Chapter 10

MY DEAR GODFATHER,—You are most disappointing and evasive. I gave up the discussion on Latin and Greek, but I did and do want your reply to a most simple question. If you had to teach children—you surely can imagine yourself in such a position—would you teach them _what are generally known as theology and metaphysics_?—excuse the emphasis. You have an answer, I am certain, and you may just as well give it me. I know that you had rather, or affect you had rather, talk about Catullus, but I also know that you think upon serious subjects sometimes. These matters cannot now be put aside. We live in a world in which certain problems are forced upon us and we are compelled to come to some conclusion upon them. I cannot shut myself up and determine that I will have no opinion upon Education or Socialism or Women’s Rights. The fact that these questions are here is plain proof that it is my duty not to ignore them. You hate large generalisations, but how can we exist without them? They may never be entirely true, but they are indispensable, and, if you never commit yourself to any, you are much more likely to be practically wrong than if you use them.

Take, for example, the Local Veto. I admitted in my speech that there is much to be urged against it. It might act harshly, and it is quite true that poor men in large towns cannot spend their evenings in their filthy homes; but I _must_ be for it or against it, and I am enthusiastically for it, because on the whole it will do good. So with Socialism. The evils of Capitalism are so monstrous that any remedy is better than none. Socialism may not be the direct course: it may be a tremendously awkward tack, but it is only by tacking that we get along. So with positive education, but I have enlarged upon this already. What a sermon to my dear godfather! Forgive me, but you will have to take sides, and do, please, be a little more definite about my book.

Your affectionate godchild, HERMIONE.

MY DEAR HERMIONE,—I haven’t written for some time, for I was unwell for nearly a month. The doctor has given me physic, but my age is really the mischief, and it is incurable. I caught cold through sitting out of doors after dinner with the rector, a good fellow if he would not smoke on my port. To smoke on good port is a sin. He knows my infirmity, that I cannot sit still long, and he excuses my attendance at church. Would you believe it? When I was very bad, and thought I might die, I read Horace again, whom you detest. I often wonder what he really thought upon many things when he looked out on the

“taciturna noctis signa.”

Justice is not often done to him. He saw a long way, but he did not make believe he saw beyond his limit, and was content with it. A rare virtue is intellectual content!

“Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi Finem dî dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios Tentaris numeros.”

The rector was telling me about Tom Pavenham’s wedding. He has married Margaret Loxley, as you may perhaps have seen in the paper I sent you. Mrs. Loxley, her mother, was a Barfield, and old Pavenham, when he was a youth, fell in love with her. She was also in love with him. He was well-to-do, and farmed about seven hundred acres, but he was not thought good enough by the elder Barfields, who lived in what was called a park. They would not hear of the match. She was sent to France, and he went to Buenos Ayres. After some years had passed he married out there, and she married. His wife died when her first child, a boy, was born. Loxley also died, leaving his wife with an only daughter. Pavenham retired from business in South America, and came back with his son to his native village, where he meant to spend the rest of his days. Tom and Margaret were at once desperately smitten with one another. The father and mother have kept their own flame alive, and I believe it is as bright as it ever was. It is delightful to see them together. They called on me with the children after the betrothal. He was so courteous and attentive to her, and she seemed to bask in his obvious affection. I noticed how they looked at one another and smiled happily as the boy and girl wandered off together towards the filbert walk. The rector told me that he was talking to old Pavenham one evening, and said to him: “Jem, aren’t you sometimes sad when you think of what ought to have happened?” His voice shook a bit as he replied gently: “God be thanked for what we have! Besides, it has all come to pass in Tom and Margaret.”

You must not be angry with me if I say nothing more about Positive Education. It is a great strain on me to talk upon such matters, and when I do I always feel afterwards that I have said much which is mere words. That is a sure test; I must obey my dæmon. I wish I could give you what you want for what you have given me; but when do we get what we want in exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is a clumsy barter. A man sells me a sheep, and I pay him in return with my grandfather’s old sextant. This is not quite true for you and me. Love is given and love is returned. À Dieu—not adieu. Remember that the world is very big, and that there may be room in it for a few creatures like

Your affectionate godfather, G. L.

MRS. FAIRFAX

THE town of Langborough in 1839 had not been much disturbed since the beginning of the preceding century. The new houses were nearly all of them built to replace others which had fallen into decay; there were no drains; the drinking-water came from pumps; the low fever killed thirty or forty people every autumn; the Moot Hall still stood in the middle of the High Street; the newspaper came but once a week; nobody read any books; and the Saturday market and the annual fair were the only events in public local history. Langborough, being seventy miles from London and eight from the main coach-road, had but little communication with the outside world. Its inhabitants intermarried without crossing from other stocks, and men determined their choice mainly by equality of fortune and rank. The shape of the nose and lips and colour of the eyes may have had some influence in masculine selection, but not much: the doctor took the lawyer’s daughter, the draper took the grocer’s, and the carpenter took the blacksmith’s. Husbands and wives, as a rule, lived comfortably with one another; there was no reason why they should quarrel. The air of the place was sleepy; the men attended to their business, and the women were entirely apart, minding their household affairs and taking tea with one another. In Langborough, dozing as it had dozed since the days of Queen Anne, it was almost impossible that any woman should differ so much from another that she could be the cause of passionate preference.

One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough was stirred to its depths. No such excitement had been felt in the town since the run upon the bank in 1825, when one of the partners went up to London, brought down ten thousand pounds in gold with him by the mail, and was met at Thaxton cross-roads by a post-chaise, which was guarded into Langborough by three men with pistols. A circular printed in London was received on that spring day in 1839 by all the respectable ladies in the town stating that a Mrs. Fairfax was about to begin business in Ferry Street as a dressmaker. She had taken the only house to be let in Ferry Street. It was a cottage with a front and back sitting-room, and belonged to an old lady in Lincoln, who inherited it from her brother, who once lived in it but had been dead forty years. Before a week had gone by four-fifths of the population of Langborough had re-inspected it. The front room was the shop, and in the window was a lay-figure attired in an evening robe of rose-coloured silk, the like of which for style and fit no native lady had ever seen. Underneath it was a card—“Mrs. Fairfax, Milliner and Dressmaker.” The circular stated that Mrs. Fairfax could provide materials or would make up those brought to her by her customers.

Great was the debate which followed this unexpected apparition. Who Mrs. Fairfax was could not be discovered. Her furniture and the lay-figure had come by the waggon, and the only information the driver could give was that he was directed at the “George and Blue Boar” in Holborn to fetch them from Great Ormond Street. After much discussion it was agreed that Mrs. Bingham, the wife of the wine merchant, should call on Mrs. Fairfax and inquire the price of a gown. Mrs. Bingham was at the head of society in Langborough, and had the reputation of being very clever. It was hoped, and indeed fully expected, that she would be able to penetrate the mystery. She went, opened the door, a little bell sounded, and Mrs. Fairfax presented herself. Mrs. Bingham’s eyes fell at once upon Mrs. Fairfax’s dress. It was black, with no ornament, and constructed with an accuracy and grace which proved at once to Mrs. Bingham that its maker was mistress of her art. Mrs. Bingham, although she could not entirely desert the linendraper’s wife, whose husband was a good customer for brandy, had some of her clothes made in London when she stayed with her sister in town, and, to use her own phrase, “knew what was what.”

“Mrs. Fairfax?”

A bow.

“Will you please tell me what a gown would cost made somewhat like that in the window?”

“For yourself, madam?”

“Yes.”

“Pardon me; I am afraid that colour would not suit you.”

Mrs. Bingham was a stout woman with a ruddy complexion.

“One colour costs no more than another?”

“No, madam: twelve guineas; that silk is expensive. Will you not take a seat?”

“I am afraid you will find twelve guineas too much for anybody here. Have you nothing cheaper?”

Mrs. Fairfax produced some patterns and fashion-plates.

“I suppose the gown in the window is your own make?”

“My own make and design.”

“Then you are not beginning business?”

“I hope I may say that I thoroughly understand it.”

The door leading into the back parlour opened, and a little girl about nine or ten years old entered.

“Mother, I want—”

Mrs. Fairfax, without saying a word, gently led the child into the parlour again.

“Dear me, what a pretty little girl! Is that yours?”

“Yes, she is mine.”

Mrs. Bingham noticed that Mrs. Fairfax did not wear a widow’s cap, and that she had a wedding-ring on her finger.

“You will find it rather lonely here. Have you been accustomed to solitude?”

“Yes. That silk, now, would suit you admirably. With less ornament it would be ten guineas.”

“Thank you: I must not be so extravagant at present. May I look at something which will do for walking? You would not, I suppose, make a walking-dress for Langborough exactly as you would have made it in London?”

“If you mean for walking about the roads here, it would differ slightly from one which would be suitable for London.”

“Will you show me what you have usually made for town?”

“This is what is worn now.”

Mrs. Bingham was baffled but not defeated. She gave an order for a walking-dress, and hoped that Mrs. Fairfax might be more communicative.

“Have you any introductions here?”

“None whatever.”

“It is rather a risk if you are unknown.”

“Perhaps you have been exempt from risks: some people are obliged constantly to encounter them.”

“‘Exempt,’ ‘encounter,”’ thought Mrs. Bingham: “she must have been to a good school.”

“When will you be ready to try on?”

“On Friday,” and Mrs. Fairfax opened the door.

As Mrs. Bingham went out she noticed a French book lying on a side table.

The day following was Sunday, and Mrs. Fairfax and her daughter were at church. They sat at the back, and all the congregation turned on entering, looked at them, and thought about them during the service. They went out as soon as it was over, but Mrs. Harrop, wife of the ironmonger, and Mrs. Cobb, wife of the coal merchant, escaped with equal promptitude and were close behind them.

“There isn’t a crease in that body,” said Mrs. Harrop.

On Monday Mrs. Bingham was at the post-office. She took care to be there at the dinner hour, when the postmaster’s wife generally came to the counter.

“A newcomer, Mrs. Carter. Have you seen Mrs. Fairfax?”

“Once or twice, ma’am.”

“Has she many letters?”

The door between the office and the parlour was open.

“I’ve no doubt she will have, ma’am, if her business succeeds.”

“I wonder where she lived before she came here. It is curious, isn’t it, that nobody knows her? Did you ever notice how her letters are stamped?”

“Can’t say as I have, ma’am.”

Mrs. Carter shut the parlour door. “The smell of those onions,” she whispered to her husband, “blows right in here.” She then altered her tone a trifle.

“One of ’em, Mrs. Bingham, had the Portsmouth postmark on it; but this is in the strictest confidence, and I should never dream of letting it out to anybody but you, but I don’t mind you, because I know you won’t repeat it, and if my husband was to hear me he’d be in a fearful rage, for there was a dreadful row when I told Lady Caroline at Thaxton Manor about the letters Miss Margaret was getting, and it was found out that it was me as told her, and some gentleman in London wrote to the Postmaster-General about it.”

“You may depend upon me, Mrs. Carter.” Mrs. Bingham considered she had completely satisfied her conscience when she imposed an oath of secrecy on Mrs. Harrop, who was also self-exonerated when she had imposed a similar oath on Mrs. Cobb.

A fortnight after the visit to the post-office there was a tea-party. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, the grocer’s wife, and Miss Tarrant, an elderly lady, living on a small annuity, but most genteel, were invited to Mrs. Bingham’s. They began to talk of Mrs. Fairfax directly they had tasted the hot buttered toast. They had before them the following facts: the carrier’s deposition that the goods came from Great Ormond Street; the lay-figure and what it wore; Mrs. Fairfax’s prices; the little girl; the wedding-ring but no widow’s weeds; the Portsmouth postmark; the French book; Mrs. Bingham’s new gown, and lastly—a piece of information contributed by Mrs. Sweeting and considered to be of great importance, as we shall see presently—that Mrs. Fairfax bought her coffee whole and ground it herself. On these facts, nine in all, the ladies had to construct—it was imperative that they should construct it—an explanation of Mrs. Fairfax, and it must be confessed that they were not worse equipped than many a picturesque and successful historian. At the request of the company, Mrs. Bingham went upstairs and put on the gown.

“Do you mind coming to the window, Mrs. Bingham?” asked Mrs. Harrop.

Mrs. Bingham rose and went to the window. Her guests also rose. She held her arms down and then held them up, and was surveyed from every point of the compass.

“I thought it was a pucker, but it’s only the shadow,” observed Mrs. Harrop.

Mrs. Cobb stroked the body and shook the skirt. Not a single depreciatory criticism was ventured. Excepting the wearer, nobody present had seen such a masterpiece. But although for half a lifetime we may have beheld nothing better than an imperfect actual, we recognise instantly the superiority and glory of the realised Ideal when it is presented to us. Mrs. Harrop, Mrs. Cobb, Mrs. Sweeting, and Miss Tarrant became suddenly aware of possibilities of which they had not hitherto dreamed. Mrs. Swanley, the linendraper’s wife, was degraded and deposed.

“She must have learned that in London,” said Mrs. Harrop.

“London! my dear Mrs. Harrop,” replied Mrs. Bingham, “I know London pretty well, and how things are cut there. I told you there was a French book on the table. Take my word for it, she has lived in Paris. She _must_ have lived there.”

“Where is Great Ormond Street, Mrs. Bingham?” inquired Mrs. Sweeting.

“A great many foreigners live there; it is somewhere near Leicester Square.”

Mrs. Bingham knew nothing about the street, but having just concluded a residence in Paris from the French book, that conclusion led at once to a further conclusion, clear as noonday, as to the quality of the people who inhabited Great Ormond Street, and consequently to the final deduction of its locality.

“Did you not say, Mrs. Sweeting, that she buys her coffee whole?” added Mrs. Bingham, as if inspiration had flashed into her. “If you want additional proof that she is French, there it is.”

“Portsmouth,” mused Mrs. Cobb. “You say, Mrs. Bingham, there are a good many officers there. Let me see—1815—it’s twenty-four years ago since the battle. A captain may have picked her up in Paris. I’ll be bound that, if she ever was married, she was married when she was sixteen or seventeen. They are always obliged to marry those French girls when they are nothing but chits, I’ve been told—those of them, leastways, that don’t live with men without being married. That would make her about forty, and then he found her out and left her, and she went back to Paris and learned dressmaking.”

“But he writes to her from Portsmouth,” said Mrs. Bingham, who had not been told that the solitary letter from Portsmouth was addressed in a man’s handwriting.

“He may not have broken with her altogether,” replied Mrs. Cobb. “If he isn’t a downright brute he’ll want to hear about his daughter.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Sweeting, twitching her eyes as she was wont to do when she was about to give an opinion which she knew would disturb any of her friends, “you may talk as you like, but the last thing Swanley made for me looked as if it had been to the wash and hung on me to dry. French or English, captain or no captain, I shall go to Mrs. Fairfax. Her character’s got nothing to do with her cut. Suppose she _is_ divorced; judging from that body of yours, Mrs. Bingham, I shan’t have to send back a pelisse half a dozen times to get it altered. When it comes to that you get sick of the thing, and may just as well give it away.”

Mrs. Sweeting occupied the lowest rank in this particular section of Langborough society. As a grocer Mr. Sweeting was not quite on a level with the coal dealer, who was a merchant, nor with the ironmonger, who repaired ploughs, and he was certainly below Mr. Bingham. Miss Tarrant, never having been “connected with trade”—her father was chief clerk in the bank—considered herself superior to all her acquaintances, but her very small income prevented her from claiming her superiority so effectively as she desired.

“Mrs. Sweeting,” she said, “I am surprised at you! You do not consider what the moral effect on the lower orders of patronising a female of this kind will be, probably an abandoned woman. The child, no doubt, was not born in wedlock. We are sinners ourselves if we support sinners.”

“Miss Tarrant,” retorted Mrs. Sweeting, “I’m the respectable mother of five children, and I don’t want any sermons on sin except in church. If it wasn’t a sin of Swanley to charge me three guineas for that pelisse, and wouldn’t take it back, I don’t know what sin.”

Mrs. Bingham, although she was accustomed to tea-table disputes, and even enjoyed them, was a little afraid of Mrs. Sweeting’s tongue, and thought it politic to interfere.

“I agree with you entirely, Mrs. Sweeting, about the inferiority of Mrs. Swanley to this newcomer, but we must consider Miss Tarrant’s position in the parish and her responsibilities. She is no doubt right from her point of view.”

So the conversation ended, but Mrs. Fairfax’s biography, which was to be published under authority in Langborough, was now rounded off and complete. She was a Parisian, father and mother unknown, was found in Paris in 1815 by Captain Fairfax, who, by her intrigues and threats of exposure, was forced into a marriage with her. A few years afterwards he had grounds for a divorce, but not wishing a scandal, consented to a compromise and voluntary separation. He left one child in her custody, as it showed signs of resemblance to its mother, to whom he gave a small monthly allowance. She had been apprenticed as a dressmaker in Paris, had returned thither in order to master her trade, and then came back to England. In a very little time, so clever was she that she learned to speak English fluently, although, as Mrs. Bingham at once noticed, the French accent was very perceptible. It was a good, intelligible, working theory, and that was all that was wanted. This was Mrs. Fairfax so far as her female neighbours were concerned. To the men in Langborough she was what she was to the women, but with a difference. When she went to Mr. Sweeting’s shop to order her groceries, Mr. Sweeting, notwithstanding the canonical legend of her life, served her himself, and was much entangled by her dark hair, and was drawn down by it into a most polite bow. Mr. Cobb, who had a little cabin of an office in his coal-yard, hastened back to it from superintending the discharge of a lighter, when Mrs. Fairfax called to pay her little bill, actually took off his hat, begged her to be seated, and hoped she did not find the last lot of coals dusty. He was now unloading some of the best Wallsend that ever came up the river, and would take care that the next half ton should not have an ounce of small in it.

“You’ll find it chilly where you are living, ma’am, but it isn’t damp, that’s one comfort. The bottom of your street is damp, and down here in a flood anything like what we had fourteen years ago, we are nearly drowned. If you’ll step outside with me I’ll show you how high the water rose.” He opened the door, and Mrs. Fairfax thought it courteous not to refuse. He walked to the back of his cabin bareheaded, although the morning was cold, and pointed out to her the white paint mark on the wall. She, dropped her receipted bill in the black mud and stooped to pick it up. Mr. Cobb plunged after it and wiped it carefully on his silk pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Cobb’s bay window commanded the whole length of the coal-yard. In this bay window she always sat and worked and nodded to the customers, or gossiped with them as they passed. She turned her back on Mrs. Fairfax both when she entered the yard and when she left it, but watched her carefully. Mr. Cobb came into dinner, but his wife bided her time, knowing that, as he took snuff, the handkerchief would be used. It was very provoking, he was absent-minded, and forgot his usual pinch before he sat down to his meal. For three-quarters of an hour his wife was afflicted with painfully uneasy impatience, and found it very difficult to reply to Mr. Cobb’s occasional remarks. At last the cheese was finished, the snuff-box appeared, and after it the handkerchief.

“A pretty mess that handkerchief is in, Cobb.” She always called him simply “Cobb.”

“Yes, it was an a-a-accident. I must have a clean one. I didn’t think it was so dirty.”

“The washing of your snuffy handkerchiefs costs quite enough as it is, Cobb, without using them in that way.”

“What way?” said Mr. Cobb weakly.

“Oh, I saw it all, going out without your hat and standing there like a silly fool cleaning that bit of paper. I wonder what the lightermen thought of you.”

It will already have been noticed that the question what other people thought was always the test which was put in Langborough whenever anything was done or anything happened not in accordance with the usual routine, and Mrs. Cobb struck at her husband’s conscience by referring him to his lightermen. She continued—

“And you know what she is as well as I do, and if she’d been respectable you’d have been rude to her, as you generally are.”

“You bought that last new gown of her, and you never had one as fitted you so well.”