FLORENCE went faithfully to Mrs. Gould’s to ask for the nurse, though she knew the nurse was not there. A man, perhaps, would have departed from that position when it was no longer necessary, but she considered it needful, as a proof of good faith, to carry out her announced intention. It was a long way round, and then she had to make another tour to get to the place where the nurse really was, so that her walk altogether occupied some three-quarters of an hour more than it need have done, and the time was long, although, on the other hand, she was glad to have it to herself, and to get over the pang of that abrupt separation. She knew very well what it was that the curate had to say to her. It had been on his lips for many days, and she had dreaded it, not because she did not want to hear it, but because of a girl’s natural evasion of the moment she wishes for most, the shy, half mischievous, half visionary putting off of the sweet cup from the lips. The expectation of it was sweet; all the pleasures of imagination lay in that moment which would bring an entire change in her life, a remodelling of all its circumstances. Florence had taken a pleasure in stealing away, in postponing till to-morrow. But it cannot be said that she experienced that pleasure to-day. She felt that she had received a blow when the curate turned with that hasty leave-taking and left her. To run away is one thing, and hold off a joy which is on the way; but to be thus abandoned is another. It gave her a dull shock like that of an unexpected, uncomprehended blow. She had wondered how he would take her remonstrance, her statement of what she thought his duty, which had been on her lips so long; but she had never expected him to take it with instant offence, with a resentment which drove all other thoughts out of his mind. What did he resent? To have this duty which he did not wish to recognise pointed out to him, or that she should venture to point it out—she only a girl, and the girl who, by loving him, he perhaps thought was bound to see no flaw in him? Florence was not one of those who can see nothing but excellence in those they love, but she felt, with a momentary gleam of insight sharpened by pain, that perhaps Mr. Osborne was of the kind which requires that in a woman. She had not thought of the possibility before, that this might not be merely a momentary offence, but a wound from which he would not recover, which he would not forgive. A love-quarrel ever seems thus even when of the most trivial origin. It appears at once tragic, a thing never to be got over: an end of all the romance. Florence’s heart went down, down to the very depths. She said to herself that it was all over: that the last step would never now be taken, that there would be no more all her life but only an aching void, not even the recollection of words said that never could be forgotten. Had she let him speak she would at least have had that to cheer her; but as it was she would have nothing, not even the gloomy importance of an engagement to break off, a farewell that would have a whole tragedy in it: not even that: only a mere drifting asunder, a vacancy where there had been so much hope: a life blighted before it had come to bloom.
This thought occupied her mind sadly as she made that unnecessary round. He had gone off like a racehorse, scarcely touching the ground in the heat of his vexation and offence, but she went along very slowly, with the depression of the one who is in fault; whose interference and perhaps unreasonable censure had made the breach. Who, after all, was she that she should tell him of his duty, or that something else than the course he had adopted was a better way? she, only a girl with no education in particular, dictating not only to a man trained to discriminate what was the best, but a priest with the highest of vows upon him, and a special consecration to God’s service? Her presumption overwhelmed her when she thought of it in this light. But perhaps to be a member of a clerical family, used to see gentlemen of that profession too closely, and amid all the little trials of life, takes away to a certain extent the visionary reverence which it would be perhaps better to keep like an aureole about them. Florence could not surrender her natural judgment to this extent, nor convince herself that she had done wrong. She had taken perhaps an inopportune moment, but she had not said anything that was not true. She had managed badly for herself, and she would have to bear the result: but it was not wrong what she had said, nor was it wrong to say it; for perhaps, who could tell, he had never thought of that side of the question before? Very likely he had never thought of it. Some people are so happy that they never have in all their lives to encounter misery in their family, and how can they know, unless somebody who does know it, somebody who has been forced to understand it, tells them? And perhaps—she thought with a forlorn consolation—what she had said would bear fruit, though he might never have anything to do with her again. He was too much offended, wounded, hurt, to think of her any more; that was a thing to be received as certain once for all; but perhaps what she had said would come back to him, and he might feel that it was true.
Then if she had let it alone for the present, if she had allowed him to say what was on his lips, and had answered what was on hers, and had become his, and had pledged herself to him—why, then one time or other she must have spoken, not as now in the general, but plainly of Jim? And what if the righteous young man’s high disapproval and disgust with the unrighteous had gone even further, to the length of putting poor Jim, whom his sister loved, out of the charities of life altogether and casting him off as some good people do? Florence felt that no tie, not even marriage itself, would have made her bear that, and so concluded at last, mournfully, that what she had done was, perhaps, after all the best, so as to warn him off in time, and show him that her views were very different from his. Oh, what mistakes men can make even when they are the most highly instructed, the most high-minded and nobly purposed of their kind! Edward Osborne was all that; yet he thought that it was a more pious thing to make poor old Mrs. Lloyd and such harmless old bodies give up their little harmless indulgences than to risk a little trouble or company that, perhaps, might be distasteful to him, in order to save Jim.
Florence got home at last just in time for the family luncheon, which was a good thing for her, as it kept her from exposure to the close personal observation of her mother and sister, who were too well acquainted with every change of her countenance not to perceive at once when anything was wrong with Florry. But the family meal occupied Mrs. Plowden, and Emmy was fortunately so full of her own morning’s occupations that her sister escaped notice.
‘You are not eating anything, child, and you have no colour,’ her mother said, ‘after your long walk.’
‘It is the long walk that has done it, she has over-tired herself; you shouldn’t permit those long walks,’ said the Rector. This was his favourite way of treating any annoyance—with that consolatory conviction that it must be his wife’s fault, which supports many men through the smaller miseries of life. Mrs. Plowden took an equal pleasure in the pleas of self-defence. ‘How am I to prevent long walks when there is always so much to do in the parish?’ she said. ‘I am constantly telling you you should have more district visitors, or a mission woman, or something. Those girls have never a moment to themselves.’
‘Oh, it is nothing, mamma,’ said Florence. ‘I had to make a long round to get the parish nurse: for I went to Mrs. Gould’s to find her, and, of course, she wasn’t there.’
‘You ought to have known that, Florry, so it is your own fault. Why, you sent her off yourself to the little Heaths.’
‘I know, mamma: I can’t think how I could be so stupid,’ Florence said.
‘And who wants her now?’ said the Rector curtly.
‘It is that woman in Mead Lane, who is always in trouble. Mr. Osborne,’ said Florence, so anxious to keep her voice firm that she gave the name an emphasis and importance she had no intention of giving, ‘had been sent for to see her last night.’
‘Osborne! he’s always finding a mare’s nest somewhere—do you mean that woman that always is in trouble, as you say?—trouble, indeed! drink you mean, and all that follows. If he could get her to take the pledge it might do some good: that’s if she would keep it—which I don’t believe for a moment.’
‘Then why should he take the trouble, papa, if it is to do no good?’
‘That’s what I tell him for ever: but he believes in himself, the young prig: I wish he would keep to his own business, and not mix himself up with things he cannot possibly understand.’
‘My dear James,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘Mr. Osborne is an excellent young man. There has not been a curate in the parish I have liked so much since Mr. Sinclair’s time. And he is very well connected and well-off, I believe, and altogether a creditable person to have about—an Oxford man and all that.’
‘That’s why he gives himself so many airs,’ the Rector said—which was not to say that the Rector did not really approve of Mr. Osborne, but only that it was his rôle to take the critical side. Mrs. Plowden, for her part, knew very well what was going on, and though she had burst forth in the fulness of her heart to her sister-in-law upon his shortcomings, she was on ordinary occasions very careful to keep up Mr. Osborne’s reputation, and to impress Florence with a due sense of all his qualities.
Now there arose a testimony in Mr. Osborne’s favour which was totally unexpected. ‘He wasn’t at all a bad lot at Oxford, said Jim. ‘Fellows that knew him liked him there: he played racquets for the University, and won. I wonder if he ever gets a game now.’
‘You astonish me, Jim,’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘I never should have thought he was a man for games. What is racquets? is it a kind of tennis? for of course tennis is played with racquets. Perhaps we could get up a game for him here.’
At this Jim laughed loudly, and his father, who did not often join in his jokes, such as they were, backed him up faintly with a smile.
‘No, I don’t think we could get up a game for him here. It’s a tremendous game; not like anything so simple as lawn tennis. It is the old jeu de paume, isn’t it?’ said the Rector, ‘the beginning of them all.’
A conversation between the Rector and his son, on a general subject, on a question, something they were both interested in, without reproof on one side, or defence on the other: what a thing that was! Mrs. Plowden’s eyes grew lambent with the light of unusual happiness; after a moment she said: ‘I suppose you play it, Jim?’
‘I!’ said the young man. ‘Oh, I’m not half enough of a swell for that, mother.’
‘I don’t see,’ said the mother, half happy, half indignant, ‘why you shouldn’t be swell enough, Jim, to do anything Mr. Osborne does.’
‘You don’t remember,’ said the Rector sharply, ‘that it takes application to play a game well, as well as to study well, and that Jim never thought it good enough, either for one thing or another.’
Alas! how short the moment of happiness is!
‘Oh, girls,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when lunch was over, and the three ladies were in the drawing-room again, ‘if Mr. Osborne would only take up Jim! He is the only man in the parish who could do it; and now that I hear he plays games and things I feel a little hopeful. For whatever your father may say, I know that Jim is good at all games. We might get up this racquets, whatever it is, and get them to play together. We might ask the General, Florry, what it is. Army men always know everything of that kind. Or, Emmy, you might remember to ask your aunt; and there’s Mr. Swinford; perhaps he plays it too.’
‘I suppose it is a gentleman’s game,’ said Emmy, with perhaps not so strong an enthusiasm.
‘Do you think I might speak to Mr. Osborne about it?’ said the mother, pondering. When she asked advice of her girls it was in fact a sort of thinking aloud, a putting of the question to her own mind. A thing often seems quite different put out in audible words from what it does when only turned over and over in the recesses of your own heart. ‘I might tell him that Jim was very fond of it, and that hearing he was good I thought I would consult him how we should get it up.’
‘But Jim never said he was fond of it, mamma.’
‘Oh, how matter-of-fact you are, Emmy! Jim would be fond of anything that was a game. He would be glad of any break; and to get him surrounded with nice companions like himself, and taking his pleasure with them, wouldn’t that be better for him than Sophocles, or any old Pagan of them all? Your father doesn’t think so, perhaps, but I do; and, if you look at it reasonably, so will you too.’
‘I would not trust to Mr. Osborne if I were you,’ said Florence. She was standing in the corner beyond the window at the big old-fashioned round table, which had been dismissed from its old-fashioned place in the centre of the room, but was retained in the corner because it was so useful. Florence had her back to her mother and sister, and was very busy cutting out clothes for her girls’ class, which, like Miss Grey’s mothers’ meeting, met weekly for needlework. ‘I would not speak to him about it. He sometimes takes offence when you suggest a thing, and then goes away and does it. I would not say a word if I were you.’
‘But it never has been suggested to him, Florry! Why, you know I never heard of this even, till to-day. Here is your aunt Emily coming. We can ask her what she thinks. She has been more in the world than any of us, and probably she can tell us what racquets is.’
A considerable time elapsed, but no visitors appeared; and then Mrs. Plowden, from wondering what Emily would say, at last came to wonder where Emily could be, or if her eyes had deceived her, and Lady William had not crossed the lawn at all. ‘I declare,’ she said, ‘I shall feel quite unhappy if your aunt does not appear: for I saw her as plainly as I see you. I saw her black gown, and the feather in her hat, which really ought to be renewed if she will go on wearing black for ever—and that umbrella of hers with the long handle.’
‘But, mamma dear,’ said Emmy, ‘you must have known at once whether it was Aunt Emily or not, without thinking what she had on.’
‘Well, so I should have supposed,’ said Mrs. Plowden, bewildered, ‘but then where is she, and what has become of her? She should have been here ten minutes ago. Oh, who is that? Mab! Why, child, where have you come from? And where is your mother? I am sure I saw her cross the lawn ten minutes ago or more.’
‘And we think it must have been her wraith, Mab.’
‘Mother has gone to talk to Uncle James,’ said Mab. ‘She says it’s about business, but I think it is some worry, she looks so serious. So I came on after to wait for her. Oh, are you cutting out, Florry? Shall I help you, or do you want any help?’
‘Some worry?’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a sorrowful brow. ‘I hope it is not anything new about your uncle Reginald, girls.’
Reginald was the brother to whom Lady William had given her money, and who had never come back.
‘Hadn’t we better wait till we hear what it is, mamma? I thought Uncle Reginald had not been heard of for years.’
‘That is quite true, and it was my opinion we should never hear from him any more; but what worry can your aunt Emily have if it is not about him? For I am sure otherwise she is a happy woman, and never has the shadow of a trouble. Was it after getting a foreign letter that she grew so serious, Mab?’
‘She has had no letter at all,’ said Mab, ‘and she did not say it was anything but business. The worry was only my own fancy; and I daresay I was wrong.’
‘What else could it be?’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘She may have heard he is coming home. And I am sure, if he is coming home, I don’t know what I shall do. He shall not come here. I could not have him in this house. Our own burdens we must bear; but Reginald Plowden—oh, Reginald Plowden is too much! If he comes here I shall run away.’
‘Dear mamma, don’t you think we had better wait a little? Aunt Emily is sure to come here when she leaves papa, and then you will know.’
‘Oh, it is all very well to tell me to wait—when Reginald Plowden would just put the crown upon everything,’ the poor lady said.