Watersprings Part 8

"Yes," said Howard, "'the old, unhappy, far-off things,' that turn themselves into songs and stories! That is another puzzle; one's own sorrows and tragedies, would one like to think of them as being made into songs for other people to enjoy? I suppose we ought to be glad of it; but there does not seem anything poetical about them at the time; and yet they end by being sweeter than the old happy things. The 'Isle of Thorns'! Yes, that IS a beautiful name."

Suddenly there came a faint musical sound on the air, as sweet as honey. Howard held up his hand. "What on earth or in heaven is that?"

he said.

"Those are the chimes of Sherborne!" said Maud. "One hears them like that when the wind is in this quarter. I like to hear them--they have always been to me a sort of omen of something pleasant about to happen.

Perhaps it is in your honour to-day, to welcome you!"

"Well," said Howard, "they are beautiful enough by themselves; and if they will bring me greater happiness than I have, I shall not object to that!"

They smiled at each other, and stood in silence for a little, and then Maud pointed out some neighbouring villages. "All this," she said, "is Cousin Anne's--and yours. I think the Isle of Thorns is yours."

"Then the old chief shall not be disturbed," said Howard.

"How curious it is," said Maud, "to see a place of which one knows every inch laid out like a map beneath one. It seems quite a different place! As if something beautiful and strange must be happening there, if only one could see it!"

"Yes," said Howard, "it is odd how we lose the feeling that a place is romantic when we come to know it. When I first went up to Cambridge, there were many places there that seemed to me to be so interesting: walls which seemed to hide gardens full of thickets, strange doorways by which no one ever pa.s.sed out or in, barred windows giving upon dark courts, out of which no one ever seemed to look. But now that I know them all from the inside, they seem commonplace enough. The hidden garden is a place where Dons smoke and play bowls; the barred window is an undergraduate's gyp-room; there's no mystery left about them now.

This place as I see it to-day--well, it seems the most romantic place in the world, full of unutterable secrets of life and death; but I suppose it may all come to wear a perfectly natural air to me some day."

"That is what I like so much about Cousin Anne," said Maud; "nothing seems to be commonplace to her, and she puts back the mystery and wonder into it all. One must learn to do that for oneself somehow."

"Yes, she's a great woman!" said Howard; "but what shall we do now?"

"Oh, I am sorry," said Maud, "I have been keeping you all this time--wouldn't you like to go and look for Jack? I think I heard a shot just now up the valley."

"No," said Howard, looking at her and smiling, "we won't go and look for Jack to-day; he has quite enough of my company. I want your company to-day, and only yours. I want to get used to my new-found cousin."

"And to get rid of the sense of romance about her?" said Maud with a smile; "you will soon come to the end of me."

"I will take my chance of that," said Howard. "At present I feel on the other side of the wall."

"But I don't," said Maud, laughing; "I can't think how you slip in and fit in as you do, and disentangle all our little puzzles as you have done. I thought I should be terrified of you--and now I feel as if I had known you ever so long. You are like Cousin Anne, you know."

"Perhaps I am, a little," said Howard, "but you are not very much like Jack! Show me Mrs. Darby's house, by the way. I wonder how things are going."

"There it is," said Maud, pointing to a house not far from the Vicarage, "and there is Dr. Grierson's dogcart. I am afraid I had not been thinking about her; but I do hope it's all right. I think she will get over this. Don't you always have an idea, when people are ill, whether they will get well or not?"

"Yes," said Howard, "I do; but it doesn't always come right!"

They lingered long on the hill, and at last Maud said that she must return for tea. "Papa will be sure to bring Dr. Grierson in."

They went down the hill, talking lightly and easily; and to Howard it was more delightful than anything he had known to have a peep into the girl's frank and ingenuous mind. She was full of talk--spontaneous, inconsequent talk--like Jack; and yet with a vast difference. Hers was not a wholly happy temperament, Howard thought; she seemed oppressed by a sense of duty, and he could not help feeling that she needed some sort of outlet. Neither the Vicar nor Jack were people who stood in need of sympathy or affection. He felt that they did not quite understand the drift of the girl's mind, which seemed clear enough to him. And yet there fell on him, for all his happiness, a certain dissatisfaction. He would have liked to feel less elderly, less paternal; and the girl's frank confidence in him, treating him as she might have treated an uncle or an elder brother, was at once delightful and disconcerting. The day began to decline as they walked, and the light faded to a sombre bleakness. Howard went back to the Vicarage with her, and, at her urgent request, went in to tea. They found the Vicar and Dr. Grierson already established. Mrs. Darby was quite comfortable, and no danger was apprehended. The Vicar's diagnosis had been right, and his precautions perfect. "I could not have done better myself!" said Dr. Grierson, a kindly, bluff Scotchman. Howard became aware that the Vicar must have told the Doctor the news about his inheritance, and was subtly flattered at being treated by him with the empress.e.m.e.nt reserved for squires. Jack came in--he had been shooting all afternoon--and told Howard he was improving. "I shall catch you up," he said. He seemed frankly amused at the idea of Howard having spent the afternoon with Maud. "You have got the whole family on your back, it seems," he said. Maud was silent, but in her heightened colour and sparkling eye Howard discerned a touch of happiness, and he enjoyed the quiet attention she gave to his needs. The Vicar seemed sorry that they had not made a closer inspection of the village. "But you were right to begin with a general coup d'oeil," he said; "the whole before the parts! First the conspectus, then the details," he added delightedly. "So you have been to the Isle of Thorns?" he went on. "I want to rake out the old fellow up there some day--but Cousin Anne won't allow it--you must persuade her; and we will have a splendid field-day there, unearthing all the old boy's arrangements; I am sure he has never been disturbed."

"I am afraid I agree with my aunt," said Howard, shaking his head.

"Ah, Maud has been getting at you, I perceive," said the Vicar. "A very feminine view! Now in the interests of ethnology we ought to go forward--dear me, how full the world is of interesting things!"

They parted in great good-humour. The whole party were to dine at the Manor next day; and Howard, as he said good-bye to Maud, contrived to add, "Now you must tell me to-morrow that you have made a beginning."

She gave him a little nod, and a clasp of the hand that made him feel that he had a new friend.

That evening he talked to his aunt about Maud. He told her all about their walk and talk. "I am very glad you gave her something to do," she said--"that is so like a man! That is just where I fail. She is a very interesting and delightful girl, Howard; and she is not quite happy at home. Living with Cousin Frank is like living under a waterfall; and Jack is beginning to have his own plans, and doesn't want anyone to share them. Well, you amaze me! I suppose you get a good deal of practice in these things, and become a kind of amateur father-confessor. I think of you at Cambridge as setting the lives of young men spinning like little tops--small human teetotums. It's very useful, but it is a little dangerous! I don't think you have suffered as yet. That's what I like in you, Howard, the mixture of practical and unpractical. You seem to me to be very busy, and yet to know where to stop. Of course we can't make other people a present of experience; they have to spin their own webs; but I think one can do a certain amount in seeing that they have experience. It would not suit me; my strength is to sit still, as the Bible says. But in a place like this with Frank whipping his tops--he whips them, while you just twirl them--someone is wanted who will listen to people, and see that they are left alone. To leave people alone at the right minute is a very great necessity. Don't you know those gardens that look as if they were always being fussed and slashed and cut about? There's no sense of life in them. One has to slash sometimes, and then leave it. I believe in growth even more than in organisation. Still, I don't doubt that you have helped Maud, and I am very glad of it. I wanted you to make friends with her. I think the lack in your life is that you have known so few women; men and women can never understand each other, of course; but they have got to live together and work together; and one ought to live with people whom one does not understand. You and your undergraduates don't yield any mysteries. You, no doubt, know exactly what they are thinking, and they know what you are thinking. It's all very pleasant and wholesome, but one can't get on very far that way.

You mustn't think Maud is a sort of undergraduate. Probably you think you know a great deal about her already--but she isn't the least what you imagine, any more than I am. Nor are you what I imagine; but I am quite content with my mistaken idea of you."

XI

JACK

The next day's dinner was a disappointment. The Vicar expatiated, Jack counted, and became so intent on his counting that he hardly said a word; indeed Howard was not sure that he was wholly pleased with the turn affairs had taken; he was rather touched by this than otherwise, because it seemed to him that Jack was really, if unconsciously, a little jealous. His whole visit had been rather too much of a success: Jack had expected to act as showman of his menagerie, and to play the princ.i.p.al part; and Howard felt that Jack suspected him of having taken the situation too much into his own hands. He felt that Jack was not pleased with his puppets; his father had needed no apologies or explanations, Maud had been forward, he himself had been donnish.

The result was that Howard hardly got a word with Maud; she did indeed say to him that she had made a beginning, and he was aware of a pleasant sense of trustfulness about her; but the party had been involved in vague and general talk, with a disturbing element somewhere. Howard found himself talking aimlessly and flatly, and the net result was a feeling of dissatisfaction.

When they were gone, Mrs. Graves said to Howard, "Jack is rather a masterful young man, I think. He has no sense of respect in his composition. Were you aware of the fact that he had us all under his thumb this evening?"

"Yes," said Howard, "it was just what I was thinking!"

"He wants work," said Mrs. Graves; "he ought not to dangle about at home and at Cambridge; he wants tougher material to deal with; it's no use snubbing him, because he is on the right tack; but he must not be allowed to interfere too much. He wants a touch of misfortune to bring him to himself; he has a real influence over people--the influence that all definite, good-humoured, outspoken people have; it is easier for others to do what he likes than to resist him; he is not irritable, and he is pertinacious. He is the sort of man who may get very much spoilt if he doesn't marry the right woman, because he is the sort of person women will tell lies to rather than risk displeasing him. If he does not take care he will be a man of the world, because he will not see the world as it is; it will behave to him as he wishes it to behave."

"I think," said Howard, "that he has got good stuff in him; he would never do anything mean or spiteful; but he would do anything that he thought consistent with honour to get his way."

"Well, we shall see," said Mrs. Graves; "but he is rather a bad influence for Maud just now. Maud doesn't suspect his strength, and I can't have her broken in. Mind, Howard, I look to you to help Maud along. You have a gift for keeping things reasonable; and you must use it."

"I thought you believed in letting people alone!" said Howard.

"In theory, yes," said Mrs. Graves, smiling; "I certainly don't believe in influencing people; but I believe very much in loving them: it's what I call imaginative sympathy that we want. Some people have imagination enough to see what other people are feeling, but it ends there: and some people have unintelligent sympathy, and that is only spoiling. But one must see what people are capable of, and what their line is, and help them to find out what suits them, not try to conform them to what suits oneself; and that isn't as easy as it sounds."

XII

DIPLOMACY

A few days later Howard was summoned back to Cambridge. One of his colleagues was ill, and arrangements had to be made to provide for his work. It astonished him to find how reluctant he was to return; he seemed to have found the sort of life he needed in this quiet place. He had walked with the Vicar, and had been deluged with interesting particulars about the parish. Much of it was very trivial, but Howard saw that the Vicar had a real insight into the people and their ways.

He had not seen Maud again to speak to, and it vexed him to find how difficult it was to create occasions for meeting. His mind and imagination had been taken captive by the girl; he thought of her constantly, and recalled her in a hundred charming vignettes; the hope of meeting her was constantly in his mind; he had taught Jack a good deal, but he became more and more aware that for some reason or other his pupil was not pleased with him.

He and Jack were returning one day from fishing, and they had come nearer than Howard had liked to having a squabble. Howard had said something about an undergraduate, a friend of Jack's. Jack had seemed to resent the criticism, and said, "I am not quite sure whether you know so much about him as you think. Do you always a.n.a.lyse people like that? I sometimes feel with you as if I were in a room full of specimens which you were showing off, and that you knew more about them dead than alive."

"That's rather severe!" said Howard; "I simply try to understand people--I suppose we all do that."

"No, I don't," said Jack; "I think it's rather stuffy, if you want to know. I have a feeling that you have been turning everyone inside out here. I think one ought to let people alone."

"Well," said Howard, "it all depends upon what one wants to do with people. I think that, as a matter of fact, you are really more inclined to deal with people, to use them for your own purposes, than I am. You know what you want, and other people have got to follow. Of course, up at Beaufort, it's my business to try to do that to a certain extent; but that is professional, and a matter of business."

"But the worst of doing it professionally," said Jack, "is that you can't get out of the way of doing it unprofessionally. You seem to me to have rather purchased this place. I know you are to be squire, and all that; but you want to make yourself felt. I am not sure that you aren't rather a Jesuit."