Watersprings Part 16

"Well, I will begin a new book," said Howard, "and steal an old t.i.tle.

It shall be called Love is Enough."

On the last night before they left the cottage they talked long about things past, present, and to come.

"Now," said Maud, "I am not going to be a gushing and sentimental young bride any more. I am not sentimental, best-beloved! Do you believe that? The time we have had here together has been the best and sweetest time of my whole life, every minute worth all the years that went before. But you must write that down, as Dr. Johnson said, in the first page of your pocket-book, and never speak of it again. It's all too good and too sacred to talk about--almost to think about. And I don't believe in looking BACK, Howard--nor very much, I think, in looking forward. I know that I wasted ever so much time and energy as a girl--how long ago that seems!--in wishing I had done this and that; but it's neither useful nor pleasant. Now we have got things to do.

There is plenty to do at Windlow for a little for you and me. We have got to know everybody and understand everybody. And I think that when the year is out, we must go back to Cambridge. I can't bear to think I have stopped that. I am not going to h.o.a.rd you, and cling round you.

You have got things to do for other people, young men in particular, which no one else can do just like you. I am not a bit ambitious. I don't want you to be M.P., LL.D., F.R.S., &c., &c., &c., but I do want you to do things, and to help you to do things. I don't want to be a sort of tea-table Egeria to the young men--I don't mean that--and I don't wish to be an interesting and radiant object at dinner-tables; but I am sure there is trouble I can save you, and I don't intend you to have any worries except your own. I won't smudge my fingers over the accounts, like that wretched Dora in David Copperfield. Understand that, Howard; I won't be your girl-bride. I won't promise that I won't wear spectacles and be dowdy--anything to be prosaic!"

"You may adorn yourself as you please," said Howard, "and of course, dearest child, there are hundreds of things you can do for me. I am the feeblest of managers; I live from hand to mouth; but I am not going to submerge you either. If you won't be the girl-bride, you are not to be the professional sunbeam either. You are to be just yourself, the one real, sweet, and perfect thing in the world for me. Chaire kecharitoenae--do you know what that means? It was the angel's opinion long ago of a very simple mortal. We shall affect each other, sure enough, as the days go on. Why what you have done for me already, I dare hardly think--you have made a man out of a machine--but we won't go about trying to revise each other; that will take care of itself. I only want you as you are--the best thing in the world."

The last morning at Lydstone they were very silent; they took one long walk together, visiting all the places where they had sate and lingered. Then in the afternoon they drove away. The old maidservant gave them, with almost tearful apologies, two little ill-tied posies of flowers, and Maud kissed her, thanked her, made her promise to write.

As they drove away Maud waved her hand to the little cove--"Good-bye, Paradise!" she said.

"No," said Howard, "don't say that; the swallow doesn't make the summer; and I am carrying the summer away with me."

XXVII

THE NEW LIFE

The installation at Windlow seemed as natural and obvious as any other of the wonderful steps of Howard's new life. The only thing which bothered him was the incursions of callers, to which his marriage seemed to have rendered the house liable. Howard loved monotony, and in the little Windlow party he found everything that he desired. At first it all rather amused him, because he felt as though he were acting in a charming and absurd play, and he was delighted to see Maud act her wedded part. Mrs. Graves frankly enjoyed seeing people of any sort or kind. But Howard gradually began to find that the arrival of county and clerical neighbours was a really tiresome thing. Local gossip was unintelligible to him and did not interest him. Moreover, the necessity of going out to luncheon, and even to dinner, bored him horribly. He said once rather pettishly to Maud, after a week of constant interruptions and little engagements, that he hoped that this sort of thing would not continue.

"It seems to knock everything on the head," he went on; "these country idylls are all very well in their way; but when it comes to entertaining parties day by day, who 'sit simply chatting in a rustic row,' it becomes intolerable. It doesn't MEAN anything; one can't get to know these people; if there is anything to know, they seem to think it polite to conceal it; it can't be a duty to waste all the time that this takes up?"

Maud laughed and said, "Oh, you must forgive them; they haven't much to do or talk about, and you are a great excitement; and you are really very good to them!"

Howard made a grimace. "It's my wretched habit of civility!" he said.

"But really, Maud, you can't LIKE them?"

"Yes, I believe I do," said Maud. "But then I am more or less used to the kind of thing. I like people, I think!"

"Yes, so do I, in a sort of way," said Howard; "but, really, with some of these caravans it is more like having a flock of sheep in the place!"

"Well, I like SHEEP, then," said Maud; "I don't really see how we can stop it."

"I suppose it's the seamy side of marriage!" said Howard.

Maud looked at him for a moment, and then, getting up from her chair and coming across to him, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked in his face.

"Are you VEXED?" she said in rather a tragic tone.

"No, of course, not vexed," said Howard, catching her round the waist.

"What an idea! I am only jealous of everything which seems to come in between us, and I have seemed to see you lately through a mist of oddly dressed females. It's a system, I suppose, a social system, to enable people to waste their time. I feel as if I had got caught in a sort of glue--wading in glue. One ought to live life, or the best part of it, on one's own lines. I feel as if I was on show just now, and it's a nuisance."

"Well," said Maud, "I am afraid I do rather like showing you off and feeling grand; but it won't go on for ever. I'll try to contrive something. I don't see why you need be drawn in. I'll talk to Cousin Anne about it."

"But I am not going to mope alone," said Howard. "Where thou goest, I will go. I can't bear to let you out of my sight, you little witch! But I feel it is casting pearls before swine--your pearls, I mean."

"I don't see what to do," said Maud, looking rather troubled. "I ought to have seen that you hated it."

"No, it's my own stupid fault," said Howard. "You are right, and I am wrong. I see it is my business at present to go about like a dancing bear, and I'll dance, I'll dance! It's priggish to think about wasting one's sweetness. What I really feel is this. 'Here's an hour,' I say, 'when I might have had Maud all to myself, and she and I have been talking about the weather to a pack of unoccupied females.'"

"Something comes of it," said Maud. "I don't know what it is, but it's a kind of chain. I don't think it matters much what they talk about, but there is a sort of kindness about it which I like--something which lies behind ideas. These people don't say anything, but they think something into one--it's alive, and it moves."

"Oh, yes," said Howard, "it's alive, no doubt. It would amuse me a good deal to see these people at home, if I could just be hidden in the curtains, and hear what they really talked about, and what they really felt. It's when they have their armour on that they bore me. It is not a pretty armour, and they don't wear it well; they don't fight in it--they only wear it that you mayn't touch them. If they would give themselves away and talk like Miss Bates, I could stand it."

"Well," said Maud, "I am going to say something rather bold. It comes, I think, of living at Cambridge with clever people, and having real things to talk about, that makes your difficulty. You care about people's minds more than about themselves, perhaps? But I'm on their level, and they seem to me to be telling something about themselves all the time. Of course it must be GHASTLY for you, and we will try to arrange things better."

"No, dearest, you won't, and you mustn't," said Howard. "That's the best of marriage, that one does get a glimpse into different things.

You are perfectly and entirely right. It simply means that I can't talk their language, and I will learn it. I am a prig; your husband is a prig--but he will try to do better. It isn't a duty, and it isn't a pleasure, and it isn't a question of minds at all. It is just living life on ordinary terms. I won't have anything different at all. I'm ashamed of myself for my moans. When I have anything in the way of work to do, it may be different. But now I see what I have to do. I am suffering from the stupidity of so-called clever people; and you mustn't mind it. Only don't, for Heaven's sake, try to contrive, or to spare me things. That is how the ugly paterfamilias is made. You mustn't spoil me or manage me; if I ever suspect you of doing that, I'll just go back to Cambridge alone. I hate even to have made you look at me as you did just now--you must forgive me that and many other things; and now you must promise just this, that if I am snappish you won't give way; you must not become a slipper-warmer."

"Yes, yes, I promise," said Maud, laughing; "here's my hand on it! You shall be diligently henpecked. But I am always rather puzzled about these things; all these old ideas about mutual consolation and advice and improvement and support ought to be THERE--they all mean something--they mean a great deal! But the moment they are spoken about, or even thought about, they seem so stuffy and disgusting. I don't understand it! I feel that one ought to be able to talk plainly about anything; and yet the more plainly you talk about such things as these, the more hateful you are, and the meaner you feel!"

XXVIII

THE VICAR'S VIEW

Another small factor which caused Howard some discomfort was the conversation of the Vicar. This, at the first sight of Windlow, had been one of the salient features of the scene. It had been amusing to see the current of a human mind running so frankly open to inspection; and, moreover, the Vicar's constantly expressed deference for the exalted quality of Howard's mind and intellectual outfit, though it had not been seriously regarded, had at least an emollient effect. But it is one thing to sit and look on at a play and to be entertained by the comic relief of some voluble character, and quite another to encounter that volubility at full pressure in private life. There was a certain charm at first in the Vicar's inconsequence and volatility; but in daily intercourse the good man's lack of proportion, his indiscriminate interest in things in general, proved decidedly fatiguing. Given a crisis, and the Vicar's view was interesting, because it was, as a rule, exactly the view which the average man would be likely to take, melodramatic, sentimental, commonplace, with this difference, that whereas the average man is tongue-tied and has no faculty of expression, the Vicar had an extraordinarily rich and emphatic vocabulary; and it was thus an artistic presentment of the ordinary standpoint. But in daily life the Vicar talked with impregnable continuity about any subject in which he happened to be interested. He listened to no comment; he demanded no criticism. If he conversed about his parishioners or his fellow-parsons or his country neighbours, it was not uninteresting; but when it was genealogy or folklore or prehistoric remains, it was merely a tissue of sc.r.a.ps, clawed out of books and imperfectly remembered. Howard found himself respecting the Vicar more and more; he was so kindly, so unworldly, so full of perfectly guileless satisfaction: he was conscious too of his own irrepressibility. He said to Howard one day, as they were walking together, "Do you know, Howard, I often think how many blessings you have brought us--I a.s.sure you, quiet and modest as you are, you are felt, your influence permeates to the very ends of the parish; I cannot exactly say what it is, but there's a sense of something that has to be dealt with, to be reckoned with, a mind of force and energy in the background; your approval is valued, your disapproval is feared. There is a consciousness, not perhaps expressed or even actually realised, of condescension, of gratification at one from so different a sphere coming among us, sharing our problems, offering us, however un.o.btrusively, sympathy and fellow-feeling. It's very human, very human," said the Vicar, "and that's a large word! But among all the blessings which I say you have brought us, of course my dear girl's happiness must come first in my regard; and there I hardly know how to express what a marvellous difference you have made! And then I feel that I, too, have come in for some crumbs from the feast, like the dogs under the table mentioned so eloquently in Scripture--sustenance unregarded and unvalued, no doubt, by yourself--cast out inevitably and naturally as light from the sun! It is not only the actual dicta," said the Vicar, "though these alone are deeply treasured; it's the method of thought, the reserve, the refinement, which I find insensibly affecting my own mental processes. Before I was a mere collector of details. Now I find myself saying, 'What is the aim of all this? What is the synthesis? Where does it come in? Where does it tend to?' I have not as yet found any very definite answer to these self-questionings, but the new spirit, the synthetic spirit, is there; and I find myself too concentrating my expression; I have become conscious in your presence of a certain diffuseness of talk--I used, I think, to indulge much in synonyms and parallel clauses--a characteristic, I have seen it said, of our immortal Shakespeare himself--but I have found myself lately considering the aim, the effect, the form of my utterances, and have practised--mainly in my sermons--a certain economy of language, which I hope has been perceptible to other minds besides my own."

"I always think your sermons very good," said Howard, quite sincerely; "they seem to me arrows deliberately aimed at a definite target--they have the grace of congruity, as the articles say."

"You are very good," said the Vicar. "I am really overwhelmed; but I must admit that your presence--the mere chance of your presence--has made me exercise an unwonted caution, and indeed introduce now and then an idea which is perhaps rather above the comprehension of my flock!"

"But may I go back for one moment?" said Howard. "You will forgive my asking this--but what you said just now about Maud interested me very much, and of course pleased me enormously. I would do anything I could to make her happy in any way--I wish you would tell me how and in what you think her more content. I want to learn all I can about her earlier days--you must remember that all that is unknown to me. Won't you exercise your powers of a.n.a.lysis for my benefit?"

"You are very kind," said the Vicar in high delight; "let me see, let me see! Well, dear Maud as a girl had always a very high and anxious sense of responsibility and duty. She conceived of herself--perhaps owing to some chance expressions of my own--as bound as far as possible to fill the place of her dear mother--a gap, of course, that it was impossible to fill,--my own pursuits are, you will realise, mere distractions, or, to be frank, were originally so designed, to combat my sense of loss. But I am personally not a man who makes a morbid demand for sympathy--I have little use for sympathy. I face my troubles alone; I suffer alone," said the Vicar with an incredible relish. "And then Jack is an independent boy, and has no taste for being dominated.

So that I fear that dear Maud's most touching efforts hardly fell on very responsive soil. She felt, I think, the failure of her efforts; and kind as Cousin Anne is, there is, I think, a certain vagueness of outline about her mind. I would not call her a fatalist, but she has little conception of the possibility of moulding character;--it's a rich mind, but perhaps an indecisive mind? Maud needed a vocation--she needed an aim. And then, too, you have perhaps observed--or possibly,"

said the Vicar gleefully, "she has effaced that characteristic out of deference to your own great power of amiable toleration--but she had a certain incisiveness of speech which had some power to wound? I will give you a small instance. Gibbs, the schoolmaster, is a very worthy man, but he has a certain flightiness of manner and disposition. Dear Maud, talking about him one day at our luncheon-table, said that one read in books how some people had to struggle with some underlying beast in their const.i.tution, the voracious man, let us say, with the pig-like element, the cruel man with the tiger-like quality. 'Mr.

Gibbs,' she said, 'seems to me to be struggling not with a beast, but with a bird.' She went on very amusingly to say that he reminded her of a wagtail, tripping along with very short steps, and only saved by adroitness from overbalancing. It was a clever description of poor Gibbs--but I felt it somehow to be indiscreet. Well, you know, poor Gibbs came to me a few days later--you realise how gossip spreads in these places--and said that he was hurt in his mind to think that Miss Maud should call him a water-wagtail. Servants' tattle, I suppose. I was considerably annoyed at this, and Maud insisted on going to apologise to Gibbs, which was a matter of some delicacy, because she could not deny that she had applied the soubriquet--or is it sobriquet?--to him. That is just a minute instance of the sort of thing I mean."

"I confess," said Howard, "that I do recognise Maud's touch--she has a strong sense of humour."

"A somewhat dangerous thing," said Mr. Sandys. "I have a very strong sense of humour myself, or rather what might be called risibility. No one enjoys a witty story or a laughable incident more than I do. But I keep it in check. The indulgence of humour is a risky thing; not very consistent with the pastoral office. But that is a small point; and what I am leading up to is this, that dear Maud's restlessness, and even morbidity, has entirely disappeared; and this, my dear Howard, I attribute entirely to your kind influence and discretion, of which we are all so conscious, and to the consciousness of which it is so pleasant to be able to give leisurely expression."

But the Vicar was not always so fruitful a talker as this. The difficulty with him was to shift the points. There were long walks in Mr. Sandys' company which were really of an almost nightmare quality.

He had a way of getting into a genealogical mess, in which he used to say that it cleared the air to be able to state the difficulties.

Howard used to grumble a little over this to Mrs. Graves. "Yes," she said, "if Frank were not so really unselfish a man, he would be a bore of purest ray serene; but his humanity breaks through. I made a compact with him long ago, and told him plainly that there were certain subjects he must not talk to me about. I suppose you couldn't do that?"

"No," said Howard, "I can't do that. It's my greatest weakness, I believe, that I can't say a good-natured decisive thing, until I am really brought to bay--and then I say much more than I need, and not at all good-naturedly. I must get what fun out of Frank I can. There's a good deal sprinkled about; and one comfort is that Maud understands."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "she understands! I know no one who sees weaknesses in so absolutely clear a light as Maud, and who can at the same time so wholly neglect them in the light of love."