Читать книгу Lady William - Mrs. Oliphant - Страница 9

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Jim strolled down into the village when the boat came to shore. It was before the hour at which he had concluded he would go home, which, as was natural, was considerably later than the hour proposed by Mab. What was the good, he said to himself, of going in before dinner, or at least before the time which was necessary to get ready for dinner? In that hour, as everybody knows, very little can be done. Mrs. Plowden and the girls would be in the drawing-room talking about what had happened in the afternoon, and the Rector would not have come in. So it was quite a certainty in Jim’s mind that no Sophocles would come of it if he had returned home when Florence did, as she begged him to do. He would not have worked; and, indeed, it would be a kind of breaking of his word if he had done so then, for had he not promised his father to work after dinner, which was quite a different thing? And it was more amusing to prowl along through the village on the outlook for anything that might happen, than to go in and listen to the girls chattering, probably about the Swinfords. And Jim was sick of the very name of the Swinfords. He had that distaste which a young man who has fallen into objectionable ways so often acquires of party-givings and society in what his mother called ‘his own rank of life.’ He flattered himself that what he did dislike was the conventionalities and stiffness of society, and that his own desire to see ‘life’ was a more original and natural sort of thing. He liked to hear what the people said when they were at their ease in inn parlours and tap-rooms. He liked, it is to be feared, what accompanied these sayings. And the more familiar he became in such localities, the more ‘out of it’ he felt in the drawing-rooms, and among the staid and quiet folk who represented society in Watcham. So that the Swinfords represented nothing but a succession of fresh annoyances to Jim. If they gave parties, as his mother and the girls hoped, he would be obliged to get himself up in gorgeous attire and take a part in these entertainments. There was a time when he, too, would have been excited by such a prospect; but that had departed after his first experiences of the life of the somewhat disreputable undergraduate, into which he had been so unfortunate as to fall. Now that he could not lounge into any resort where he could meet his peers in that class, Jim found his distaste for the home society grow upon him. He was tired to death of the girls. The old ladies bored him, which was not so wonderful. The correct old General and the clergymen about were old fogeys, which indeed was true enough. Where was the poor boy to find any one whom he could talk to with the freedom of those delightful but too brief terms at the University where he had been taught what life meant? It had been a shock to his own remaining scruples, and all the force of tradition, when he first strayed into the public-house. Oh no; not the public-house, but the little inn at Watcham, which was quite a pretty little house, all brilliant with flowers, and where people from town came down to stay in the summer; it was so nice, so quaint, so respectable, and so near the river. But it is a very different thing coming to stay at an inn for the sake of being near the river, and stealing in in the evening to the same place for society and amusement. There was nothing disreputable going on in the parlour of the ‘Swinford Arms,’ or the ‘Blue Boar,’ as it was vulgarly called, in reference to the Swinford crest, which presented that aspect to the common eye. The people who went there were respectable enough—the tradesmen in the village, good decent men who liked to see the papers and talk them over with the accompaniment of a glass of something, and a pipe: and the veterinary surgeon, who was a great deal about the country, and talked familiarly of Sir Thomas Barnes, and the Mortlocks of Wellwood, the great hunting people. It made a young man who felt acutely that he did not belong to the class of the tradesmen, more satisfied with himself to talk with a man who spoke of such people familiarly in a sort of hail-fellow well met way, even though he was only the vet. But by degrees as Jim acquired the habit of dropping in in the evenings to the ‘Blue Boar,’ he got to think that the village shopkeepers were very good fellows, and their opinions well worth hearing. So they were, indeed, as a matter of fact: solid, decent men, whose measured glass of something probably did them no harm, and whose wives were rather glad than otherwise that they had this little enlivenment in the evening of a little respectable society in the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ which was itself as respectable as could be desired. But yet it was not respectable, alas! for Jim.

When the Rector first discovered that this was where his son went when he went out in the evenings to take a walk, as he said, Mr. Plowden’s feelings would be difficult to describe. The misery, the shame, the acute and intolerable sense of downfall were perhaps exaggerated. But who can say what the descent is from the drawing-room of the Rectory to the parlour of the village public-house? which is what it really was, no doubt, though it was a most respectable little inn, and frequented in summer by the best of company. The first interview between the father and the son was very painful, but not without hope, for Jim himself was very well aware of all that it meant, and did not stand against his father’s reproaches. ‘I know it is not a place for the Rector’s son,’ he said, humbly enough. ‘It’s not a place for anybody’s son,’ the Rector said. ‘Do you think even White and Slaughter would like their sons to go there?’ This was an argument Jim was not prepared for, and he acknowledged with humility that he did not think they would. The Rector was very gentle with the boy that first time. He pointed out that for Slaughter and White, and even the vet., it was a sort of club where they went to meet their friends—and whether or not there might be any objections morally to their glass of something, yet at all events it was a very moderate indulgence, and went no further. ‘I don’t say it is quite right even for them; but that’s a very different question,’ Mr. Plowden said, and Jim acknowledged the self-evident truth. The Rector said nothing to his wife for that first time, nor for several times afterwards; but he could not conceal his anxiety when Jim disappeared in the evening, as, after a few very quiet and dull nights at home, he again began to do. When Mrs. Plowden heard she cried, almost with indignation, ‘But why didn’t you speak to him, James?’ Speak to him! After two or three interviews poor Mr. Plowden soon began to recognise how little use there was in that.

Jim, accordingly, when he left the girls to stroll down the village street, did so against the remonstrances of Florry, who tried hard to persuade him to come back and hear what mamma and Emmy had been doing at the Hall, then offered herself to share his walk, with equal seriousness. ‘I like a stroll by myself,’ Jim said.

‘It will very soon be dark, Jim; it is no fun walking in the dark.’

‘Not for you. But let me alone; if I like it, that’s enough, Flo.’

‘Oh, Jim, mamma is so pleased when you come in early,’ cried Florence, pleading; ‘it does us all so much good. If you only saw the difference in poor papa’s face when he knows you’re in the drawing-room.’

‘I shouldn’t be in the drawing-room in any case. I’ve got my Greek to do.’

‘Still better if you are at your Greek. Oh, Jim, do for once come home with me!’

‘I’ll come in in half an hour—will that satisfy you? I only want to shake myself up a bit after sitting there with nothing to do.’

‘Well, mind you don’t forget: in half an hour,’ said Florence.

He went off waving his hand to her. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, with that idle lounging step of the man who is ready for any mischief, but has none immediately in sight, he strolled away. Florence stood looking after him, with anxiety in every line of her face, until she remembered Mab looking on, whom it was necessary to keep from knowing if possible: and then the poor girl laughed. ‘Isn’t he lazy?’ she said; ‘and it does vex papa so. Papa thinks Jim should like Sophocles as much as he does, which is nonsense, isn’t it? But Jim says that old people never can understand young ones, and perhaps it’s true.’

‘Mother always understands me,’ said Mab, with a child’s unhesitating confidence.

‘Oh,’ said Florence. Her secret thought was, ‘What is there in you, you little thing, to understand?’ She said after a moment, ‘Boys are so different!’ with a sigh.

‘You should not nag at him so much,’ said Mab, with a reflection of her mother’s sentiments, who as yet knew little of Jim’s case, and gave her opinion privately in the bosom of her own home that the boy was being driven out of his senses by never being left alone.

‘I don’t think we nag at him,’ said Florence meekly: and then the two girls parted, Mab taking the way to the cottage, and Florry that which led to the Rectory. ‘You don’t want to hear what they have got to say?’ Florry said, with a faint smile, before the other left her.

‘I shall hear it from mother,’ said Mab, ‘and I don’t know that I care.’

So the cousins separated—with thoughts so different. And Jim strolled away in the other direction with a thirst which was both physical and mental, in his whole being. It was physical, alas! and that was perhaps in its immediate development the worst: but it was also mental, a craving for something he knew not what; something that would supply the atmosphere, the novelty, he wanted, the something he had not got. He knew very well at other moments that the inn parlour, and the village society, and the pipes and the glass—in his own case so often repeated—would not give that. Ordinarily, he thought Oxford would give it and the society of the young men with whom he sometimes talked metaphysics, though usually it was only horses and racing, and boats and bumps, and the qualities of the different dogs of the circle, that they discussed; but still, it was not to be denied that there was something in Jim’s being which thirsted, as well as that fatal thirst in his body, which, alas! it was so much more easy to satisfy. The drab-coloured house at home, with its habits fixed like iron; the evening round the lamp; the mother’s prolonged talk about her neighbours, and about people she once knew, and about getting on; his father’s scanty, careless replies; the girls’ talk, which was very often about their dresses, and how things were worn now—all these had become wearisome to the young man: and he did not care at all for his Sophocles. He had found in Oxford that opening out of the restricted household circle for which his young being craved; but it had not been the best of openings, and now poor Jim prowled down the village street, wanting that something which he could not tell how to attain to, neither what it was. He did not want to go to the ‘Blue Boar.’ He had never yet gone in daylight openly, but under cover of night, when the parlour window looked so bright in the dull village street. It wanted some courage to go now, in cold blood as it were, when there was no reason for it, and he felt all that it meant, the son of the Rectory going in, in the light of day, to the village public-house. He did not want to do it, if he could only find somewhere else to go.

It happened in this way that Jim was very ready to be led in any quarter where a little novelty or amusement was to be found. Not in any quarter; for supposing he had at that moment met the good old General, whose company could do him nothing but good, who had told him, perhaps, that he had a young nephew, perhaps a pretty niece, to whom he wished to introduce the Rector’s son, Jim would at once have found that he had to go back to his Greek: he would not have gone to the General’s, nor to any house, as his mother said, ‘in his own rank of life.’ And why this should be I am quite unable to tell. Houses which were in his own rank of life did not seem to him to have what he wanted; he would have felt sure in advance that the General’s nephew would be a prig, or perhaps an insolent young soldier, thinking nobody was anybody who was out of the service; and the General’s niece, ugly and stupid. This he would have felt sure of, though he could not have told why. Neither can I tell why, nor any of those to whom it would be of the greatest advantage to make this all-important discovery. It would be even more important than finding out how to resist a deadly disease; and in the one case as in the other, there are many surprises and many experiments. But nobody as yet has been able to find out the way.

It was while he was thus moving along on the other side of the street, not desiring to go to the ‘Blue Boar,’ yet not knowing where else to go, and having within him an imperious wish to go somewhere, that Jim suddenly heard in the soft stillness of the evening air—for the wind had quite fallen as night came on—a pleasant voice saying, ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden’; a voice which was quite new to him, and which he could not associate with anybody in Watcham. He knew everybody in Watcham, great and small, so that it was not easy to take him by surprise. He turned round, startled, and saw a woman, a lady, standing in the half-light in the door of the house next to the schools, which was appropriated to the village schoolmistress. He knew there was a new schoolmistress, for he had heard it talked of, but he had not seen her, so that this was about the only person in Watcham whose voice he did not know. Jim stopped suddenly and made a clutch at his cap. I hope he would on any occasion have taken off his hat to the schoolmistress, but at all events this voice made it imperative, for it was a refined voice, the voice of a lady, or else an exceedingly good make-believe.

‘Good evening,’ he replied vaguely. He could not very well make out her face, but yet there was something in it which it appeared to him he had seen before.

‘You do not remember me?’ she said.

‘You have newly come to the school, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I don’t think I have seen you before.’

‘You have seen me before, but not here, and if I were quite sure you did not remember me I should be very glad.’

‘That is rather a queer thing to say,’ said Jim.

‘Perhaps; but it is a true thing. I wanted to ask you, if you did remember me, not to do so—at least, to say nothing about it.’

‘This is more mysterious still.’

‘Yes, I daresay it does sound mysterious; but it is important to me. I don’t know whether to trust to you in this way, that if you remember me after you will say nothing about it; or to be frank and recall myself to your mind.’

‘You had better let me judge,’ said Jim.

Here was the something he wanted, perhaps—an adventure, a mystery; of all things in the world the least likely thing to find in Watcham village street.

The woman—lady he called her—gave a glance round to see if any one was looking, then suddenly stepping back, bade him come in. There was nothing in the house of the schoolmistress that looked like mystery. He knew it well enough. He had been there with his mother when he was a child. He had come with errands from her to the late mistress. The narrow passage and the tiny little sitting-room that opened off from it were as familiar to him as the Rectory. He walked into the parlour, which, however, startled him, as if it had been a new place which he had never seen before. How well he remembered the black haircloth sofa, the square table with its heavy woollen table-cover, which left so little room for coming or going. It was newly furnished, draped with curtains much more fresh than anything in the Rectory, a small sofa with pretty chintz, an easy-chair or two, the small tables which were not so common in those days. Jim did not notice those things in detail, but the general effect was such as to turn his head.

‘Hullo!’ he said, in his surprise.

‘You see the difference in the room? No; I wouldn’t have my predecessor’s old things. I have done it almost all with my own hands. Isn’t it nice?’

‘It is very different,’ said Jim. His home was dingy, but it was natural, and he had an undefined sense that this was not natural. There was something fictitious in the air of the little room with its poor, coarsely-papered walls—a sort of copy of a boudoir out of a novel, or on the stage. He was not very learned in such things, and yet it seemed to him to be part of a décor rather than a room to live in. In Mrs. Peters’ time it was very ugly, but as honest as the day.

‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘and let me give you a cup of tea; or perhaps—for I think I know gentlemen’s tastes—there may be something else that you will like better. Sit down, at least, and I will try if I can find something to your taste; for I want to make a little bargain with you, Mr. Plowden, that may be for my advantage and yours, too. Sit down for a moment, and wait for me here.’

She vanished as she spoke, and left him much bewildered in the little bedizened room. It occurred to him during the moment he was left there that perhaps, on the whole, it would have been better had he gone after all to the parlour in the ‘Blue Boar.’ But his entertainer reappeared in a minute or two, bearing in her hands a tray, upon which stood a tall glass, foaming as nothing ever foamed in the ‘Blue Boar.’ I don’t pretend to say what its contents were. They were foaming, and highly scented, and they pleased Jim Plowden, I am sorry to say, better than tea.

‘That is something like what we had at Nuneham that lovely day. Don’t you recollect me now?’

‘Mrs. Brown!’ cried Jim. It was not a name which said very much to the ordinary ear. It would, indeed, be difficult to say less. But the new schoolmistress made him a curtsey such as had never been seen in Watcham before.

‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you remember me; though I ought to have been pleased and satisfied that you did not—for a woman, however she may came down in the world, never likes to think that she has been forgotten. I have recalled myself to your recollection, Mr. Plowden, in order to say that I hope you won’t say anything to your father or any one of where we met last. I was then, if you remember, chaperon, to some young ladies.’

‘Oh yes, indeed, I remember perfectly,’ cried Jim, ‘your nieces.’

‘Well, yes, my nieces if you like; and I was not at all like a village schoolmistress, was I? Things happen so in this life; but it would do me no good, Mr. Plowden, with the Rector or the other good people, to know that I had been—well, helping you to squander your money at Oxford only last year.’

‘You did not help me to squander my money, Mrs. Brown. I was only one of the guests. I had no money to squander; but I fear what you mean is that you have come down in the world. I am very sorry, I am as sorry as I can be. It is very different, this, from anything you have been accustomed to; but instead of saying nothing about it, which I can understand as a matter of pride, don’t you think it would be better for me to tell my mother, who though she has her own ways which you might perhaps not care for, is very kind, and would, I am sure, try to make things as pleasant as she could and as little hard, and ask you up to the Rectory and all that?’

Mrs. Brown turned her back upon Jim, and he feared that she wept. But I don’t think she wept, though when she turned round again she had her handkerchief to her eyes. She said, ‘I am sure your mother is goodness itself, Mr. Plowden; but I am a proud woman, as you perceive. No, you must not breathe a word to your mother. I have one friend who knows all about me; and that is Mrs. Swinford, at the Hall; but except her and yourself I want nobody to know. Will you promise me that nobody shall know from you, Mr. Jim?’

How did she know his name, Jim? How did she remember him at all, a little, young, ignorant freshman much honoured to make one of the brilliant water party of which she and her nieces had been the soul? He was ready to have promised anything, everything she asked.