Watersprings - Arthur Christopher Benson (short novels to read TXT) 📗

tastes, of course, not faculties, like yours--but we read and talk and ventilate our ideas, Maud and I; and when we are tired of books, why I fall back on the great book of humanity. We don't stagnate--at least I hope not--I have a horror of stagnation. I said so to the Archdeacon the other day, and he said that there was nothing stagnant about Windlow."

"No, I am quite sure there is not," said Howard politely.

"It's very good of you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly. "Really quite a compliment! And I assure you, you don't know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed. Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is a vast improvement on the old type of don, if I may say so. I'm very free, you see! And so you think Jack might do well in commerce? Well, I quite approve. All I want is that he should not be out of touch with human beings. I'm not a metaphysician, but it seems to me that that is what we are here for--touch with humanity--of course on Church of England lines. I'm tolerant, I hope, and can see the good side of other creeds; but give me something comprehensive, and that is the glory of our English Church. Well, you have given me a lot to think of, Howard; I must just take it all away and think it over. It's well to do that, I think? Not to be in a hurry, try to see all round a question? That is my line always!"

They walked into the drawing-room together; and Howard felt curiously drawn to the warm-hearted and voluble man. Perhaps it was for the sake of his children, he thought. There must be something fine about a man who had brought up two such children--but that was not all; the Vicar was enthusiastic; he revelled in life, he adored life; and Howard felt that there was a real fund of sense and even judgment somewhere, behind the spray of the cataract. He was a man whom one could trust, he believed, and whom it was impossible not to like.

When they reached the drawing-room, Mrs. Graves called the Vicar into a corner, and began to talk to him about someone in the village; Howard heard his talk plunge steadily into the silence. Miss Merry flitted about, played a few pieces of music; and Howard found himself left to Maud. He went and sate down beside her. In the dim light the girl sate forward in a big arm-chair; there was nothing languorous or listless about her. She seemed all alert in a quiet way. She greeted him with a smile, and sate turned towards him, her chin on her hand, her eyes upon him. Her shining hair fell over the curves of her young and pure neck. She was holding a flower, which Mrs. Graves had given her, in her other hand, and its fragrance exhaled all about her. Once or twice she checked him with a little gesture of her hand, when Miss Merry began to play, and he could see that she was much affected by the music.

"It seems to me so wrong to talk during music," she said; "perhaps it wasn't polite of me to stop you, but I can't bear to interrupt music--it's like treading on flowers--it can't come again just like that!"

"Yes," said Howard, "I know exactly what you mean; but I expect it is a mistake to think of a beautiful thing being wasted, if we don't happen to hear or see it. It isn't only meant for us. It is the light or the sound or the flower, I think, being beautiful because it is glad."

"Yes," said the girl, "perhaps it is that. That is what Mrs. Graves thinks. Do you know, it seems to me strange that you have never been here before, though you are almost her only relation. She is the most wonderful person I have ever seen. The only person I know who seems always right, and yet never wants anyone else to know she is right."

"Yes," said Howard, "I feel that I have been very foolish--but it has been going on all the time, like the music and the light. It hasn't been wasted. I have had a wonderful talk with her to-day--the most wonderful talk, I think, I have ever had. I can't understand it all yet--but she has given me the sense of some fine purpose--as if I had been kept away for a purpose, because I was not ready; and as if I had come here for a purpose now."

The girl sate looking at him with open eyes, and with some strange sense of surprise. "Yes," she said, "it is just like that; but that you could have seen it so soon amazes me. I have known her all my life, and could never have put that into words. Do you know how things seem to come and go and shift about without any meaning? It is never so with her; she sees what it all means. I cannot explain it."

They sate in silence for a moment, and then Howard said: "It is very curious to be here; you know, or probably you don't know, how much interested I am in Jack; and somehow in talking to him I felt that there was something behind--something more to know. All this"--he waved his hand at the room--"my aunt, your father, yourself--it does not seem to me new and unfamiliar, but something which I have always known. I can't tell you in what a dream I have seemed to be moving ever since I came here. I have been here for twenty-four hours, and yet it seems all old and dear to me."

"I know that feeling," said the girl, "one dips into something that has been going on for ever and ever--I feel like that to-night. It seems odd to talk like this, but you must remember that Jack tells me most things, and I seem to know you quite well. I knew it would be all easy somehow."

"Well, we are a sort of cousins," said Howard lightly. "That's such a comfort; it needn't entail anything, but it can save one all sorts of fencing and ceremony. I want to talk to you about Jack. He is a little mysterious to me still."

"Yes," she said, "he is mysterious, but he really is a dear: he was the most aggravating boy that ever lived, and I sometimes used really to hate him. I am afraid we used to fight a great deal; at least I did, but I suppose he was only pretending, for he never hurt me, and I know I used to hurt him--but then he deserved it!"

"What a picture!" said Howard, smiling; "no wonder that boys go to their private schools expecting to have to fight for their lives. I never had a sister; and that accounts perhaps for my peaceful disposition." He had a sudden sense as he spoke that he was talking as if to an undergraduate in friendly irony. To his surprise and pleasure he saw that his thought had translated itself.

"I suppose that is how you talk to your pupils," said the girl, smiling; "I recognise that--and that's what makes it easy to talk to you as Jack does--it's like an easy serve at lawn-tennis."

"I am glad it is easy," said Howard, "you don't know how many of my serves go into the net!"

"Lawn-tennis!" said Mr. Sandys from the other side of the room. "There's a good game, Howard! I am not much of a hand at it myself, but I enjoy playing. I don't mind making a spectacle of myself. One misses many good things by being afraid of looking a fool. What does it matter, I say to myself, as long as one doesn't FEEL a fool? You will come and play at the vicarage, I hope. Indeed, I want you to go and come just as you like. We are relations, you know, in a sort of way--at least connections. I don't know if you go in for genealogy--it's rather a hobby of mine; it fills up little bits of time, you know. I could reel you off quite a list of names, but Mrs. Graves doesn't care for genealogy, I know."

"Oh, not that!" said Mrs. Graves. "I think it is very interesting. But I rather agree with the minister who advised his flock to pray for good ancestors."

"Ha! ha!" said Mr. Sandys, "excellent, that; but it is really very curious you know, that the further one goes back the more one's ancestors increase. Talk of over-population; why if one goes back thirty or forty generations, the world would be over-populated with the ancestors of any one of us. I remember posing a very clever mathematician with that once; but, as a fact, it's quite the reverse, one finds. Are you interested in neolithic men, Howard? There are graves of them all over the down--it is not certain if they were neolithic, but they had very curious burial customs. Knees up to the chin, you know. Well, well, it's all very fascinating, and I should like to drive you over to Dorchester to look at the museum there--there are some questions I should like to ask you. But we must be off. A delightful evening, cousin Anne; a delightful evening, Howard. I feel quite rejuvenated--such a lot to ponder over."

Howard went to the door to see them off, and was rewarded by a parting smile from Maud, which made him feel curiously elated. He went back to the drawing-room with that faint feeling of flatness which comes of parting with lively guests; and yet it somehow gave him a pleasant sense of being at home.

"Well," said Mrs. Graves, "so now you have seen the Sandys interior. Dear Frank, how he does chatter, to be sure! but he is all alive too in his own way, and that is what matters. What did you think of Maud? I want you to like her--she is a great friend of mine, and really a fine creature. Not very happy just now, perhaps. But while dear old Frank never sees past the outside of things--what a lot of things he does see!--she sees inside, I think. But I am tired to death. I always feel after talking to Frank as if I had been driving in a dog-cart over a ploughed field!"


VII


COUNTRY LIFE

Howard woke early, after sweet and wild dreams of great landscapes and rich adventures; as his thoughts took shape, he began to feel as if he had passed some boundary yesterday; escaped, as a child escapes from a familiar garden into great vague woodlands. There was his talk with Mrs. Graves first--that had opened up for him a new region, indeed, of the mind and soul, and had revealed to him an old force, perhaps long within his grasp, but which he had never tried to use or wield. And the vision too of Maud crossed his mind--a perfectly beautiful thing, which had risen like a star. He did not think of it as love at all--that did not cross his mind--it was just the thought of something enchantingly and exquisitely beautiful, which disturbed him, awed him, threw his mind off its habitual track. How extraordinarily lovely, simple, sweet, the girl had seemed to him