A Country Gentleman and His Family by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVI.

By this time London was on the eve of its periodical moment of desertion; the fashionable people all gone or going; legislators weary and worn, blaspheming the hot late July days, and everything grown shabby with dust and sunshine; the trees and the grass no longer green, but brown in the parks; the flowers in the balconies overgrown; the atmosphere all used up and exhausted; and the great town, on the eve of holiday, grown impatient of itself. Although fashion is but so small a part of the myriads of London, it is astonishing how its habits affect the general living, and how many, diversely and afar off, form a certain law to themselves of its dictates, though untouched by its tide.

Warrender had never known anything about London. His habits were entirely distinct from those of the young men, both high and low, who find their paradise in its haunts and crowds. When he left Cavendish on their arrival, not without a suggestion on Dick's part of an after meeting which the other did not accept, for no reason but because in his present condition it was more pleasant to him to be alone, Warrender, who did not know where to go or what to do in order to carry out the commission which he had so vaguely taken upon him, walked vaguely along, carrying about him the same mist of dreams which made other scenes dim. Where was he to find a tutor in the streets of London? He turned to the Park by habit, as that was the direction in which, half mechanically, he was in the habit of finding himself when he went to town. But he was still less likely to find a tutor for Lady Markland's boy in the lessened ranks of the loungers in Rotten Row than he was in the streets. He walked among them with his head in the clouds, thinking of what she had said when last he saw her; inquiring into every word she had uttered; finding, with a sudden flash of delight, a new meaning which might perchance lurk in a phrase of hers, and which could be construed into the intoxicating belief that she had thought of him in his absence. This was far more interesting than any of the vague processional effects that glided half seen before his eyes, the streams of people with no apparent meaning in them, who were going and coming, flowing this way and the other, on their commonplace business. The phantasmagoria of moving forms and faces went past and past, as he thought, altogether insignificant, meaning nothing. She had said, "I wondered if you remarked"—something that had happened when they were apart from each other; a sunset it was, now he remembered, of remarkable splendour, which she had spoken of next day. "I wondered if you remarked," not I wonder, which would have meant that at that moment she was in the act of wondering, but I wondered, in the past, as if, when the glorious crimsons and purples struck her imagination, and gave her that high delight which nature can give to the lofty mind (the adjectives too were his, poor boy), she had thought of him, perhaps, as the one of all her friends who was most likely to feel as she was feeling. Poor Warrender was conscious, with bitter shame and indignation against himself, that at that moment he was buried in his father's gloomy library, deep in the shadow of those trees which he had no longer leisure to think of cutting, and was not so much as aware that there was a sunset at all; and this he had been obliged to confess, with passionate regret (since she had seen it, and given it thus an interest beyond sunsettings): but afterwards recalled, with the tempestuous sudden joy and misery that seized upon him all at once now.

In the middle of Rotten Row! with still so many pretty creatures on so many fine horses cantering past, and even what was more wonderful, Brunson, that inevitable competitor, the substance of solid success to Warrender's romance of shadowy glory, walking along with his arm in that of another scholar, and pointing to the man of dreams who saw them not. "He is working out that passage in the Politics that your tutor makes such a pother about," said the other. "Not a bit of it," cried Brunson, "for that would pay." But they gave him credit, at all events, for some classic theme, and not for the discoveries he was making in that other subject which is not classic, though universal; whereas the only text that entered into his dreams was that past tense, opening up so many vistas of thought which he had not realised before. Was there ever a broken sentence of Aristotle that moved so much the scholar to whom a new reading has suddenly appeared? There is no limiting the power of human emotion which can flow in almost any channel, but enthusiastic indeed must be the son of learning in whose bosom the difference of the past and the present tense would raise so great a ferment. "I wondered if you remarked." It lit up heaven and earth with new lights to Warrender. He wanted no more to raise his musings into ecstasy. He pictured her standing looking out upon the changing sky, feeling perhaps a loneliness about her, wanting to say her word, but with no one near whose ear was fit to receive it. "I wondered"—and he all the while unconscious, like a dolt, like a clod, with his dim windows already full of twilight, his mossy old trees hanging over him, his back turned, even, could it have penetrated through dead walls and heavy shade, to the glow in the west! While he thought of it his countenance too glowed with shame. He said to himself that never, should he live a hundred years, would he again be thus insensible to that great and splendid ceremonial which ends the day. For that moment she had wanted him, she had need of him: and not even in spirit had he been at hand, as her knight and servant ought to be.

And all this, as we have said, in the middle of Rotten Row! He remembered the spot afterwards, the very place where that revelation had been made to him: but never was aware that he had met Brunson, who was passing through London on his way to join a reading party, and was in the meantime, in passing, making use of all the diversions that came in his way, in the end of the season, as so reasonable and practical a person naturally would do.

Warrender went long and far in the strength of this marvellous supply of spiritual food, and wanted no other; but at last, a long time after, when it was nearly time to go back to his train, bethought himself that it would be better to lunch somewhere, for the sake of the questions which would be certainly put to him when he got home on this point. In the meantime he had occupied himself by looking out and buying certain new books, which he had either heard her inquire about or thought she would like to see—and remembered one or two trifles she had mentioned which she wanted from town, and even laid in a stock of amusements for little Geoff,—boys' books, suited rather to his years than to his precocity. About the other and more serious part of his self-constituted mission Warrender, however, had done nothing. He had passed one of those "Scholastic Agencies," which it had been his (vague) intention to inquire at, had paused and passed it by. There was truth, he reflected, in what Cavendish said. How could he tell who might be recommended to him as tutor for Geoff? Perhaps some man who would be his own superior, to whom she might talk of the sunset or even of other matters, who might worm his way into the place which had already begun to become Warrender's place,—that of referee and executor of troublesome trifles, adviser at least in small affairs.

He then began to reflect that in all probability a tutor in the house would be a trouble and embarrassment to Lady Markland: one who could come for a few hours every day (and was there not one who would be too happy of the excuse to wait upon his mistress daily?) one who could engage Geoff with work to be done, so that the mother might be free; one, indeed, who would thus supplement the offices already held, and become indispensable where now he was only precariously necessary, capable of being superseded. It is very possible that in any case, even had he not asked the valuable advice of Dick Cavendish, his journey to London would have come to nothing; for he was in the condition to which a practical proceeding of such a kind is inharmonious, and in which all action is somewhat against the grain. But with the support of Dick's advice his reluctance was justified to himself, and he returned to Underwood with a consciousness of having given up his first plan for a better one, and of having found by much thought an expedient better calculated to answer all needs. Meanwhile he carried with him everywhere the delight of that discovery which he had made. To say over the words was enough,—I wondered if you remarked. Had Cavendish been with him on the return journey, or had any stranger addressed him on the way, this was the phrase which he would have used in reply. He watched the sunset eagerly as he walked home from the station, laden with his parcel of books. It was not this time a remarkable sunset. It was even a little pale, as if it might possibly rain to-morrow, but still he watched, with an eye to all the changes of colour. Perhaps nature had not hitherto called him with a very strong voice; but there came a great many scraps of poetry floating in his head which might have given an interest to sunsets even before Lady Markland. There was something about that very golden greenness which was before his eyes, "beginning to fade in the light he loves on a bed of daffodil sky." He identified that and all the rims of colours that marked the shining horizon. Perhaps she would ask him if he had remarked; and he would be able to reply.

"Books?" cried Minnie—"are all those books? Don't you know we have a great many books already, more than we have shelves for? The library is quite full, and even the little bookcase in the drawing-room. You should get rid of some of the old ones if you bring in so many new."

"And who did you see in town, Theo?" said his mother. He had no club, being so young and so little accustomed to London; but yet a young man brought up as he had been can scarcely fail to have many friends.

"Most people seem to have gone away," he said. "I saw nobody. Yes, there were people riding in the Row, and people walking too, I suppose, but nobody I knew."

"And did you go up all that way only to buy books? You might have written to the bookseller for them, and saved your fare."

Theo made his sister no reply, but when Chatty asked, rather shyly, if he had seen much of Mr. Cavendish, answered warmly that Cavendish was a very good fellow; that he took the greatest interest in his friends' concerns, and was always ready to do anything he could for you. "I had no idea what a man he was," he said, with fervour. Mrs. Warrender looked up at this with a little anxiety, for according to the ordinary rules which govern the reasoning of women she was led from it to the deduction, not immediately visible to the unconcerned spectator, that her son had got into some scrape, and had found it necessary to have recourse to his friend's advice. Theo in a scrape! It seemed impossible: but yet there are few women who are not prepared for something happening of this character even to the best of men.

"I hope," she said, "that he is a prudent adviser, Theo; but he is still quite a young man."

"Not so young; he must be six or seven and twenty," said the young man; and then he paused, remembering that this was the perfect age,—the age which she had attained, which he had described to Cavendish as "about my own,"—and he blushed a little and contradicted himself. "Yes, to be sure, he is young: but that makes him only the more sympathetic; and it was not his advice I was thinking of so much as his sympathy. He is full of sympathy."

"You have us to sympathise with you," said Minnie. "I don't know what you want from strangers. We ought to stand by each other, and not care what outsiders say."

"I hope Theo will never despise the sympathy of his own people, but—a friend of your own choosing is a great help," said Mrs. Warrender. Yet she was uneasy. She did not think young Cavendish's sympathy could be on account of Theo's late bereavement, and what trouble could the boy have that he confided to Cavendish, and did not mention to his mother? She became more and more convinced that there must be some scrape, or at least that something had gone wrong. But save in these speeches about Cavendish there was no proof of anything of the kind. He gave no further explanation, however, of the business which had taken him to town, unless the fact that he drove over to Markland next morning with the half of the pile of books which he had brought from town, in his dog-cart, should afford an explanation; and that was so vague that it was hard to say what it did or did not prove.

He went over to Markland with his books, but left them in the dog-cart, shy, when he was actually in her presence, of carrying her that bribe. Books were a bribe to her; she had been out of the way of gratifications of this kind, and too solitary and forsaken during the latter part of her married life to know what was going on and to supply herself. She was sitting with Geoff upon the terrace, which ran along one side of the house, when Warrender appeared, and both teacher and pupil received him with something that looked very like relief; for the day was warm, and the terrace was but ill chosen as a schoolroom. The infinite charm of a summer day, the thousand invitations to idleness with which the air is full, the waving trees (though there were not many of them), the scent of the flowers, the singing of the birds, all distracted Geoff's attention, and sooth to say his mother's too. She would have been glad to sit quiet, to escape the boy's questioning, to put away the irksome lessons which she herself did not much more than understand, and to which she brought a mind unaccustomed and full of other thoughts. Of these other thoughts there were so many, both of the future and the past: it was very hard to keep her attention to the little boy's Latin grammar. And Geoff on his side was weary too; he should have been in a schoolroom, shut out from temptation, with maps hung along the walls, instead of waving trees, and where he could not have stopped to cry out, "I say, mamma, there's a squirrel. I am certain it is a squirrel," in the midst of his exercises. That, of course, was very bad. And then up to a recent period he had shared all, or almost all, his mother's thoughts; but since his father's death these had become so full of complications that a child could no longer share them, though neither quite understood the partial severance which had ensued. Both were relieved, however, when the old butler appeared at the end of the terrace, pointing out to Warrender where the little group was. The man did not think it necessary to expose himself to the full blaze of the sunshine in order to lead "a great friend" like Mr. Warrender close up to my lady's chair.

"We are very glad to see you; in fact, we are much too glad to see you," said Lady Markland, with a smile. "We are ashamed to say that we were not entering into our work as we ought. Nature is always so busy doing a hundred things, and calling us to come and look what she is about. We take more interest in her occupations than in our own."

"Mamma makes a story of everything," said Geoff, half aggrieved; "but I'm in earnest. Grammar is dreadful stuff; there are no reflections in it. Why can't one begin to read books straight off, without nasty, stupid rules?"

Warrender took little note of what the boy said. Meanwhile he had shaken hands and made his salutations, and his sovereign lady, with a smile, had given him a chair. He felt himself entering, out of the blank world outside, into the sphere of her existence, which was his Vita Nuova, and was capable for the moment of no other thought.

"I think," said Lady Markland,—"for we have really been at it conscientiously for a long time and doing our best,—I think, Geoff, we may shut up our books for to-day. You know there will be your lessons to prepare to-night."

"I'll go and look at Theo's horse. Have you got that big black one? I shall be back in a moment, mamma."

"If you look behind you will find some books, Geoff; some that perhaps you will like."

"Oh, good!" said the boy, with his elfish little countenance lighting up. He was very slight and small for his age, a little shadow darting across the sunshine. The half of the terrace lay in a blaze of light, but all was cool and fresh in the corner where Lady Markland's light chairs and table were placed in the angle of the balustrade, there half hidden by a luxuriant climbing rose. Above Lady Markland's head was a cluster of delicate golden roses, tinged in their hearts with faint red, in all the wealth of their second bloom. Her black dress, profound black, without any relief, was the only dark point in the scene. A little faint colour of recovering health, and perhaps of brightening life, had come to her face. She was very tranquil, resting as people rest after a long illness, in a sort of convalescence of the heart.

"You must forgive his familiarity, Mr. Warrender; you are so good to him, and at his age one is so apt to presume on that."

Warrender had no inclination to waste the few minutes in which he had her all to himself in any discussion of Geoff. He said hastily, "I have brought some other books to be looked at,—things which people are talking of. I don't know if you will care for them, but there is a little novelty in them, at least. I was in town yesterday——"

"You are very good to me too," she said. "A new book is a wonderful treat. I thought you must be occupied or absent that we did not see you here."

Again that past tense, that indication that in his absence—— Warrender felt his head grow giddy with too much delight. "I was afraid to come too often, lest you should think me—importunate."

"How so?" she said simply. "You have been like a young brother ever since—— How could I think you other than kind? The only thing is that you do too much for me. I ought to be trying to walk alone."

"Why, while I am here?" cried the young man; "asking nothing better, nothing half so good as to be allowed to do what I can,—which, after all, is nothing."

She gave a slight glance at him under her eyelids, with a faint dawning of surprise at the fervour of his tone. "The world which people say is so hard is really very kind," she said. "I never knew till now how kind—at least when one has a great evident claim upon its sympathy,—or pity, should I say? Those who find it otherwise are perhaps those whose troubles cannot be made public, and yet who expect their fellow-creatures to divine."

Warrender was sadly cast down to be considered only as the world, a type, so to speak, of mankind in general, kind to those whose claims were undeniable. He replied with a swelling heart, "There must always be individuals who divine, though perhaps they may not dare to show their sympathy,—ah, don't say pity, Lady Markland!"

"You humour me," she said, "because you know I love to talk. But pity is very sweet; there is a balm in it to those who are wounded."

"Sympathy is better.

"Ah," she cried, with a glimmer in her eyes, "if you go to the poets, Mr. Warrender! And that is more than sympathy. What did he call it himself? 'Such a friendship as had mastered time.'"

"Mamma, mamma, look here!" came in advance of his appearance the voice of Geoff. He came panting, flying round the other angle of the terrace, with his arms full of books. And here, as if it were a type of all that was coming, the higher intercourse, the exchange of thought, the promotion of the man over the child, came suddenly to an end.