Carton closed the harmonium and came towards Sherman. Her face and all her movements showed a gentle decision of character. Her glance was serene, her features regular, her figure at the same time ample and beautifully moulded; her dress plain yet not without a certain air of distinction. In a different society she would have had many suitors. But she was of a type that in country towns does not get married at all. Its beauty is too lacking in pink and white, its nature in that small assertiveness admired for character by the uninstructed. Elsewhere she would have known her own beauty—as it is right that all the beautiful should—and have learnt how to display it, to add gesture to her calm and more of mirth and smiles to her grave cheerfulness. As it was, her manner was much older than herself.
She sat down by Sherman with the air of an old friend. They had long been accustomed to consult together on every matter. They were such good friends they had never fallen in love with each other. Perfect love and perfect friendship are indeed incompatible; for the one is a battlefield where shadows war beside the combatants, and the other a placid country where Consultation has her dwelling.
These two were such good friends that the most gossiping townspeople had given them up with a sigh. The doctor’s wife, a faded beauty and devoted romance reader, said one day, as they passed, “They are such cold creatures.” The old maid who kept the Berlin-wool shop remarked, “They are not of the marrying sort,” and now their comings and goings were no longer noticed. Nothing had ever come to break in on their quiet companionship and give obscurity as a dwelling-place for the needed illusions. Had one been weak and the other strong, one plain and the other handsome, one guide and the other guided, one wise and the other foolish, love might have found them out in a moment, for love is based on inequality as friendship is on equality.
“John,” said Mary Carton, warming her hands at the fire, “I have had a troublesome day. Did you come to help me teach the children to sing? It was good of you: you were just too late.”
“No,” he answered, “I have come to be your pupil. I am always your pupil.”
“Yes, and a most disobedient one.”
“Well, advise me this time at any rate. My uncle has written, offering me £100 a year to begin with in his London office. Am I to go?”
“You know quite well my answer,” she said.
“Indeed I do not. Why should I go? I am contented here. I am now making my garden ready for spring. Later on there will be trout fishing and saunters by the edge of the river in the evening when the bats are flickering about. In July there will be races. I enjoy the bustle. I enjoy life here. When anything annoys me I keep away from it, that is all. You know I am always busy. I have occupation and friends and am quite contented.”
“It is a great loss to many of us, but you must go, John,” she said. “For you know you will be old some day, and perhaps when the vitality of youth is gone you will feel that your life is empty and find that you are too old to change it; and you will give up, perhaps, trying to be happy and likeable and become as the rest are. I think I can see you,” she said, with a laugh, “a hypochondriac, like Gorman, the retired excise officer, or with a red nose like Dr. Stephens, or growing like Peters, the elderly cattle merchant, who starves his horse.”
“They were bad material to begin with,” he answered, “and besides, I cannot take my mother away with me at her age, and I cannot leave her alone.”
“What annoyance it may be,” she answered, “will soon be forgotten. You will be able to give her many more comforts. We women—we all like to be dressed well and have pleasant rooms to sit in, and a young man at your age should not be idle. You must go away from this little backward place. We shall miss you, but you are clever and must go and work with other men and have your talents admitted.”
“How emulous you would have me. Perhaps I shall be well-to-do some day; meanwhile I only wish to stay here with my friends.”
She went over to the window and looked out with her face turned from him. The evening light cast a long shadow behind her on the floor. After some moments, she said, “I see people ploughing on the slope of the hill. There are people working on a house to the right. Everywhere there are people busy,” and, with a slight tremble in her voice, she added, “and, John, nowhere are there any doing what they wish. One has to think of so many things—of duty and God.”
“Mary, I didn’t know you were so religious.”
Coming towards him with a smile, she said, “No more did I, perhaps. But sometimes the self in one is very strong. One has to think a great deal and reason with it. Yet I try hard to lose myself in things about me. These children now—I often lie awake thinking about them. That child who was talking to you is often on my mind. I do not know what will happen to her. She makes me unhappy. I am afraid she is not a good child at all. I am afraid she is not taught well at home. I try hard to be gentle and patient with her. I am a little displeased with myself to-day; so I have lectured you. There! I have made my confession. But,” she added, taking one of his hands in both hers and reddening, “you must go away. You must not be idle. You will gain everything.”
As she stood there with bright eyes, the light of evening about her, Sherman for perhaps the first time saw how beautiful she was, and was flattered by her interest. For the first time also her presence did not make him at peace with the world.
“Will you be an obedient pupil?”
“You know so much more than I do,” he answered, “and are so much wiser. I will write to my uncle and agree to his offer.”
“Now you must go home,” she said. “You must not keep your mother waiting for her tea. There! I have raked the fire out. We must not forget to lock the door behind us.”
As they stood on the doorstep the wind blew a whirl of dead leaves about them.
“They are my old thoughts,” he said; “see, they are all withered.”
They walked together silently. At the vicarage he left her and went homeward.
The deserted flour store at the corner of two roads, the house that had been burnt hollow ten years before and still lifted its blackened beams, the straggling and leafless fruit-trees rising above garden walls, the church where he was christened—these foster-mothers of his infancy seemed to nod and shake their heads over him.
“Mother,” he said, hurriedly entering the room, “we are going to London.”
“As you wish. I always knew you would be a rolling stone,” she answered, and went out to tell the servant that as soon as she had finished the week’s washing they must pack up everything, for they were going to London.
“Yes, we must pack up,” said the old peasant; she did not stop peeling the onion in her hand—she had not comprehended. In the middle of the night she suddenly started up in bed with a pale face and a prayer to the Virgin whose image hung over her head—she had now comprehended.
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