Chapter 11

“What’s that got to do with it? You may be sure I knew my place when I went there. Fit? Yes, it did fit; them sort of women, it stands to reason, are just the women to fit you.”

Mr. Cobb was silent. He was a mild man, and he knew by much experience how unprofitable controversy with Mrs. Cobb was. He could not forget Mrs. Fairfax’s stooping figure when she was about to pick up the bill. She caused in all the Langborough males an unaccustomed quivering and warmth, the same in each, physical, perhaps, but salutary, for the monotony of life was relieved thereby and a deference and even a grace were begotten which did not usually distinguish Langborough manners. Not one of Mrs. Fairfax’s admirers, however, could say that she showed any desire for conversation with him, nor could any direct evidence be obtained as to what she thought of things in general. There was, to be sure, the French book, and there were other circumstances already mentioned from which suspicion or certainty (suspicion, as we have seen, passing immediately into certainty in Langborough) of infidelity or disreputable conduct followed, but no corroborating word from her could be adduced. She attended to her business, accepted orders with thanks and smiles, talked about the weather and the accident to the coach, was punctual in her attendance at church, calm and inscrutable as the Sphinx. The attendance at church was, of course, set down to “business considerations,” and was held to be quite consistent with the scepticism and loose morality deducible from the French book and the unground coffee.

* * * * *

In speaking of the male creatures of the town we have left out Dr. Midleton. He was forty-eight years old, and had been rector twenty years. He had obtained high mathematical honours at Cambridge, and became a tutor in a grammar school, but was soon presented by his college with the living of Langborough. He was tall, spare, clean-shaven, grey-eyed, dark-haired, thin-faced, his lips were curved and compressed, and he stooped slightly. He was a widower with no children, and the Rectory was efficiently kept in order by an aged housekeeper. Tractarianism had not arisen in 1839, but he was High Church and an enemy to all kinds of fanaticism, apt to be satirical, even in his sermons, on the right of private judgment to interpret texts as it pleased in ignorance of Hebrew and Greek. He was respected and feared more than any other man in the parish. He had a great library, and had taken up archæology as a hobby. He knew the history of every church in the county, and more about the Langborough records than was known by the town clerk. He was chairman of a Board of Governors charged with the administration of wealthy trust for alms and schools. When he first took office he found that this trust was controlled almost entirely by a man named Jackson, a local solicitor, whose salary as clerk was £400 a year and who had a large private practice. The alms were allotted to serve political purposes, and the headmaster of the school enjoyed a salary of £800 a year for teaching forty boys, of whom twenty were boarders. Mr. Midleton—he was Mr. Midleton then—very soon determined to alter this state of things. Jackson went about sneering at the newcomer who was going to turn the place upside down, and having been accustomed to interfere in the debates in the Board-room, interrupted the Rector at the third or fourth meeting.

“You’ll get yourself in a mess if you do that, Mr. Chairman.”

“Mr. Jackson,” replied the Rector, rising slowly, “it may perhaps save trouble if I remind you now, once for all, that I am chairman and you are the clerk. Mr. Bingham, you were about to speak.”

It was Dr. Midleton who obtained the new Act of Parliament remodelling the trust, whereby a much larger portion of its funds was devoted to education. Jackson died, partly from drink and partly from spite and vexation, and the headmaster was pensioned. The Rector was not popular with the middle class. He was not fond of paying visits, but he never neglected his duty, and by the poor was almost beloved, for he was careless and intimate in his talk with them and generous to real distress. Everybody admired his courage. The cholera in 1831 was very bad in Langborough, and the people were in a panic at the new disease, which was fatal in many cases within six hours after the first attack. The Rector through that dark time was untouched by the contagious dread which overpowered his parishioners, and his presence carried confidence and health. On the worst day, sultry, stifling, with no sun, an indescribable terror crept abroad, and Mr. Cobb, standing at his gate, was overcome by it. In five minutes he had heard of two deaths, and he began to feel what were called “premonitory symptoms.” He carried a brandy flask in his pocket, brandy being then considered a remedy, and he drank freely, but imagined himself worse. He was about to rush indoors and tell Mrs. Cobb to send for the surgeon, when the Rector passed.

“Ah, Mr. Cobb! I was just about to call on you; glad to see you looking so well when there’s so much sickness. We shall want you on the School Committee this evening,” and then he explained some business which was to be discussed. Mr. Cobb afterwards was fond of telling the story of this interview.

“Would you believe it?” said he. “He spoke to me about nothing much but the trust, but somehow my stomach seemed quieter at once. The sinking—just _here_, you know—was dreadful before he came up, and the brandy was no good. It was a something in his way that did it.”

Dr. Midleton was obliged to call on Mrs. Fairfax as a newcomer. He found Mrs. Harrop there, and Mrs. Fairfax asked him to step into the back parlour, into which no one in Langborough had hitherto been admitted. Gowns were tried on in the shop, the door being bolted and the blind drawn. Dr. Midleton found four little shelves of books on the cupboard by the side of the fireplace. Some were French, but most of them were English. Although it was such a small collection, his book-lover’s instinct compelled him to look at it. His eyes fell upon a _Religio Medici_, and he opened it hastily. On the fly-leaf was written “Mary Leighton, from R. L.” He had just time, before its owner entered, to replace it and to muse for an instant.

“Richard Leighton of Trinity: it is not a common name, but it cannot be he—have lost sight of him for years; heard he was married, and came to no good.”

He was able to watch her for a minute as she stood by the table giving some directions to her child, who was sent on an errand. In that minute he saw her as she had not been seen by anybody in Langborough. To Mrs. Bingham and her friends Mrs. Fairfax was the substratum of a body and skirt, with the inestimable advantage over a substratum of cane and padding that a scandalous history of it could be invented and believed. To Langborough men, married and single, she was a member of “the sex,” as women were called in those days, who possessed in a remarkable degree the power of exciting that quivering and warmth we have already observed. Dr. Midleton saw before him a lady, tall but delicately built, with handsome face and dark brown hair just streaked with grey, and he saw also diffused over every feature a light which in her eyes, forward-looking and earnest, became concentrated into a vivid, steady flame. The few words she spoke to her daughter were sharply cut, a delightful contrast in his ear to the dialect to which he was accustomed, distinguished by its universal vowel and suppression of the consonants. How he inwardly rejoiced to hear the sound of the second “t” in the word “distinct,” when she told her little messenger that Mr. Cobb had been “distinctly” ordered to send the coals yesterday. He remained standing until the child had gone.

“Pray be seated,” she said. She went to the fireplace, leaned on the mantelpiece, and poked the fire. The attitude struck him. She was about to put some coals in the grate, but he interfered with an “Allow me,” and performed the office for her. She thanked him simply, and sat down opposite to him, facing the light. She began the conversation.

“It is good of you to call on me; calling on people, especially on newcomers must be an unpleasant part of a clergyman’s duty.”

“It is so, madam, sometimes—there are not many newcomers.”

“It is an advantage in your profession that you must generally be governed by duty. It is often easier to do what we are obliged to do, even if it be disagreeable, than to choose our path by our likes and dislikes.”

The bell rang, and Mrs. Fairfax went into the shop.

“Who can she be?” said the Doctor to himself. Such an experience as this he had not known since he had been rector. Langborough did not deal in ideas. It was content to affirm that Miss Tarrant now and then gave herself airs, that Mrs. Sweeting had a way of her own, that Mr. Cobb lacked spirit and was downtrodden by his wife.

She returned and sat down again.

“You know nobody in these parts, Mrs. Fairfax?”

“Nobody.”

“Yours is a bold venture, is it not?”

“It is—certainly. A good many plans were projected, of which this was one, and there were equal difficulties in the way of all. When that is the case we may almost as well draw lots.”

“Ah, that is what I often say to some of the weaker sort among my parishioners. I said it to poor Cobb the other day. He did not know whether he should do this or do that. ‘It doesn’t matter much,’ said I, ‘what you do, but do something. _Do_ it, with all your strength.’”

The Doctor was thoroughly Tory, and he slid away to his favourite doctrine.

“Our ancestors, madam, were not such fools as we often take them to be. They consulted the _sortes_ or lots, and at the last election—we have a potwalloping constituency here—three parts of the voters would have done better if they had trusted to the toss-up of a penny instead of their reason.”

Mrs. Fairfax leaned back in her chair. Dr. Midleton noticed her wedding-ring, and also a handsome sapphire ring. She spoke rather slowly and meditatively.

“Life is so complicated; so few of the consequences of many actions of the greatest moment can be foreseen, that the belief in the lot is not unnatural.”

“You have some books, I see—Sir Thomas Browne.” He took down the volume.

“Leighton! Leighton! how odd! Was it Richard Leighton?”

“Yes.”

“Really; and you knew him?”

“He was a friend of my brother.”

“Do you know what has become of him? He was at Cambridge with me, but was younger.”

“I have not seen him for some time. Do you mind if I open the window a little?”

“Certainly not.”

She stood at the window for a moment, looking out on the garden, with her hand on the top of the sash. The Doctor had turned his chair a little and his eyes were fixed on her there with her uplifted arm. A picture which belonged to his father instantly came back to him. He recollected it so well. It represented a woman watching a young man in a courtyard who is just mounting his horse. We are every now and then reminded of pictures by a group, an attitude, or the arrangement of a landscape which, thereby, acquires a new charm.

Suddenly the shop bell rang again, and Mrs. Fairfax’s little girl rushed into the parlour. She had fallen down and cut her wrist terribly with a piece of a bottle containing some hartshorn which she had to buy at the druggist’s on her way home from Mr. Cobb’s. The blood flowed freely, but Mrs. Fairfax, unbewildered, put her thumb firmly on the wrist just above the wound and instructed the doctor how to use his pocket-handkerchief as a tourniquet. As he was tying it, although such careful attention to the operation was necessary, he noticed Mrs. Fairfax’s hands, and he almost forgot himself and the accident.

“There is glass in the wrist,” she said. “Will you kindly fetch the surgeon? I do not like to leave.”

He went at once, and fortunately met him in his gig.

On the third day after the mishap Dr. Midleton thought he ought to inquire after the child. The glass had been extracted and she was doing well. Her mother was at work in the back-parlour. She made no apology for her occupation, but laid down her tools.

“Pray go on, madam.”

“Certainly not. I am afraid I might make a mistake with my scissors if I were to listen to you; or, worse, if I were to pay attention to them I should not pay attention to you.”

He smiled. “It is an art, I should think, which requires not only much attention but practice.”

She evaded the implied question. “It is difficult to fit, but it is more difficult to please.”

“That is true in my own profession.”

“But you are not obliged to please.”

“No, not obliged, I am happy to say. If my parishioners do not hear the truth I have no excuse. It must be rather trying to the temper of a lady like yourself to humour the caprices of the vulgar.”

“No; they are my customers, and even if they are unpleasant they are so not to me personally but to their servant, who ceases to be their servant when she ceases to be employed upon their clothes.”

“You are a philosopher, madam; that sentiment is worthy of Epictetus.”

“I have read Epictetus in Mrs. Carter’s translation.”

“You have read Epictetus? That is remarkable! I should think no other woman in the county has read him.” He leaned forward a little and his face was lighted up. “I have a library, madam, a large library; I should like to show it to you, if—if it can be managed without difficulty.”

“It will give me great pleasure to see it some day. It must be a delightful solace to you in a town like this, in which I daresay you have but few friends. I suppose, though, you visit a good deal?”

“No; I do not visit much. I differ from my brother Sinclair in the next parish. He is always visiting. What is the consequence?—gossip and, as I conceive, a loss of dignity and self-respect. I will go wherever there is trouble or wherever I am wanted, but I will not go anywhere for idle talk.”

“I think you are right. A priest should not make himself cheap and common. He should be representative of sacred interests superior to the ordinary interests of life.”

“I am grateful to you, madam, very grateful to you for these observations. They are as just as they are unusual. I sincerely hope that we—” But there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.” It was Mrs. Harrop. “Your bell rang, Mrs. Fairfax, but maybe you didn’t hear it as you were engaged in conversation. Good morning, Dr. Midleton. I hope I don’t intrude?”

“No, you do not.”

He bowed to the ladies, and as he went out, the parlour-door being open, he moved the outer door backwards and forwards.

“It would be as well, Mrs. Fairfax, to have a bell hung there which would act properly.”

“I don’t know quite what Dr. Midleton means,” said Mrs. Harrop when he had gone. “The bell did ring, loud enough for most people to have heard it, and I waited ever so long.”

He walked down the street with his customary firm step, and met Mr. Bingham who stopped him, half smiling and not quite at his ease.

“We are sorry, Doctor, you did not give Hutchings your vote for the almshouse last Thursday; we expected you would have gone with us.”

“You expected? Why?”

“Well, you see, sir, Hutchings has always worked hard for our side.”

“I am astonished, Mr. Bingham, that you should suppose that I will ever consent to divert the funds of a trust for party purposes.”

Mr. Bingham, although he had just determined to give the Doctor a bit of his mind, felt his strength depart from him. His sentences lacked power to stand upright and fell sprawling. “No offence, Doctor, I merely wanted you to know—not so much my own views—difficulty to keep our friends together. Short—you know Tom Short—was saying to me he was afraid—”

“Pay no attention to fools. Good morning.”

The Doctor came in that night from a vestry meeting to which he went after dinner. The clock was striking nine, the chimes played their tune, and as the last note sounded the housekeeper and servants filed into the study for prayers. Prayers over they rose and went out, and he sat down. His habits were becoming fixed and for some years he had always read in the evening the friends of his youth. No sermon was composed then; no ecclesiastical literature was studied. Pope and Swift were favourites and, curiously enough, Lord Byron. His case is not uncommon, for it often happens that men who are forced into reserve or opposition preserve a secret, youthful, poetic passion and are even kept alive by it. On this particular evening, however, Pope, Byron, and Swift remained on his shelves. He meditated.

“A wedding-ring on her finger; no widow’s weeds; he may nevertheless be dead—I believe I heard he was—and she has discontinued that frightful disfigurement. Leighton had the thickest crop of black hair I ever saw on a man: what thick, black hair that child has! A lady; a reader of books; nobody to be compared with her here.” At this point he rose and walked about the room for a quarter of an hour. He sat down again and took up an important paper about the Trust. He had forgotten it and it was to be discussed the next day. His eyes wandered over it but he paid no attention to it; and somewhat disgusted with himself he went to bed.

Mrs. Fairfax had happened to tell him that she was fond of walking soon after breakfast before she opened her shop, and generally preferred the lane on the west side of the Common. From his house the direct road to the lane lay down the High Street, but about a fortnight after that evening in his study he found himself one morning in Deadman’s Rents, a narrow, dirty alley which led to the east side of the Common. Deadman’s Rents was inhabited by men who worked in brickyards and coalyards, who did odd jobs, and by washerwomen and charwomen. It contained also three beershops. The dwellers in the Rents were much surprised to see the Doctor amongst them at that early hour, and conjectured he must have come on a professional errand. Every one of the Deadman ladies who was at her door—and they were generally at their doors in the daytime—vigilantly watched him. He went straight through the Rents to the Common, whereupon Mrs. Wiggins, who supported herself by the sale of firewood, jam, pickles, and peppermints, was particularly disturbed and was obliged to go over to the “Kicking Donkey,” partly to communicate what she had seen and partly to ward off by half a quartern of rum the sinking which always threatened her when she was in any way agitated. When he reached the common it struck him that for the first time in his life he had gone a roundabout way to escape being seen. Some people naturally take to side-streets; he, on the contrary, preferred the High Street; it was his quarter-deck and he paraded it like a captain. “Was he doing wrong?” he said to himself. Certainly not; he desired a little intelligent conversation and there was no need to tell everybody what he wanted. It was unfortunate, nevertheless, that it was necessary to go through Deadman’s Rents in order to get it. He soon saw Mrs. Fairfax and her little girl in front of him. He overtook her, and she showed no surprise at seeing him.

“I have been thinking,” said he, “about what you told me”—this was a reference to an interview not recorded. “I am annoyed that Mrs. Harrop should have been impertinent to you.”

“You need not be annoyed. The import of a word is not fixed. If anything annoying is said to me, I always ask myself what it means—not to me but to the speaker. Besides, as I have told you before, shop insolence is nothing.”

“You may be justified in not resenting it, but Mrs. Harrop cannot be excused. I am not surprised to find that she can use such language, but I am astonished that she should use it to you. It shows an utter lack of perception. Your Epictetus has been studied to some purpose.”

“I have quite forgotten him. I do not recollect books, but I never forget the lessons taught me by my own trade.”

“You have had much trouble?”

“I have had my share: probably not in excess. It is difficult for anybody to know whether his suffering is excessive: there is no means of measuring it with that of others.”

“Have you no friends with whom you can share it?”

“I have known but one woman intimately, and she is now dead. I have known two or three men whom I esteemed, but close friendship between a woman and a man, unless he is her husband, as a rule is impossible.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I am certain of it. I am speaking now of a friendship which would justify a demand for sympathy with real sorrows.”

They continued their walk in silence for the next two or three minutes.

“We are now near the end of the lane. I must turn and go back.”

“I will go with you.”

“Thank you: I should detain you: I have to make a call on business at the White House. Good morning.”

They parted.

Dr. Midleton presently met Mrs. Jenkins of Deadman’s Rents, who was going to the White House to do a day’s washing. A few steps further he met Mr. Harrop in his gig, who overtook Mrs. Fairfax. Thus it came to pass that Deadman’s Rents and the High Street knew before nightfall that Dr. Midleton and Mrs. Fairfax had been seen on the Common that morning. Mrs. Jenkins protested, that “if she was to be burnt alive with fuz-faggits and brimstone, nothink but what she witnessed with her own eyes should pass her lips, whatsomever she might think, and although they were a-walkin’—him with his arm round her waist—she did _not_ see him a-kissin’ of her—how could she when they were a hundred yards off?”

The Doctor prolonged his stroll and reached home about half-past eleven. A third of his life had been spent in Langborough. He remembered the day he came and the unpacking of his books. They lined the walls of his room, some of them rare, all of them his friends. Nobody in Langborough had ever asked him to lend a single volume. The solitary scholar never forsook his studies, but at times he sighed over them and they seemed a little vain. They were not entirely without external effect, for Pope and Swift in disguise often spoke to the vestry or the governors, and the Doctor’s manners even in the shops were moulded by his intercourse with the classic dead. Their names, however, in Langborough were almost unknown. He had now become hardened by constant unsympathetic contact. Suddenly a stranger had appeared who was an inhabitant of his own world and talked his own tongue. The prospect of genuine intercourse disclosed itself. None but those who have felt it can imagine the relief, the joyous expansion, which follow the discovery after long years of imprisonment with decent people of a person before whom it is unnecessary to stifle what we most care to express. No wonder he was excited!

But the stranger was a woman. He meditated much that morning on her singular aptitude for reflection, but he presently began to dream over figure, hair, eyes, hands. A picture in the most vivid colours painted itself before him, and he could not close his eyes to it. He was distressed to find himself the victim of this unaccustomed tyranny. He did not know that it is impossible for a man to love a woman’s soul without loving her body. There is no such thing as a spiritual love apart from a corporeal love, the one celestial and the other earthly, and the spiritual love begets a passion peculiar in its intensity. He was happily diverted by Mr. Bingham, who called about a coming contested election for the governorships.