IT will be recollected that Mr. Osborne, the curate, ended very suddenly, and with no small amount of heat and displeasure, that walk with Florence Plowden which had so nearly decided the whole colour of his life. He had fallen in love (as people say—and, indeed, it is as good a phrase as any, for it is often by no means a voluntary action) with the Rector’s daughter in spite of himself. It was so perfectly banal and commonplace a thing to do; the sort of thing looked for by everybody; so suitable, that bugbear of youth; so exactly what might—except by his own ambitious relations, who thought him worthy of a loftier fate—have been expected, that the young man had resisted almost fiercely the tide of being which led him to that commonplace conclusion. But yet, when there is fate in it, what is the use of struggling? Florence Plowden was, Mr. Osborne thought, the prettiest, the most delightful and attractive of all the girls in Watcham—more than that, of all the girls he had ever seen. I do not know that this idea was justified by universal consent. Many people gave the palm in respect to good looks to Emmy, and, indeed, neither of them was at all up to the level of many of the girls from London who came down during the boating season, or of Dora Wade, for example, who was the belle of the county. However, the fact that this opinion was by no means universal did not affect the certainty of the curate, who had a very high idea of his own judgment, and, in fact, was better pleased that it should not chime in with other people’s, which was the last thing in the world he wished to do. He was a young man who was very well connected, and to lift his eyes even to Dora Wade would scarcely have been beyond his pretensions. But the mere fact that she was the acknowledged beauty was enough to make that pursuit unlikely to Edward Osborne. The banalité of falling in love with his Rector’s daughter was bad enough, but it would have been nothing in comparison with the downright vulgarity of falling in love with the beauty who had, as it were, signposts put up all round her to indicate her position as the Queen of Hearts. Edward Osborne would have died rather than follow these indications. They convinced him instead that she was not fair at all, but a most matter-of-fact and commonplace Blowsibella, whose radiant complexion was of the mere dairymaid order, and meant nothing but high health and good digestion—good enough things in their way, but altogether devoid of romance, and of any attraction which could dominate a highly trained and fastidious spirit like himself. At first, when he came to Watcham, he would have also said that the attributes of a Rector’s daughter, the delightful good young woman of the parish, acquainted with all the poor people and their wants, and occupied with clothing clubs, penny banks, sewing classes, and mothers’ meetings, were also the very last things that would attract a young philanthropist of the higher order like himself, who proposed to get at the people in a loftier way, to convince them by reason and argument of their foolish ways of living, and to inaugurate some large movement among them which would have little to do with the petty methods of feminine supervision. Florence Plowden, by universal consent, was made to be a clergyman’s wife, which was almost as strong an argument against her as if she had been an acknowledged beauty. But, as a matter of fact, there is no rule which tells in those mysterious ways of mutual attraction which draw the most unlikely or, which is worse, the most likely people together. And it had grown a certainty with Mr. Osborne that he had never met any one like Florence before her attention had been directed to him at all, and before even it had occurred to himself as possible that he could ever get over the dreadful obstacle of all that there was in her favour, and think of her as in possible relationship to himself. He represented it to himself as a thing that could affect him in no possible way, but yet a certain thing—that Florence Plowden was as a swan among the ducklings about her, that there was no one at all equal to her far and near, and that it was one of the mysteries of humanity how such a creature could spring and blossom from such a root, and among such surroundings. But I will not attempt to follow the matter from that first germ—obstinately held against all the force of the general idea that Florence was a nice girl and a very good girl (praises both calculated to drive an idealist mad), but nothing very particular—just like other girls, in fact, and a little like her mother. ‘When she is Mrs. Plowden’s age, Florence, indeed, will, I think, be very much like her mother,’ the General had once said, without the slightest idea that the curate, who was an athletic young person, would have liked to knock him down for saying it. And why shouldn’t Florence Plowden resemble her mother? But it was blasphemy to Mr. Osborne’s ears.
I will not, I repeat, attempt to follow all that happened from that first impression to the moment when he had made up his mind that without the companionship of Florence life would be, if not unworthy living, yet so diminished in everything that was fair and sweet that all its glory and hope would be over. Many notions about life had been in this young man’s head. He had once thought that there was no institution in the world so great as that of a celibate clergy, and that it would be his highest duty to tread that austere and lofty path. I don’t know whether Florence could be justly chargeable with the destruction of that ideal. He had come to see at last that it could not be made a general rule of, or universally enforced, before he arrived at the sudden conviction that he was not himself adapted for that form of self-abnegation. I am obliged to confess that all the different steps in Mr. Osborne’s progress had been made suddenly, as with a bound, surprising himself as much as any one else. And perhaps he had no certain idea upon that morning when he found himself engaged in a discussion with his fast friend, Miss Grey, and opposed by the object of his affections—that these affections were to burst all the restraints with which he had bound them, and pour themselves forth in a burst of enthusiasm at Florry’s feet. And then, to think that when the flood could scarcely be restrained—when despite her opposition, despite all her naughty ways, he was about to tell her that there was nobody like her in the world (a statement which would have been as astounding and incredible to Florry as any miracle)—that she should have stopped him, by contradicting all his theories, by finding fault with what he felt to be, in its way, a small martyrdom, and by suggesting something quite different—she a girl, a nobody—to him, a priest and consecrated person set apart to instruct and lead mankind, as the better way!
Edward Osborne would not pause to refute, to reprove, to pour down the thunders of his wrath upon the girl whom in another moment he would have asked to be his wife. He did what was the only thing possible in the circumstances, turned and left her, flinging her image and her counsel behind him in the fury of his indignation. He walked from that spot to his lodgings, which was about a mile off, in three minutes or thereabouts, his long steps skimming over the soil, his mind in a turmoil scarcely to be described, boiling with anger, with indignation, with resentment against this interference with his superior rights of manhood and of priesthood, as well as with the strong revulsion of thoughts thrown back upon himself and disappointed feeling. It would scarcely be too much to say that for the moment he would have liked something dreadful to happen to Florence, and if there had been a thunderbolt handy, which happily is not a missile within ready reach, he would probably have blackened the face of the whole country in order to dumb and to frighten (for I don’t think he would have gone so far as to blind) the girl he loved. When he got home he shut himself into his sitting-room, giving a stern order that no one was to be admitted, and betook himself to the writing of a sermon, which seemed the best way to sfogarsi, as the Italians say, to blow off the pernicious excitement which made his veins throb and his heart beat. But he soon threw that aside, finding it quite inadequate to the occasion, and wrote a letter to the newspapers, which was so fierce that it frightened the editor to whom it was addressed. I need scarcely say that it was on the subject of temperance.
After the vehemence of the first shock was over, which, however, took some time, Mr. Osborne made a distinct but insufficient effort to cure himself altogether of Florence. He never entered the Rectory, contriving to settle any question he might have with the Rector either when they met in church or by letter. He refused all invitations lest perhaps she might be there—for where, indeed, could a man go in the parish, to dinner or tea or evening solemnity, without the chance of encountering the family of the Rector? Of course Mr. Osborne was unaware that for a somewhat similar reason Florence refused the same invitations at this crisis, and, indeed, awakened the curiosity of her mother and Emmy—to whom, even to Emmy, she had said nothing—by her disinclination to go ‘out.’ ‘I’d rather stay and keep Jim company,’ she was forced to say on several occasions—though, alas! with very little hope that the temptation of her company would have much effect in keeping Jim indoors. It did, however, once or twice, and that was both reward and justification.
But it is not to be supposed that this curious incident passed over the head of the Rev. Edward Osborne without a certain effect. His heart began to long after Florry long before the smart of the wound she had given him was healed. And what she had said rankled in his mind even before that. Was there any truth in what she had said? Was it, perhaps, a better way, to win a young man who was his equal—i.e., whom no missionary effort was likely to be brought to bear upon, a man quite beyond the blandishments of district visitors, Bible readers, temperance lecturers, or even, in a general way, of the curate—to the paths of virtue, than to persuade an old lady to relinquish her poor little glass of beer by the sacrifice of his own very moderate glass of wine? The latter sacrifice had been mentioned in one or two papers, and held up as an example to other men. He had been applauded, but with reproof which was another kind of praise, by his own people and others. ‘Remember,’ his mother had written, ‘that Timothy was bidden by St. Paul to take a little wine for his stomach’s sake: and I am sure you are not such a giant of strength that you can afford to do without the little you take: though I quite appreciate the sacrifices you think it your duty to make, my dear boy.’ Sacrifice! It was no sacrifice. Osborne did not care in the least for the beer, which he took as a matter of habit, or the wine which was served to him at other people’s tables when he dined out. He rather liked, if truth must be told, to gently, tacitly snub his hosts by taking nothing. And it seemed to him, on the whole, an achievement which partook of the nature of the sublime to get old Mrs. Lloyd to give up her beer—not that it did her a great deal of harm, poor soul! But if she took none herself she would be strengthened to refuse it to her husband, and it would be an example to her sons and to the rest of the world—that small, dingy unenlightened world which it was so difficult to teach, which had so little to brighten or cheer it, and which pays so dearly for its indulgences in that sordid, dreadful way.
But Jim Plowden! that was a very different thing from Mrs. Lloyd. I do not for a moment believe that Mr. Osborne would have hesitated to take the pledge for and with Jim: but that was not at all what Florence had suggested. She had suggested that he should admit him to his society, take him for a companion, induce him to share in his pursuits—that last above all. She did not know, of course, that among the drawbacks to herself, of all of which Mr. Osborne was so conscious, her brother and her family took the first place. He would need to be friendly, or even more than friendly, with all the Plowdens. Nothing but the fact that Florence was unique in the world, that there was none like her, none, could make up for that. And now she demanded of him that he should take her brother into his bosom, so to speak, not as a consequence of being accepted by her, but as a matter of duty in his capacity as a priest, as a better way than that of taking the pledge along with old Mrs. Lloyd. That lout! he repeated to himself: that fellow to whom had been given all the same advantages as other people, even as Mr. Edward Osborne, and who had thrown, or was throwing, them away: the brother, who frequented the ‘Blue Boar,’ who was the friend of the schoolmistress, who shunned all the ordinary assemblages of his kind; and yet it was suggested to him that to take up this rowdy undergraduate, sent down from Oxford, would be the better way!
Is it to be wondered at if Mr. Osborne was angry?—if, whenever it came into his head, for as long a time as a fortnight after, he flung down whatever he was doing and turned aside to something else that would be more exciting, to forget the exasperations to which he had been exposed? But this did not effectually chase the suggestion, it appeared, out of his mind. It recurred to him at times when he could not chase it away; in the middle of the night, for instance, when he could not jump out of bed and write a letter to a temperance newspaper, and when it bored in quietly to his brain, like some fine, delicate instrument used by a cunning, persistent hand. It was not the hand of Florence, it was that of some demon, or some angel, or his own.
Had he, after all, perhaps as much responsibility for Jim Plowden as for Mrs. Lloyd? Was Jim Plowden, perhaps, in his youth, and with certain faculties that might be of use in the world, of as much, nay, even of more importance, than the old washer-woman? Strange questions for a young idealist, a young man deeply compassionate of the poor, deeply indignant as concerns those who throw their own advantages, their own education, and other good gifts away.
These wonderful convolutions of thought—returns upon itself of the disturbed mind, bubblings up of a suggestion not to be got rid of, however trampled upon and thrown aside—brought Osborne to the day on which the Rector had gone up to town, and Jim was left free of that controlling influence of his father’s presence which kept him within certain limits. But the curate knew nothing of this incident of the day; indeed, save in so far as concerned the church and ‘duty’ he had known nothing of the movements of his chief since the day when Florence stopped the words on his lips which might have made him a son of her father’s house.
Mr. Plowden went up to town by a morning train, and it was Jim’s duty, of course, to go to his Sophocles, however unwillingly, as on other days. He was always unwilling, but his father being present, went grumbling to his work, as a tired horse goes into the shafts, knowing there is nothing else to be done. The morning, however, was bright, and when he got into the little room which was called his study—vain title!—the sunshine came in and called him, almost as if it had been a comrade at his door. The window was open, and the air could not have been more fresh and sweet (as far as we can tell) had it blown out of heaven. The breath of the first lilacs was upon it, and other celestial things of spring. The leaves waved above in all the first new greenness of spring leaves. The book lay open on a table before the window. It was not green nor bright, nor did it smell of the spring. A great lexicon was open beside it, and other books with prodigious notes to them, and notebooks lying ready to the hand. He was expected to construe into such halting English as he could manage that great page, and search into its difficulties by the help of the notes of a dreadful German worker (who no doubt liked that sort of thing), and some English ones. Unfortunate Jim—and the sunshine outside! and the soft air blowing in through the window! and the green leaves fluttering! and the silvery river flowing! And the Rector out of reach in London, after some private business of his own.
He made a little fight, be it said to his credit; but what virtue faintly said in favour of the Sophocles was boldly contradicted by something else, not virtue, and yet not vice either, which asked, ‘What good is there in Sophocles? I am not to go back to Oxford; I am to go to a ranche in America, or else I am to go to a merchant’s office in town. What good will Greek, or all the finest poetry in the world, do me there? If I were learning bookkeeping by double entry (whatever that may be), it might do me some good—or something about cows; but Sophocles!’ One note of admiration was not half enough to express Jim’s indignant sense of a folly which could not be defended from any point of view. Sophocles! Slaughter, the butcher, who had greasy books to keep, could have shown him a mystery more worth knowing, if he went to an office; and the vet., with all his experience of animals, was a professor worth (to Jim if he went to a ranche) more than Sophocles, Eschylus, and the rest, with the German notes and the English dons all thrown into one. Fancy construing a hard chorus when you should be out after the cows! Fancy spending your time over a disputed passage when you have a batch of letters to write for the mail—much good Sophocles would do a man in either of these circumstances! And to fancy that father, who had such sense in an ordinary way (the day was so bright that Jim felt quite just and amiable even towards his father), should be so bigoted, so ridiculous in this!
It may be imagined that after such a self-argument, the sunshine, calling him exactly as one of his comrades used to do, drumming on his window, soon had the best of it. Jim—poor Jim—learned in clandestine movements by the very fact of the anxiety of all about him, listened a little to make sure that the coast was clear. He heard his mother go upstairs, and the voices of the girls in a room they had for their work at the back of the house. All the exits of the house were therefore open to him—not a jealous eye about, not an anxious ear. He strolled out whistling softly, with his hands in his pockets—whistling, thereby convincing himself that he was afraid of nobody; that there was nothing clandestine, or stealthy, or wrong in the whole proceeding, but only that natural inclination towards the fresh air which everybody feels on such a day. When he had got beyond the bounds of the Rectory, and was quite free and at his ease on the public road, with nobody to make him afraid, and Sophocles as much out of the question as if he had never existed, Jim strolled on for a little, enjoying the air, and then paused to think what he should do. That, after all, was not so easy a question to decide. Everybody about was busy with something. No possibility of dropping in upon Mrs. Brown at this hour. There was the river, to be sure: but to go and get a boat, and then to toil up-stream by himself, which either coming or going he would have been obliged to do, seemed too much trouble on this sweet, indolent morning. It occurred to him that if he dropped in at the ‘Blue Boar’ to see the papers he might very probably meet the vet., and acquire from him some useful information; or something else might turn up; so he turned his steps that way with a delightful sense of freedom. There was nobody about, and he was responsible to nobody. For this once he would take his own way.
But Jim met Mr. Osborne before he reached the ‘Blue Boar.’