Part 11 (2/2)

His mother ... he had no sentiment at the name; but then neither would he have had if the relation between them had been a happy one. He would then have felt love, but he would always have been of too deadly a clarity for sentiment. He was sorry for his mother with a degree of sympathy rare in one so young, for he had as little of the hardness of youth as might be, and what he had was not of judgment, but feeling. He was at the moment nothing but sorry for his mother, but though that pity would not change to condemnation it might turn to dislike. He too, as Annie was doing in the parlour as she awaited the sound of the wheels that were bearing him nearer her, tried to clutch at memories. He could find a few of fierce kindnesses, but not one of an embrace unqualified by some queer feeling other than simple love, which he had always felt in her. She did not, of course, care twopence for him, he decided. Well, he would not be a hypocrite--he would not bother or embarra.s.s her with the expression of a tenderness neither of them felt; he would be gentle, he would kiss her if she seemed to expect it, but he would talk brightly and naturally of trivial things, he would make the occasion seem as little weighted with portent as possible. There should be nothing of the return of the master, nothing of the odious briskness of the new broom about him at his entry. Time enough after to talk over things.... He could spend the next day with John-James on the farm discussing improvements, alterations. They were very behind the times down here; he had seen farming in Somerset and Devon in his holidays that would make them open their eyes down here. That would all break it to his mother gently. She was getting old too--she must be quite fifty--and old people did not like to have reforms thrust upon them. No, there should be nothing eager, aggressive about him. He remembered stormy, excitable scenes of his childhood and resolved they should see what the self-control of a gentleman was like. Thus Ishmael, with intentions not by any means, not even most largely, selfish. Yet, of all moods, the worst to meet his mother's.

The growing interest of the drive as they neared the north-west and the familiar landmarks of his childhood came into sight, flooded with the June suns.h.i.+ne--the ruined mine-shafts staring up so starkly, the glory of white cattle in the golden light, the first glimpse of the pale roofs of Cloom itself, prismatic as a wood-pigeon's plumage, all these things struck at his heart with a keener shock than did anything personal, and made thought of his mother sink away from him. Behind the cl.u.s.ter of grey buildings he saw the parti-coloured fields stretching away--green pasture, brown arable, pale emerald of the young corn--all his. He saw in folds of the land little copses of ash whose trunks showed pale as ghost-trees; he saw, gleaming here and there through the gorse-bushes, the stream that ran along the bottom of the slope below the cart-track that led to Cloom. He saw the bleak, grey homesteads, cottages and small farms, set here and there, as he turned in his seat to look around him.

And his heart leapt to the knowledge that all these things were his....

Annie's croaking cry, her thin arms, her quick straining of him, he all unprepared even for the mere physical yielding that alone saves such an embrace from awkwardness, found him lost. Annie felt it and stiffened, and the moment had gone never to come back. In after years, when Annie had magnified it to herself and him, accusing him of throwing her love back in her face when she had offered it, he was wont to reproach himself bitterly. But Annie was so volatile in emotion, except where Archelaus was concerned, that her new flow would, in all likelihood, not have held its course for more than a few weeks at the best. Ishmael knew this, but Annie, by dint of telling herself the contrary, never did. The awkwardness of the actual moment was saved by Phoebe, who had hung in the background waiting for what she thought might be the most telling moment to glide forward, but who, her natural pleasure at sight of her old playmate suddenly overbearing more studied considerations, could contain herself in silence and the shadows no longer.

”Ishmael!” she cried, running forward. ”Ishmael!”

She held out her two hands and Va.s.sie thought swiftly: ”It's no good, my dear; he's for your betters--he and I ...” and with a worldliness that went far towards bearing out her claims to ladyhood she broke in with:

”You remember little Phoebe, Ishmael--from the mill....”

”Why, of course. You haven't grown much, though you've got your hair done up,” said Ishmael, thankful for any diversion from Annie's reproachful arms, which had slid from his neck to hang by her side.

”I'm quite grown-up, though,” said Phoebe, dimpling.

”She mean's she's too old for you to kiss, lad,” said simple John-James with directness, grinning as he took the mare's bridle to lead her to the stable. Ishmael had not yet the social cleverness to kiss Phoebe at once and without embarra.s.sment or to laugh the suggestion away, but she, who had no social sense at all and never attained any, met the moment perfectly, with a little curtsey and a sidelong look of merriment. ”Ah, I remember when Ishmael refused to kiss me, and I cried myself to sleep over it,” she said; ”'tisn't likely I'm going to let him kiss me now.”

”No--did I ...?” asked he; and Va.s.sie gave a shrill laugh.

”To be sure he did and would again,” she declared; ”he's not thinking of such things. Mamma, is tea ready in the parlour?”

”I fear I forgot about it, Va.s.sie, my dear, but Katie shall get it to wance. Come in here, Ishmael. We do sit here now; simminly we're quality, according to she.”

Ishmael followed his mother into the ugly room, which offended his eyes, used as they were to the Parson's taste. An alb.u.m lay on the floor, and he stooped to pick it up, but his mother, quick for all her years and rheumatism, was before him and had thrust it out of his reach.

Tea was a stiff meal; everyone was on company manners. John-James, in from stabling the mare, sat at the edge of a chair; Va.s.sie was too genteel, Phoebe too arch, Annie grim. Ishmael's heart sank with a terrible weight upon it as he thought that these were the people with whom his lot was cast--that he must see them, talk to them, day in, day out, all the round of the seasons.... Va.s.sie's beauty seemed dimmed to him; Phoebe became an annoyance like a musical-box that will not leave off tinkling out the same tune. He bent his head lower as he sat, aware, with a misery of shame, that tears were burning perilously near his eye-lids. Life was sordid, and his position, over which he had not been guiltless of sometimes dreaming as romantic, held nothing but mortification and hatefulness.

The meal dragged on; the daylight without grew glamorous. Conversation flickered and died, and at last Ishmael, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back with a noise that sounded horrible to himself, announced his intention of going to the Vicarage. Annie muttered something about people who could not be content to stay at home even on their first evening....

But he was not allowed to escape alone; Phoebe discovered that it was time she was going back to the mill, and there was no evading an offer to accompany her.

Somehow, away from the others, and out in the open, Phoebe seemed to shed the commonness that had blighted her at that dreadful tea. She still coquetted, but it was with a fresh and dewy coquetry as of some innocent woodland creature that displays its charms as naturally as it breathes. Ishmael found himself pleased instead of irritated when he received her weight as he helped her over the stone steps at each stile--for the only girl he had seen much of in late years had been wont to stretch out a strong hand to guide him.

As they went over the marsh where they had so often played as children they vied with each other in pointing out memorable spots, and the gaiety of the old days mingled with the beauty of the present evening to brighten his spirits. The marsh was all pied with white--pearly white of blowing cotton-gra.s.s; thick, deader white of water-cress in full flower; faint blurred white of thousands of the heath-bedstraw's tiny blossoms.

Phoebe in her white gown sprang onto swaying tussocks and picked plumes of cotton-gra.s.s to trim herself a garden hat, and Ishmael steadied her pa.s.sage.

”Oh, Ishmael, I'm so glad you've come back!” she told him, lifting a glowing face, haloed by the rose-lined hat that had slipped to her shoulders and was only held in place by a pink velvet ribbon which was not softer than the throat it barred.

”It's often dull here,” she ran on. ”There's not many people I care about going with since I came back from boarding school, and even for those I do go with Va.s.sie spoils it by saying I'm demeaning myself.

She's such a fine lady.”

”And aren't you?” asked Ishmael, laughing; ”that was my first thought when I saw you, anyway.”

”Was it?” She dimpled with pleasure, but added shrewdly: ”I'm not one, though. I like getting away from it all and working in the dairy and looking after the tiny calves. I like that best of all, that and my baby chickens. But Va.s.sie's only happy when she's dressed up and paying visits.”

”I like your way best,” he a.s.sured her, thinking what a jolly little thing she was after all. But Phoebe's mind could not keep its attention on any one theme for more than a minute, and her eyes and thoughts were wandering. Suddenly she gave a little cry.

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