CHAPTER XXX

UNDER THE MULBERRY TREE

Kate disengaged herself from Rose, and hastened to the Rectory. She opened the garden gate. She was a privileged person there, coming when she liked about choir matters, sent messages by her uncle, who was churchwarden, running in when she had a spare hour to look at Mr. Fielding’s picture-books, in strawberry time to gather the fruit and eat it, in preserving time to collect his raspberries, currants, plums, for the cook to convert into jams.

She saw the rector sitting under a mulberry tree on his lawn with a book on his lap. He had removed his hat, and the spring air fluttered his silver hair.

He saw Kate at once, and, smiling, beckoned to her to come and sit by him on the bench that half encircled the old tree.

This she would not do, but she stood before him with downcast eyes and folded hands, and said, “Please, sir, I am afraid you will be cross with me.”

“I am never that, Kitty.”

“No, sir, never.” She raised her flashing blue eyes for a moment. “Perhaps you may be vexed with me. I’ve just gone and done clean contrary to what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“You said after my holiday I was to go home, and obey my uncle and aunt in everything.”

“I am sure I never said that.”

“It was something like it—be obliging and good.”

“Well, have you not been obliging and good?”

“No, sir.”

“What have you done?”

“I’ve crossed them, and I fancy father will be cross too.”

“What have you done to cross them?”

“Refused Jan Pooke.”

The rector drew back against the tree and smiled.

“Refused? I don’t quite understand.”

“Please, sir, Jan wanted to make me his wife.”

“Well?”

“And I said ‘No.’”

“You had made up your mind already?”

“I knew I must say ‘No.’ Do you know, sir, Jan thought that silver peninks came from daffodil roots.”

“Oh! and accordingly you could not say ‘Yes’?”

“It was silly; was it not?”

“And that was your real, true reason for saying ‘No’?”

Kitty looked down.

“You are not angry with me, sir?”

“No. Are your relations so?”

“Yes; uncle and aunt are dreadfully vexed, and that is what has made me cry. I came home wishing to do everything to please them, and the first thing I did was to make them angry and call me a little viper they had brought up in their bosom. You do not think I did wrong? You are not angry also?”

“No; I do not think you could have done otherwise, if you did not care for John Pooke.”

“I did, and I do care for John Pooke.”

“Then why did you not take him? Only because of the silver peninks?”

“No, sir; not that only. I care for him, but not enough; I like him, but not enough.”

“Quite so. You like, but do not love him.”

“Yes, that is it.” Kate breathed freely. “I did not know how to put it. Do you think I did right?”

The rector paused before he answered. Then he said, signing with his thin hand, “Come here, little Kitty. Sit by me.”

He took her hand in his, and, looking before him, said, “It would have been a great thing for this parish had you become John Pooke’s wife, the principal woman in the place, to give tone to it, the one to whom all would look up, the strongest influence for good among the girls. I should have had great hopes that all the bread I have strewed upon the waters would not be strewn in vain.”

“I thought you wished it,” burst forth from the girl, with a sob. “And yet I could not—I could not indeed. Now I have turned everyone against me—everyone but Rose,” she added, truthful in everything, exact in all she said.

“No, Kitty, I do not wish it. It is true, indeed, that it would be a rich blessing to such a place as this to have you as the guiding star to all the womanhood in the place, set up on such a candlestick as the Pookes’ farm. But I am not so sure that the little light would burn there and not be smothered in grease, or would gutter, and become extinguished in the wind there. The place is good in itself, but not good for you. It might be an advantage to the parish, but fatal to yourself. John Pooke is an honest, worthy fellow, and he has won my respect because he saw your value and has striven to win you. But he is not the man for you. For my little Kitty I hope there will come some one possessed of better treasures than broad acres, fat beeves, and many flocks of sheep; possessed of something better even than amiability of temper.”

“What is that, sir?”

“A well-stored intellect—an active mind. Kitty, no one has more regard for young John than myself, but it would have been terrible to you to have been tied to him. ‘Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together’ was the command of Moses, and we must not unite under one yoke the sluggish mind with that which is full of activity. No, no, Kitty. You acted rightly. The man who will be fitted to be coupled in the same plough with you will be one of another mould. He will be”—

The garden gate opened, and Walter Bramber entered. A twig of laurel caught his sleeve, and he turned to extricate himself, and did not perceive the rector and Kate. A sudden confusion came over the girl, caused—whether by her thoughts, whether by the words of the rector, whether from natural shyness, she could not tell, but she started from the seat and slipped behind the mulberry.

The schoolmaster came up to the rector when called, and found the old man with a smile playing about his lips.

“I have come, sir,” said Bramber, “to ask your advice.”

“In private?”

“Yes, sir, if you please.”

“Then I cannot grant you an audience now. If you will run round the mulberry, you will discover why.”

Bramber was puzzled.

“Do what I say. There is someone there, someone who must retire farther than behind a tree if you are to consult me without being overheard.”

The schoolmaster stepped aside to go about the mulberry, and saw Kate standing there, leaning against the trunk, holding together her skirts, and looking down.

“Oh!” laughed Walter; “this is the audience! I do not in the least mind a discussion of my concerns before such an one.”

“Come out, Kitty! You hear your presence is desired,” called Mr. Fielding, and the girl stepped forward. “Take the place where you were before on one side of me, and Mr. Bramber shall sit on the other, and we will enter on the consideration of his affairs. What are they as to complexion, Bramber, sanguine or atrabilious?”

“Not cheerful, I am afraid. I have my troubles and difficulties before my eyes.”

“So has Kitty. She comes to me from the same cause.” Then he added, “Well, let us hear and consider.”

“It concerns Mr. Puddicombe. I do not know what I ought to do, or whether I should do anything. There is an organised opposition to me, and the late schoolmaster is at the bottom of it. I can clearly perceive that not parents only, but children as well, have been worked upon to offer stubborn opposition to all my changes, and to make myself ridiculous. I need not enter into details. There is this feeling of antagonism in the place, and it paralyses me. If the children were left unmanipulated, I could get along and gain their confidence; but at home they hear what their parents say, what is said to their parents, and they come to school with a purpose not to obey me, not to listen to my instructions, and to make my task in every particular irksome and distasteful. I see precisely what Puddicombe is aiming at—to force me to use the cane, not once or twice, but continuously, and to force me to it by making discipline impossible without it. Then he will have a handle against me, and will rouse the parish to hound me out. What am I to do?”

“Have you called on him?”

“No, sir, I have not. I really could not pluck up courage to do so. I hardly know what I could say to him that is pleasant if we did meet.”

“You have not yet met him?”

“No. I do not know him by sight.”

“He is not a bad fellow; jovial, a sportsman at heart, and his heart was never in the school; it was to be sought in the kennels, in stables, in the ring, anywhere save in class. That was the blemish in the man. His thoroughness was not where it should have been. His centre of gravity was outside the sphere in which it was his duty to turn. But he is not a bad fellow, good-hearted, placable, and only your enemy because his vanity rather than his pocket is touched by his dismissal. I hear he has announced his intention of becoming a Dissenter; but as he hardly ever came to church when he was professedly a Churchman, I do not suppose chapel will see much of him when he professes himself a Nonconformist. It is a great misfortune when a man’s interests lie outside his vocation.”

“What shall I do, sir?”

“Call on him.”

“What shall I say to him?”

“Something that will please him—nothing about the school; nothing about your difficulties.”

“I am supremely ignorant of the cockpit and the race-course. It is very hard when two men belonging to different spheres meet; they can neither understand the other.”

“My dear young man, that is what I have been experiencing these many years here; we must strive to accommodate ourselves to inferior ways of thinking and speaking, and then, then only, shall we be able to insinuate into the gross and dark minds some spark of the higher life. Kitty, have I your permission to tell Mr. Bramber what it is that you have just communicated to me? It will be public property throughout Coombe in half an hour, if everyone does not know it now, so it will be revealing no secrets.”

Kate looked, with a startled expression in her eyes, at the rector. Why should he care to speak of this matter now? Why before Bramber? But she had confidence in him, and she did not open her lips in remonstrance.

With a quiet smile, Mr. Fielding said: “You have not yet heard the tidings with regard to our little friend here, I presume?”

“Tidings—what?” The schoolmaster looked hastily round and saw Kate’s head droop, and a twinkle come in the rector’s eye. A slight flush rose to his temples.

“Merely that she has received an offer”—

“Offer?” Bramber caught his breath, and the colour left his face.

“Of marriage,” continued Mr. Fielding composedly. “A most remarkable offer. The young man is eminently respectable, very comfortably off; age suitable; looks prepossessing; parents acquiescing.”

“Kate! Kitty!” Bramber’s voice was sharp with alarm and pain.

“I do not know whether the attachment has been one of long continuance,” proceeded the rector. “The fact of the proposal—now passing through Coombe—is like the dropping of a meteorite in its midst. Popular fame had attributed Rose Ash to John Pooke.”

“John Pooke, is it?” gasped the schoolmaster, and he sprang to his feet.

“John Pooke the younger, not the father, who is a widower of many years’ standing. The disparity of ages makes that quite impossible. The younger John it is who has aspired.”

“Kate, tell me—it cannot be. It must not be,” exclaimed Bramber, stepping before the girl, and in his excitement catching her hands and drawing them from her face, in which she had hidden them. She looked up at him with a flutter in her eyes and hectic colour in her cheeks. She made no attempt to withdraw her hands.

“By the way,” said the rector, “I will look up cockfighting in my _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and make an extract from the article, if I find one, that may be serviceable to you, Bramber, when you call on Mr. Puddicombe. I’ll go to my library. I shall not detain you many minutes.”

The many minutes were protracted to twenty. When Mr. Fielding returned, the young people were seated close to each other under the mulberry-tree, and still held hands; their eyes were bright, and their cheeks glowing.

“I am sorry I have been so long,” said the rector; “but there was a great deal of matter under the head of ‘Cock-pit’ in the _Encyclopædia_; and I had to run through it, and cull what would be of greatest utility. I have written it out. Do not rise. I will sit beside you—no, not between you—listen! ‘It must appear astonishing to every reflecting mind, that a mode of diversion so cruel and inhuman as that of cockfighting should so generally prevail, that not only the ancients, barbarians, Greeks, and Romans should have adopted it; but that a practice so savage and heathenish should be continued by Christians of all sorts, and even pursued in these better and more enlightened times.’ That is how the article begins—very true, but won’t do for Mr. Puddicombe. ‘The islanders of Delos, it seems, were great lovers of cockfighting; and Tanagra, a city in B[oe]otia, the Isle of Rhodes, Chalcis in Eub[oe]a, and the country of Media, were famous for their generous and magnanimous race of chickens.’ I don’t think this is much good. Puddicombe, though a schoolmaster, will hardly know the whereabouts of Delos, Tanagra, Rhodes, and Chalcis. ‘The cock is not only an useful animal, but stately in his figure, and magnificent in his plumage. His tenderness towards his brood is such, that, contrary to the custom of many other males, he will scratch and provide for them with an assiduity almost equal to that of the hen; and his generosity is so great, that, on finding a hoard of meat, he will chuckle the hens together, and, without touching one bit himself, will relinquish the whole of it to them. He was called _the bird_, κατ’ ἐξοχήν by many of the ancients’—But, bless me, are you attending?”

“Mr. Fielding,” answered Bramber, “I do not think I shall have much trouble in finding a topic on which to speak with my predecessor in the school. He was Kitty’s schoolmaster. She will introduce me to him. We will go to him at once; and when he hears what we have to say,—that I, the new schoolmaster, am going to take to me the favourite, most docile, the best scholar of the old one; and when he learns that he is the first person to whom we make the announcement, and that he is at liberty to run up and down, and in and out of every house, communicating the news,—why, I am pretty sure that he will be won.”

“Well, now!”

“And Kitty will cease to be Kitty Alone some time next year.”