Part 25
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.’
XXXIV
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---- ’