as you mean, whilst I could get indifference among such people as hers.’
‘What crazy twist o’ thinking will enter your head next?’ said his mother. ‘And come to that, she’s not a bit too high for you, or you too low for her. See how careful I be to keep myself up. I’m sure I never stop for more than a minute together to talk to any journeymen people; and I never invite anybody to our party o’ Christmases who are not in business for themselves. And I talk to several toppermost carriage people that come to my lord’s without saying ma’am or sir to ‘em, and they take it as quiet as lambs.’
‘You curtseyed to the vicar, mother; and I wish you hadn’t.’
‘But it was before he called me by my Christian name, or he would have got very little curtseying from me!’ said Mrs. Smith, bridling and sparkling with vexation. ‘You go on at me, Stephen, as if I were your worst enemy! What else could I do with the man to get rid of him, banging it into me and your father by side and by seam, about his greatness, and what happened when he was a young fellow at college, and I don’t know what-all; the tongue o’ en flopping round his mouth like a mop-rag round a dairy. That ‘a did, didn’t he, John?’
‘That’s about the size o’t,’ replied her husband.
‘Every woman now-a-days,’ resumed Mrs. Smith, ‘if she marry at all, must expect a father-in-law of a rank lower than her father. The men have gone up so, and the women have stood still. Every man you meet is more the dand than his father; and you are just level wi’ her.’
‘That’s what she thinks herself.’
‘It only shows her sense. I knew she was after ‘ee, Stephen – I knew it.’
‘After me! Good Lord, what next!’
‘And I really must say again that you ought not to be in such a hurry, and wait for a few years. You might go higher than a bankrupt pa’son’s girl then.’
‘The fact is, mother,’ said Stephen impatiently, ‘you don’t know anything about it. I shall never go higher, because I don’t want to, nor should I if I lived to be a hundred. As to you saying that she’s after me, I don’t like such a remark about her, for it implies a scheming woman, and a man worth scheming for, both of which are not only untrue, but ludicrously untrue, of this case. Isn’t it so, father?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand the matter well enough to gie my opinion,’ said his father, in the tone of the fox who had a cold and could not smell.
‘She couldn’t have been very backward anyhow, considering the short time you have known her,’ said his mother. ‘Well I think that five years hence you’ll be plenty young enough to think of such things. And really she can very well afford to wait, and will too, take my word. Living down in an out-step place like this, I am sure she ought to be very thankful that you took notice of her. She’d most likely have died an old maid if you hadn’t turned up.’
‘All nonsense,’ said Stephen, but not aloud.
‘A nice little thing she is,’ Mrs. Smith went on in a more complacent tone now that Stephen had been talked down; ‘there’s not a word to say against her, I’ll own. I see her sometimes decked out like a horse going to fair, and I admire her for’t. A perfect little lady. But people can’t help their thoughts, and if she’d learnt to make figures instead of letters when she was at school ‘twould have been better for her pocket; for as I said, there never were worse times for such as she than now.’
‘Now, now, mother!’ said Stephen with smiling deprecation.
‘But I will!’ said his mother with asperity. ‘I don’t read the papers for nothing, and I know men all move up a stage by marriage. Men of her class, that is, parsons, marry squires’ daughters; squires marry lords’ daughters; lords marry dukes’ daughters; dukes marry queens’ daughters. All stages of gentlemen mate a stage higher; and the lowest stage of gentlewomen are left single, or marry out of their class.’
‘But you said just now, dear mother – ’ retorted Stephen, unable to resist the temptation of showing his mother her inconsistency. Then he paused.
‘Well, what did I say?’ And Mrs. Smith prepared her lips for a new campaign.
Stephen, regretting that he had begun, since a volcano might be the consequence, was obliged to go on.
‘You said I wasn’t out of her class just before.’
‘Yes, there, there! That’s you; that’s my own flesh and blood. I’ll warrant that you’ll pick holes in everything your mother says, if you can, Stephen. You are just like your father for that; take anybody’s part but mine. Whilst I am speaking and talking and trying and slaving away for your good, you are waiting to catch me out in that way. So you are in her class, but ‘tis what HER people would CALL marrying out of her class. Don’t be so quarrelsome, Stephen!’
Stephen preserved a discreet silence, in which he was imitated by his father, and for several minutes nothing was heard but the ticking of the green-faced case-clock against the wall.
‘I’m sure,’ added Mrs. Smith in a more philosophic tone, and as a terminative speech, ‘if there’d been so much trouble to get a husband in my time as there is in these days – when you must make a god-almighty of a man to get en to hae ye – I’d have trod clay for bricks before I’d ever have lowered my dignity to marry, or there’s no bread in nine loaves.’
The discussion now dropped, and as it was getting late, Stephen bade his parents farewell for the evening, his mother none the less warmly for their sparring; for although Mrs. Smith and Stephen were always contending, they were never at enmity.
‘And possibly,’ said Stephen, ‘I may leave here altogether to-morrow; I don’t know. So that if I shouldn’t call again before returning to London, don’t be alarmed, will you?’
‘But didn’t you come for a fortnight?’ said his mother. ‘And haven’t you a month’s holiday altogether? They are going to turn you out, then?’
‘Not at all. I may stay longer; I may go. If I go, you had better say nothing about my having been here, for her sake. At what time of the morning does the carrier pass Endelstow lane?’
‘Seven o’clock.’
And then he left them. His thoughts were, that should the vicar permit him to become engaged, to hope for an engagement, or in any way to think of his beloved Elfride, he might stay longer. Should he be forbidden to think of any such thing, he resolved to go at once. And the latter, even to young hopefulness, seemed the more probable alternative.
Stephen walked back to the vicarage through the meadows, as he had come, surrounded by the soft musical purl of the water through little weirs, the modest light of the moon, the freshening smell of the dews out-spread around. It was a time when mere seeing is meditation, and meditation peace. Stephen was hardly philosopher enough to avail himself of Nature’s offer. His constitution was made up of very simple particulars; was one which, rare in the spring-time of civilizations, seems to grow abundant as a nation gets older, individuality fades, and education spreads; that is, his brain had extraordinary receptive powers, and no great creativeness. Quickly acquiring any kind of knowledge he saw around him, and having a plastic adaptability more common in woman than in man, he changed colour like a chameleon as the society he found himself in assumed a higher and more artificial tone. He had not many original ideas, and yet there was scarcely an idea to which, under proper training, he could not have added a respectable co-ordinate.
He
