning of life, share in the contemplative ecstasy of a God, rejoice with Him in a fair work—behold it very good!

“What is exquisite here,” he told himself as he thought of Mary standing at her work, “is the bending to the yoke, and the resiliency, the strain for release which is irrepressible in so ardent and strong a nature. I remember the proud youths in the Panathenaic frieze, the noble maidens bearing baskets on their heads. Obedience, willingness, patience on the curb—can anything be more beautiful? You ride a perfect horse; he throbs under your hand. A touch will guide him, but brutality will make a mad thing of him. The gentle hand, the gentle hand! He who is privileged enough to have that in his gift, within his faculty, is surely blessed above his fellows!

“And does not that quality of beauty, indeed, depend upon the curb? Can it exist, as such, without it? No: the head cannot bow so meekly without the burden laid, the neck cannot spring until it has been bent. Ah, but the curb is wielded by the hand, and must never be in unwise or brutal employ. Here there is not brutality, but a stupidity beyond belief, something horrible to me, and deeply touching, that one so young, so highly graced, so little advantaged, should be drudging to prepare for others a lot no better than her own—drudging without aptitude, without reason, without hope to realize or ambition to gratify—desiring merely to live and grow and be happy! Horrible, most horrible. Surely so fair a spirit should be more thriftily expended! Transplant that sweet humour, that really beautiful submissiveness into a room more gracious, an atmosphere more appreciative, and how could it fail to thrive, to bear flower and fruit?”

Flower and fruit—ah, me! There leapt up in his heart an answering fire, and he cried to himself, “Hestia! The Hearth!”