He walked to the farm in long strides.This,then,was the outcome of his first morning's work as curate here.Things had gone fairly well with him.He had been ordained;he was in a comfortable parish,where he would exercise almost sole supervision,the rector being infirm.He had made a deep impression at starting,and the absence of a hood seemed to have done him no harm.Moreover,by considerable persuasion and payment,his father and the dark woman had been shipped off to Canada,where they were not likely to interfere greatly with his interests.
Rosa came out to meet him.'Ah!you should have gone to church like a good girl,'he said.
'Yes--I wished I had afterwards.But I do so hate church as a rule that even your preaching was underestimated in my mind.It was too bad of me!'
The girl who spoke thus playfully was fair,tall,and sylph-like,in a muslin dress,and with just the coquettish desinvolture which an English girl brings home from abroad,and loses again after a few months of native life.Joshua was the reverse of playful;the world was too important a concern for him to indulge in light moods.He told her in decided,practical phraseology of the invitation.
'Now,Rosa,we must go--that's settled--if you've a dress that can be made fit to wear all on the hop like this.You didn't,of course,think of bringing an evening dress to such an out-of-the-way place?'
But Rosa had come from the wrong city to be caught napping in those matters.'Yes,I did,'said she.'One never knows what may turn up.'
'Well done!Then off we go at seven.'
The evening drew on,and at dusk they started on foot,Rosa pulling up the edge of her skirt under her cloak out of the way of the dews,so that it formed a great wind-bag all round her,and carrying her satin shoes under her arm.Joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors before changing them,as she proposed,but insisted on her performing that operation under a tree,so that they might enter as if they had not walked.He was nervously formal about such trifles,while Rosa took the whole proceeding--walk,dressing,dinner,and all--as a pastime.To Joshua it was a serious step in life.
A more unexpected kind of person for a curate's sister was never presented at a dinner.The surprise of Mrs.Fellmer was unconcealed.
She had looked forward to a Dorcas,or Martha,or Rhoda at the outside,and a shade of misgiving crossed her face.It was possible that,had the young lady accompanied her brother to church,there would have been no dining at Narrobourne House that day.
Not so with the young widower,her son.He resembled a sleeper who had awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn.He could scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces,so strong was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing.When they had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the air of a ruler in the land;but the woman lurking in the acquaintance soon brought him to his level,and the girl from Brussels saw him looking at her mouth,her hands,her contour,as if he could not quite comprehend how they got created:then he dropped into the more satisfactory stage which discerns no particulars.
He talked but little;she said much.The homeliness of the Fellmers,to her view,though they were regarded with such awe down here,quite disembarrassed her.The squire had become so unpractised,had dropped so far into the shade during the last year or so of his life,that he had almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded him.His mother,after her first moments of doubt,appeared to think that he must be left to his own guidance,and gave her attention to Joshua.
With all his foresight and doggedness of aim,the result of that dinner exceeded Halborough's expectations.In weaving his ambitions he had viewed his sister Rosa as a slight,bright thing to be helped into notice by his abilities;but it now began to dawn upon him that the physical gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than nature's intellectual gifts to himself.While he was patiently boring the tunnel Rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain.
He wrote the next day to his brother,now occupying his own old rooms in the theological college,telling him exultingly of the unanticipated debut of Rosa at the manor-house.The next post brought him a reply of congratulation,dashed with the counteracting intelligence that his father did not like Canada--that his wife had deserted him,which made him feel so dreary that he thought of returning home.
In his recent satisfaction at his own successes Joshua Halborough had well-nigh forgotten his chronic trouble--latterly screened by distance.But it now returned upon him;he saw more in this brief announcement than his brother seemed to see.It was the cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
CHAPTER IV
The following December,a day or two before Christmas,Mrs.Fellmer and her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered the east front of the house.Till within the last half-hour the morning had been a drizzling one,and they had just emerged for a short turn before luncheon.
'You see,dear mother,'the son was saying,'it is the peculiarity of my position which makes her appear to me in such a desirable light.
When you consider how I have been crippled at starting,how my life has been maimed;that I feel anything like publicity distasteful,that I have ye no political ambition,and that my chief aim and hope lie in the education of the little thing Annie has left me,you must see how desirable a wife like Miss Halborough would be,to prevent my becoming a mere vegetable.'
'If you adore her,I suppose you must have her!'replied his mother with dry indirectness.'But you'll find that she will not be content to live on here as you do,giving her whole mind to a young child.'
'That's just where we differ.Her very disqualification,that of being a nobody,as you call it,is her recommendation in my eyes.
