JIM was not in any way afraid of Osborne, the curate—that is, he was not afraid of being stopped by him, or interrupted in any way in his career. He could not, indeed, go into the ‘Blue Boar’ while the curate was about; that would be giving an occasion to the adversary to blaspheme. But Jim did not dislike Osborne. He was quite willing to walk along with him so long as their ways ran together, turning back when the curate turned the first corner. It would always be something to do; and whether he arrived at that undesirable destination half an hour earlier or later was of importance to nobody. He did not notice that the curate’s salutation was anything more than usual, or that he came up to him with a distinct purpose, instead of the usual cool nod with which the two young men passed each other by on ordinary occasions.
‘Oh, Plowden,’ Mr. Osborne said, ‘have you got work over early, or are you taking holiday?’
Few people in Watcham took Jim’s work seriously. Most of them, having the advantage over him of having known him all his life, were disposed to be a little admonitory, and shook their heads when they met him out. ‘No work to-day, Jim?’ the General would say: and most people shared the same feeling. But Osborne, probably because he also was young, never took a mean advantage. He spoke as if it were quite natural that Jim should have a holiday now and then.
‘Well, yes,’ said Jim, moved to confidence, and to take the matter easily, too. ‘The Rector has gone to town, and I have half a day to myself. If I had been wise no doubt I should have taken it in the afternoon,’ he added, with ingratiating frankness; ‘but then, who knows, it may rain this afternoon, and it’s too fine this morning to work.’
‘Then you’d better come with me,’ said Osborne quickly. ‘I’m going to walk into Winwick to see if I can pick up some musicians for my entertainment. There never was a finer morning for a walk. It is not too hot, and what with the shower this morning there will be no dust. Will you come? We can look in upon Ormerod for a bit of bread and cheese if we’re kept late for lunch.’
Jim hesitated a moment, but all the same there mounted up into his cheek a pleasant colour and into his heart a certain warmth of gratification. He had always entertained a certain admiration for Osborne, a fellow who had played for the University! On the other hand, it was agreeable to lounge into the ‘Blue Boar,’ where everybody was so very civil to him, and where he anticipated meeting the vet. Thus it was with a mixture of pleasure and reluctance that he received the unlooked-for invitation. To look in upon Ormerod, who was another parson in Winwick, was not without its temptations too, for that gentleman was a fine cricketer, known over all the county. Jim was not often led into such society—his usual cronies admired Mr. Ormerod at a distance, talking big of having seen him do this and that feat. A fear of being de trop, of being looked down upon by these men, of having to act the part of an undesired third, checked, however, his pleasure in that thought. Poor Jim was proud, though he had not very much reason for it, and his pride had received some severe blows, and was always on the watch for more. For a moment its whisper that he would be nobody between these two, and that he was always somebody at the ‘Blue Boar,’ had almost turned him back. But then ‘Come along,’ said Osborne, ‘come along, don’t let us lose the best of the day!’
If Jim had known that Florry was at the bottom of it all—Florry, only a girl, one of the home police who kept that insufferable watch upon him, his sister! But, fortunately, no such idea could by any chance have crossed his mind. Florry! what could she have had to do with it? And he was moved by the cheerful call of the curate, who was not in general a very cheerful man, and who rather preferred in an ordinary way to tramp through the slush and cold than to take advantage of a beautiful morning for a walk. He said, ‘I suppose you will not be very late,’ hesitating at the corner.
‘Late! You know how far it is to Winwick,’ said Mr. Osborne, ‘a matter of three miles—not much that to you and me.’
‘No, it’s not much,’ said Jim. ‘I think I’ll risk it,’ he added, when the turn was actually taken, and the Winwick Road stretched before them. ‘I’m on an easy bit to-day. I’ll have time to get it all up when we get back.’
‘A good walk always clears a man’s head,’ said Osborne; and he resumed after a pause, ‘What are you reading now?’
‘Oh, it’s Sophocles. Seven against Thebes, don’t you know, with all those hard choruses.’
‘Oh, for Greats?’
‘I wish I only knew what it was for,’ cried Jim. ‘You know I haven’t been lucky, Osborne. I got into a scrape, don’t you know. I suppose everybody knows: though we think at the Rectory that if we make-believe strong enough nobody need know.’
‘A great many men get into scrapes,’ said the curate oracularly.
‘Don’t they, now?’ cried Jim, with eagerness; ‘that’s what my people won’t see.’
‘The only thing is to get out of them as fast as possible,’ added Mr. Osborne.
‘Ah,’ said Jim, a little crestfallen. He went on after a pause: ‘If you knew what your governor meant, don’t you know. He wants me to read, and yet he says I’m to go out to a ranche or into an office in the city. Why doesn’t he make up his mind? And what good will Greek do me on a ranche? Morris the vet. could teach me what would be more use for that than all the Sophocles in the world.’
‘But then you see,’ said the curate, ‘Morris is not just the kind of tutor for a gentleman.’
‘Oh,’ said Jim again. His pride was of the kind that could not bear to desert his friends, however undesirable. ‘He’s a decent fellow enough.’
‘In his own sphere—I suppose so,’ said Osborne; ‘and clever, they tell me, in his way; but not our kind.’ He added: ‘I believe, from what I’ve heard, if you are going to a ranche, the best way of learning is just—to go.’
‘If any one he minds would only tell my father that,’ said Jim, gratified by the pronoun, and that Osborne had said ‘our’ instead of ‘your.’ He was aware that Osborne’s ‘kind’ was different from his own, and that his kind would not have been, perhaps, very desirable for one of the curate’s cloth. Thank God, there was no question of Jim going into the Church, though it had been his mother’s desire. ‘That’s the chief thing I complain of,’ he said; ‘let them tell me straight out what I’m to do. Whether it’s one thing or the other I don’t mind. If it’s to be Oxford over again, well, then the Greek’s good for something; but if it’s the ranche——’
‘That is reasonable,’ said the curate, ‘and if you put it to the Rector like that, surely——’
‘Poor father!’ said Jim, moved to unusual sympathy, ‘I don’t believe he knows himself. First he thinks one thing and then he thinks another. And chiefly, I suppose, he thinks that I am not good for very much, any way.’
‘That’s an idea that you must get him out of, Plowden.’
‘It’s easy to say so, but how am I to do it? When people lose their confidence in you——’ said Jim. And then he hesitated and drew back. ‘What did you say you were going to Winwick for?’ he added hastily. ‘Musicians for your—what did you say?’
‘Musicians for my entertainment—to amuse my temperance people. Your sisters are going to sing: and I hear you recite, Plowden.’
‘No, I don’t—not good enough for you. I used sometimes to do things at penny readings; but that was before I went to Oxford,’ said Jim, with a sudden flush, which seemed to envelop him from head to foot—a flush half of unexpected pleasure, half of overwhelming shame.
‘Well,’ said the curate, ‘you had better begin again: unless you disapprove of my temperance meetings, like’—he paused a little and said fiercely—‘your sister.’
‘My sister!’ cried Jim with amazement; and then he laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you mind very much. Which was it? Emmy? She’s dreadfully serious about everything that God has given us being meant for use. I think that myself, you know,’ he said.
‘But perhaps you haven’t seen, as I have, the terrible misery it has brought,’ said the curate, watching secretly with great interest to see what the result would be.
Now Jim knew a great deal about himself, more than anybody else knew: but he did not accuse himself in this respect. He had not realised the danger here. In other ways he was aware that there was danger; but in this, for himself, no.
‘I’m not such a novice as you think,’ he said. ‘I’ve known fellows at Oxford—Good God! if one was to think of it, it’s enough to make your brain go round—nice fellows, men that there was no harm in, and yet—— ’
Jim walked on very soberly for a few minutes, thinking of tragic scenes he had seen. Even though he was so young, Heaven help him, he had seen tragic scenes. He had beheld with his own eyes the tribute of youth, which the infernal powers demand and receive wherever youth abounds. He knew it well enough. But for himself there was no question of that; for himself there was only a little escape from paternal coercion—a place to lounge in when he had nothing to do, a set of people obsequious, admiring him whenever he opened his mouth. Danger in the ‘Blue Boar!’ He could have laughed at the thought; and so had the nice fellows by whose example he was not warned. He did not say anything at all for a few minutes, being deeply moved by things he remembered, though not by any trouble for himself.
‘Plowden,’ said the curate, ‘that’s one thing I wanted to speak to you about. I don’t know how you feel, but to think upon those men makes me so sick at heart that I don’t know what to do. They’re so often nice fellows: and how are we to get hold of them? How are we to stop them? You’re freshly out of it, you’re of the present generation. What is a man that wants to stop them to do?’
Jim gave him a frightened half-glance, then lowered his eyes. ‘Good Heavens,’ he said, ‘what a question to ask! How am I to know?’
‘How is one to get at them? How is one to get hold of them?’ said the curate. ‘There’s always some way of getting at the young fellows in the slums. You may not do any good, but yet you can say out what you’ve got to say. There’s the river men, the boatmen, and all those. I don’t say that usually they pay a bit of attention, but now and then there’s a chance of getting hold of them and speaking one’s mind. They can’t help listening to you, and they know what you say is true. But the gentlemen are different. You can’t get at them, and they wouldn’t believe it if you did; they don’t know the result. They think they can stop when they please, and there will always be some one who will stick to them. How are we to get hold of them, Plowden?—our own very brothers, men of our own kind. They’re all our brothers, every one, to be sure; but think, Plowden, those fellows at Oxford, in London, everywhere. God help us! all the harm isn’t in the slums. There must be some way of getting at them too!’
Jim Plowden looked at the curate with an interest he had never felt before. He was moved by this earnestness, almost passion, that was in him. ‘The poor beggar must have a brother that’s gone to the bad,’ he said to himself. That it should be he himself about whom the curate was concerned, or that there was any reason why anybody should be so concerned for him, never entered into Jim’s head.
‘I see what you mean,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t answer your question if you were to give me a fortune for it. They know fast enough. They see other men going to the dogs every day. I suppose that ought to be better than sermons or any other kind of missionary work, or what a parson could do. I’m sure I can’t tell you, or how you’re to get hold of them. It won’t be with any teetotal stuff, if I must say what I think.’
A shade of anger crossed the curate’s face, and he looked at Jim with a wondering gaze, which awoke that young man’s surprise in return. ‘What do you look at me like that for?’ he said, half irritated in his turn.
‘Like what? I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean anything—particular. I suppose I thought I saw the others, the men I want to get hold of, through you, or behind you,’ he said. This was not a speech which was very agreeable to Jim, who did not see any reason why he should be chosen as a type of the young man of whom the curate wanted to get hold. But Mr. Osborne here made a diversion by another reference to Jim’s suspended power of recitation or reading, and by entering with him into a discussion of what would be suitable for the occasion, which distracted Jim’s attention. Before they got to Winwick Jim had proposed to read something—unwillingly, yet not without a little gratification too.
When they had accomplished their business, and secured the aid of two or three amateurs all very willing to exhibit themselves and their accomplishments, the two young men made their way to the lodgings of Mr. Ormerod, who was one of the curates of the place, and who produced for them the bread and cheese demanded in the shape of a beef-steak, round which they were all mildly merry as befitted the character of the party, and talked cricket and music, and other matters in which Jim felt himself quite able to take his share, and did so, to the surprise of his host, who had heard the usual derogatory murmurs which breathe into the air concerning every such young defaulter—and of his companion, who had given poor Jim the credit of being a fool as well as other troublesome things. The entertainment took solid shape in the hands of the two curates, and poor Jim felt a certain elation in feeling himself one of them—taking a part with those who were of ‘one’s own kind,’ as Osborne had said. A passing reflection even glanced through his mind that it would not have been nearly so comfortable had he been leaving the ‘Blue Boar,’ a little heated by the refreshment which it was necessary to take there, after an hour or two’s talk with Morris the vet., and the landlord, even on a subject so instructive as cows. He knew exactly what would have happened in that case. He would have been very late for lunch, for which meal the ladies would have waited till he came in; and his feeling that his morning had not been very profitably employed, as well as the refreshment that had been necessary, would have made him irritable. He would have answered his mother (who of course would have said something brutal to him) insolently, and then there would have followed a hush at table, no one saying anything, since all were angry, for the sake of the servant who waited. And his sisters would have looked as if they would like to cry, and his mother would have been red with wrath, and as soon as the meal was over he would have strolled off—to his study in the first place, where he would have opened his books, and then sat down to think how hard it was upon a fellow never to be left to himself, never to have funds for anything, to get angry words and tearful looks whatever he did. And then, after half an hour’s indignant musing, he would have strolled out again. Now how different everything was, as he walked through the hilly street of Winwick, keeping up with his companion’s long strides, fresh and good-humoured, feeling that he had done himself credit, with Mr. Ormerod’s wholesome beer, light upon both mind and stomach, and the three miles’ stretch of leafy road before him. To be sure there would be a little rush at the Rectory to meet him, a cry of ‘Jim, where have you been?’ But he was not afraid of that cry. If there were tearful looks they would be looks of pleasure. If his mother met him red with anxiety, she would soon be bubbling a hundred questions full of satisfaction. ‘Walked into Winwick with Osborne. I know I ought not to have done it, but don’t be frightened, I’ve time to do the Sophocles before father comes back. And we lunched with Ormerod at Winwick, who gave us a capital beef-steak.’ What a secret thrill of pleasure would run through the faded drawing-room at this explanation! There was no virtue in having gone off to Winwick instead of doing his work. To tell the truth, it was not a whit more virtuous than strolling into the ‘Blue Boar.’ But oh, the difference! the difference! The difference to himself, walking home with a calm conscience and a light heart! And the difference to them, whose trembling would all at once in a moment be turned into joy, though he did not doubt that for the moment they were unhappy enough now!
‘Come over, will you, in the evening, and try over that “Ride from Ghent,”’ said Mr. Osborne, when they parted.
‘I will, with pleasure,’ said Jim. They parted, though neither was aware of it, in sight of Florry, who had come out very wretched to see whether in her perambulations about the village she could catch a glimpse of Jim, and who came up to him a few moments after he had left the curate, in a state of curious commotion which Jim found it very difficult to understand.
‘Oh, Jim,’ she cried, ‘where have you been?’—the usual phrase. But then she added, ‘Have you been somewhere with Mr. Osborne?’ in a voice that fluttered like a bird.
‘I have been to Winwick with Osborne, and we lunched with Ormerod off an excellent beef-steak,’ said the complacent Jim.
But Florence answered not a word. She put down her veil, which was unnecessary, and struggled with it a little to draw it over her face, turning away her head.