Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

“Why — yes,” said John, “it is very easy. Ideal comes from idea. Plato meant, by the idea, the perfect model — well, do you see?”

  “Not exactly,” said Mrs. Goddard.

  “It is very simple. When I, when anybody, says you are the ideal woman, it is meant that you are the perfect model, the archetype of a woman.”

  “Yes — but that is absurd,” said his companion rather coldly.

  “I am sorry that it should seem absurd,” said John in a persuasive tone; “it seems very natural to me. A man thinks for a long time about everything that most attracts him and then, on a sudden, he sees it all before him, quite real and alive, and then he says he has realised his ideal. But you liked the verses, Mrs. Goddard?” he added quickly, hoping to bring back the smile that had vanished from her face. He had a strong impression that he had been a little too familiar. Probably Mrs. Goddard thought so too.

  “Oh yes, I think they are very nice,” she answered. But the smile did not come back. She was not displeased, but she was not pleased either; she was wondering how far this boy would go if she would let him. John, however, felt unpleasantly doubtful about what he had done.

  “I hope you are not displeased,” he said.

  “Oh, not in the least,” said she. “Shall we go to the park and skate?”

  “I am not sure that I will skate to-day,” said John, foolishly. Mrs.

  Goddard looked at him in unfeigned surprise.

  “Why not? I thought it was for that—”

  “Oh, of course,” said John quickly. “Only it is not very amusing to skate when Mr. Juxon is pushing you about in a chair.”

  “Really — why should not he push me about, if I like it?”

  “If you like it — that is different,” answered John impatiently.

  Mrs. Goddard began to think that John was very like a spoiled child, and she resented his evident wish to monopolise her society. She left the room to get ready for the walk, vaguely wishing that he had not come.

  “I have made a fool of myself again,” said John to himself, when he was left alone; and he suddenly wished he could get out of the house without seeing her again. But before he had done wishing, she returned.

  “Where is Miss Nellie?” he asked gloomily, as they walked down the path.

  “I hope she is coming too.”

  “She went up to the pond with Mr. Juxon, just before you came.”

  “Do you let her go about like that, without you?” asked John severely.

  “Why not? Really, Mr. Short,” said Mrs. Goddard, glancing up at his face, “either you dislike Mr. Juxon very much, or else I think you take a good deal upon yourself in remarking — in this way—”

  She was naturally a little timid, but John’s youth and what she considered as his extraordinary presumption inspired her with courage to protest. The effect upon John was instantaneous.

  “Pray forgive me,” he said humbly, “I am very silly. I daresay you are quite right and I do not like Mr. Juxon. Not that I have the smallest reason for not liking him,” he continued quickly, “it is a mere personal antipathy, a mere idea, I daresay — very foolish of me.”

  “It is very foolish to take unreasonable dislikes to people one knows nothing about,” she said quietly. “Will you please open the gate?” They were standing before the bars, but John was so much disturbed in mind that he stood still, quite forgetting to raise the long iron latch.

  “Dear me — I beg your pardon — I cannot imagine what I was thinking of,” he said, making the most idiotic excuse current in English idiom.

  “Nor I,” said Mrs. Goddard, with a little laugh, as he held the gate back for her to pass. It was a plain white gate with stone pillars, and there was no gatehouse. People who came to the Hall were expected to open it for themselves. Mrs. Goddard was so much amused at John’s absence of mind that her good humour returned, and he felt that since that object was attained he no longer regretted his folly in the least. The cloud that had darkened the horizon of his romance had passed quickly away, and once more he said inwardly that he was enjoying the happiest days of his life. If for a moment the image of Mr. Juxon entered the field of his imaginative vision in the act of pushing Mrs. Goddard’s chair upon the ice, he mentally ejaculated “bother the squire!” as he had done upon the previous night, and soon forgot all about him. The way through the park was long, the morning was delightful and Mrs. Goddard did not seem to be in a hurry.

  “I wish the winter would last for ever,” he said presently.

  “So do I,” answered his companion, “it is the pleasantest time of the year. One does not feel that nature is dead because one is sure she will very soon be alive again.”

  “That is a charming idea,” said John, “one might make a good subject of it.”

  “It is a little old, perhaps. I think I have heard it before — have not you?”

  “All good ideas are old. The older the better,” said John confidently.

  Mrs. Goddard could not resist the temptation of teazing him a little.

  They had grown very intimate in forty-eight hours; it had taken six

  months for Mr. Juxon to reach the point John had won in two days.

  “Are they?” she asked quietly. “Is that the reason you selected me for the ‘idea’ of your ode, which you explained to me?”

  “You?” said John in astonishment. Then he laughed. “Why, you are not any older than I am!”

  “Do you think so?” she inquired with a demure smile. “I am very much older than you think.”

  “You must be — I mean, you know, you must be older than you look.”

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Goddard, still smiling, and just resting the tips of her fingers upon his arm as she stepped across a slippery place in the frozen road. “Yes, I am a great deal older than you.”

  John would have liked very much to ask her age, but even to his youthful and unsophisticated mind such a question seemed almost too personal. He did not really believe that she was more than five years older than he, and that seemed to be no difference at all.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I am nearly one and twenty.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Goddard, who had heard every detail concerning John from Mr. Ambrose, again and again. “Just think,” she added with a laugh, “only one and twenty! Why when I was one and twenty I was—” she stopped short.

  “What were you doing then?” asked John, trying not to seem too curious.

  “I was living in London,” she said quietly. She half enjoyed his disappointment.

  “Yes,” he said, “I daresay. But what — well, I suppose I ought not to ask any questions.”

  “Certainly not,” said she. “It is very rude to ask a lady questions about her age.”

  “I do not mean to be rude again,” said John, pretending to laugh. “Have you always been fond of skating?” he asked, fixing his eye upon a distant tree, and trying to look unconscious.

  “No — I only learned since I came here. Besides, I skate very badly.”

  “Did Mr. Juxon teach you?” asked John, still gazing into the distance. From not looking at the path he slipped on a frozen puddle and nearly fell. Whereat, as usual, when he did anything awkward, he blushed to the brim of his hat.

  “Take care,” said Mrs. Goddard, calmly. “You will fall if you don’t look where you are going. No; Mr. Juxon was not here last year. He only came here in the summer.”

  “It seems to me that he has always been here,” said John, trying to recover his equanimity. “Then I suppose Mr. Ambrose taught you to skate?”

  “Exactly — Mr. Ambrose taught me. He skates very well.”

  “So will you, with a little more practice,” answered her companion in a rather patronising tone. He intended perhaps to convey the idea that Mrs. Goddard would improve in the exercise if she would actually skate, and with him, instead of submitting to be pushed about in a chair by Mr. Juxon.

  “Oh, I daresay,” said Mrs. Goddard indifferently. “We shall soon be the
re, now. I can hear them on the ice.”

  “Too soon,” said John with regret.

  “I thought you liked skating so much.”

  “I like walking with you much better,” he replied, and he glanced at her face to see if his speech produced any sign of sympathy.

  “You have walked with me; now you can skate with Nellie,” suggested Mrs.

  Goddard.

  “You talk as though I were a child,” said John, suddenly losing his temper in a very unaccountable way.

  “Because I said you might skate with Nellie? Really, I don’t see why. Mr.

  Juxon is not a child, and he has been skating with her all the morning.”

  “That is different,” retorted John growing very red.

  “Yes — Nellie is much nearer to your age than to Mr. Juxon’s,” answered

  Mrs. Goddard, with a calmness which made John desperate.

  “Really, Mrs. Goddard,” he said stiffly, “I cannot see what that has to do with it.”

  “‘The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the lady so much older than myself has charged—’ How does the quotation end, Mr. Short?”

  “‘Has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny,’” said John savagely. “Quite so, Mrs. Goddard. I shall not attempt to palliate it, nor will I venture to deny it.”

  “Then why in the world are you so angry with me?” she asked, suddenly turning her violet eyes upon him. “I was only laughing, you know.”

  “Only laughing!” repeated John. “It is more pleasant to laugh than to be laughed at.”

  “Yes — would not you allow me the pleasure then, just for once?”

  “Certainly, if you desire it. You are so extremely merry—”

  “Come, Mr. Short, we must not seem to have been quarrelling when we reach the pond. It would be too ridiculous.”

  “Everything seems to strike you in a humorous light to-day,” answered

  John, beginning to be pacified by her tone.

  “Do you know, you are much more interesting when you are angry,” said

  Mrs. Goddard.

  “And you only made me angry in order to see whether I was interesting?”

  “Perhaps — but then, I could not help it in the least.”

  “I trust you are thoroughly satisfied upon the point, Mrs. Goddard? If there is anything more that I can do to facilitate your researches in psychology—”

  “You would help me? Even to the extent of being angry again?” She smiled so pleasantly and frankly that John’s wrath vanished.

  “It is impossible to be angry with you. I am very sorry if I seemed to be,” he answered. “A man who has the good fortune to be thrown into your society is a fool to waste his time in being disagreeable.”

  “I agree with the conclusion, at all events — that is, it is much better to be agreeable. Is it not? Let us be friends.”

  “Oh, by all means,” said John.

  They walked on for some minutes in silence. John reflected that he had witnessed a phase of Mrs. Goddard’s character of which he had been very far from suspecting the existence. He had not hitherto imagined her to be a woman of quick temper or sharp speech. His idea of her was formed chiefly upon her appearance. Her sad face, with its pathetic expression, suggested a melancholy humour delighting in subdued and tranquil thoughts, inclined naturally to the romantic view, or to what in the eyes of youths of twenty appears to be the romantic view of life. He had suddenly found her answering him with a sharpness which, while it roused his wits, startled his sensibilities. But he was flattered as well. His instinct and his observation of Mrs. Goddard when in the society of others led him to believe that with Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, or even with Mr. Juxon, she was not in the habit of talking as she talked with him. He was therefore inwardly pleased, so soon as his passing annoyance had subsided, to feel that she made a difference between him and others.

  It was quite true that she made a distinction, though she did so almost unconsciously. It was perfectly natural, too. She was young in heart, in spite of her thirty years and her troubles; she had an elastic temperament; to a physiognomist her face would have shown a delicate sensitiveness to impressions rather than any inborn tendency to sadness. In spite of everything she was still young, and for two years and a half she had been in the society of persons much older than herself, persons she respected and regarded as friends, but persons in whom her youth found no sympathy. It was natural, therefore, that when time to some extent had healed the wound she had suffered and she suddenly found herself in the society of a young and enthusiastic man, something of the enforced soberness of her manner should unbend, showing her character in a new light. She herself enjoyed the change, hardly knowing why; she enjoyed a little passage of arms with John, and it amused her more than she could have expected to be young again, to annoy him, to break the peace and heal it again in five minutes. But what happened entirely failed to amuse the squire, who did not regard such diversions as harmless; and moreover she was far from expecting the effect which her treatment of John Short produced upon his scholarly but enthusiastic temper.

  CHAPTER IX.

  THE SQUIRE HAD remarked that John Short seemed to have a peculiar temper, and Mrs. Goddard had observed the same thing. What has gone before sufficiently explains the change in John’s manner, and the difference in his behaviour was plainly apparent even to Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose. The vicar indeed was wise enough to see that John was very much attracted by Mrs. Goddard, but he was also wise enough to say nothing about it. His wife, however, who had witnessed no love-making for nearly thirty years, except the courtship of the young physician who had married her daughter, attributed John’s demeanour to no such disturbing cause. He was overworked, she said; he was therefore irritable; he had of course never taken that excellent homoeopathic remedy, highly diluted aconite, since he had left the vicarage; the consequence was that he was subject to nervous headache — she only hoped he would not be taken ill on the eve of the examination for honours. She hoped, too, that he would prolong his holiday to the very last moment, for the country air and the rest he enjoyed were sure to do him so much good. With regard, to the extension of John’s visit, the vicar thought differently, although he held his peace. There were many reasons why John should not become attached to Mrs. Goddard both for her sake and his own, and if he staid long, the vicar felt quite sure that he would fall in love with her. She was dangerously pretty, she was much older than John — which in the case of very young men constitutes an additional probability — she evidently took an innocent pleasure in his society, and altogether such a complication as was likely to ensue was highly undesirable. Therefore, when Mrs. Ambrose pressed John to stay longer than he had intended, the vicar not only gave him no encouragement, but spoke gravely of the near approach of the contest for honours, of the necessity of concentrating every force for the coming struggle, and expressed at the same time the firm conviction that, if John did his best, he ought to be the senior classic in the year.

  Even Mrs. Goddard urged him to go. Of course he asked her advice. He would not have lost that opportunity of making her speak of himself, nor of gauging the exact extent of the interest he hoped she felt in him.

  It was two or three days after the long conversation he had enjoyed with her. In that time they had met often and John’s admiration for her, strengthened by his own romantic desire to be really in love, had begun to assume proportions which startled Mrs. Goddard and annoyed Mr. Juxon. The latter felt that the boy was in his way; whenever he wanted to see Mrs. Goddard, John was at her side, talking eagerly and contesting his position against the squire with a fierceness which in an older and wiser man would have been in the worst possible taste. Even as it was, Mr. Juxon looked considerably annoyed as he stood by, smoothing his smooth hair from time to time with his large white hand and feeling that even at his age, and with his experience, a man might sometimes cut a poor figure.

  On the particular occasion w
hen the relations between John and the squire became an object of comment to Mrs. Ambrose, the whole party were assembled at Mrs. Goddard’s cottage. She had invited everybody to tea, a meal which in her little household represented a compromise between her appetite and Nellie’s. She had felt that in the small festivities of the Billingsfield Christmas season she was called upon to do her share with the rest and, being a simple woman, she took her part simply, and did not dignify the entertainment of her four friends by calling it a dinner. The occasion was none the less hospitable, for she gave both time and thought to her preparations. Especially she had considered the question of precedence; it was doubtful, she thought, whether the squire or the vicar should sit upon her right hand. The squire, as being lord of the manor, represented the powers temporal, the vicar on the other hand represented the church, which on ordinary occasions takes precedence of the lay faculty. She had at last privately consulted Mr. Juxon, in whom she had the greatest confidence, asking him frankly which she should do, and Mr. Juxon had unhesitatingly yielded the post of honour to the vicar, adding to enforce his opinion the very plausible argument that if he, the squire, took Mrs. Goddard in to tea, the vicar would have to give his arm either to little Nellie or to his own wife. Mrs. Goddard was convinced and the affair was a complete success.

  John felt that he could not complain of his position, but as he was separated from the object of his admiration during the whole meal, he resolved to indemnify himself for his sufferings by monopolising her conversation during the rest of the evening. The squire on the other hand, who had been obliged to talk to Mrs. Ambrose during most of the time while they were at table, and who, moreover, was beginning to feel that he had seen almost enough of John Short, determined to give the young man a lesson in the art of interesting women in general and Mrs. Goddard in particular. She, indeed, would not have been a woman at all had she not understood the two men and their intentions. After tea the party congregated round the fire in the little drawing-room, standing in a circle, of which their hostess formed the centre. Mr. Juxon and John, anticipating that Mrs. Goddard must ultimately sit upon one side or other of the fireplace had at first chosen opposite sides, each hoping that she would take the chair nearest to himself. But Mrs. Goddard remained standing an unreasonably long time, for the very reason that she did not choose to sit beside either of them. Seeing this the squire, who had perhaps a greater experience than his adversary in this kind of strategic warfare, left his place and put himself on the same side as John. He argued that Mrs. Goddard would probably then choose the opposite side, whereas John who was younger would think she would come towards the two where they stood; John would consequently lose time, Mr. Juxon would cross again and install himself by her side while his enemy was hesitating.