Part 2, Chapter IX
Contrasts

 
“There’s none so sure to pay his debt.
As wet to dry, and dry to wet.”
 

Part 2, Chapter X
The Time of Roses

 
“When all the world was young, lad,
And all the trees were green.”
 

While the bright southern sunshine was filling the old palace with its rays; and while, beneath the blue Italian sky, Hugh Crichton was arranging Violante’s flowers; the same fair summer weather was making life enchanting in the English county where Oxley lay. Instead of deep, unbroken azure, see a paler tint, with fleecy, snowy clouds; and, for the fretwork and the imagery, the marble, and the alabaster of Civita Bella, broad, green, low-lying meadows, where dog-roses tossed in the hedges, and dog-daisies and buttercups were falling beneath the scythe; a slow, sleepy canal, with here and there a bright-painted boat; and, on the low hill side, the clustering white villas and modern streets, surmounted, not by innumerable pinnacles and domes, but by one tall, grey spire.

Oxley was a large, flourishing town, some forty miles from London – next to the county town in dignity, and before it in size and enterprise. It could boast no architecture and no antiquities, save a handsome church – neither very old nor very new – and some tumble-down, red-tiled, dirty streets, sloping down from the back of the town to the canal – unless, indeed, like some of its townsmen, you counted the Corinthian façade of the railway station, the Gothic gables of the new Town-Hall, or the sober eighteenth-century squareness of the Oxley Bank. These two latter public buildings opened on to a broad, sunny market-place; from which started a clean, white, sunny road, which led past villas, nursery gardens, meadows, and bits of furzy, heathery waste, all the way to Redhurst, and was the old coach-road from the county town to London.

Along this road were the prettiest residences, the gayest little conservatories, the most flowery lilacs, laburnums, and acacias of suburban Oxley. Here was the “best neighbourhood,” and here, on the clean, gravelled footway, the nursery-maids and children went to walk on fine mornings; ladies and little dogs paid calls of an afternoon; and groups of slim, long-haired girls came out to attend classes at Oxley Manor, the famous Young Ladies’ School. The Manor House lay back from the road behind high, substantial, red-brick walls, with mossy crevices, and bushy ivy peeping over the top; showing beyond, garden trees, walnuts, acacias, and horse-chestnuts, surrounding the big, substantial house, where, from the small-paned windows, peeped now and then a girl’s face.

There was no better school in the country than the Miss Vennings’ at Oxley Manor; and it was considered a great privilege for the girls of Oxley that certain classes there were opened to them; and a still greater that Miss Spencer and Miss Crofton were allowed to attend regularly as day scholars. But these young ladies did not come from Redhurst by the road. There was a pretty, quiet path through the meadows – half-way between the public road and the towing-path by the canal – that led here through a bit of copsewood famous for primroses, there across a sunny, open meadow; now over a low, wooden stile, then between high hedges, full of brambles, honey-suckles, and roses; till the hedges grew neater and closer, and terminated in the high red wall of the Manor kitchen-garden, from which opened a little green gate. On the other side of the road was a paddock, with a shallow pond where ducks flourished, and where, on the opposite bank, an old pollard willow threw its slender branches across the muddy water.

On that sunny afternoon a sunnier spot could hardly have been found than the narrow path under the wall; and yet here lingered two figures: a girl, who had poised herself on the end of a great garden-roller, and a young man who leaned against the white railing of the pond beside her. She was a graceful little lady, small and soft-faced; with brown hair, shining and neat, round rosy lips, and clear, steady eyes of a hazel tint. Her white dress was elaborately trimmed with handsome embroidery, and all her blue ribbons were fresh and smart, as if they had no need to see sunny days enough to dim their brightness. There was a bag of books at her feet, and her pretty eyes were cast down towards them; and her pink cheeks were flushed with considerable, yet not excessive, embarrassment.

“But, Arthur,” she said, with a clear, distinct, and yet soft utterance, “but, Arthur, I think we ought to consider about it a great deal.”

“I have never considered it at all,” said Arthur Spencer.

He was a tall young man, slight and graceful; with – spite of his second class and his cultivated expression – a sort of happy-go-lucky air, that seemed hardly to have outgrown the right to his old appellation of a “very pretty boy,” earned by his bright colour, dark hair, with a picturesque wave in it, and black-lashed eyes, of that distinct shade of grey which cannot be mistaken for blue or hazel. He was an elegant, rather handsome young man at three-and-twenty, with a light-hearted, self-reliant manner that might have been careless and even conceited had a less earnest and genuine affection looked out from his bright eyes at the pretty creature beside him. Arthur thought himself clever, good-looking, rather a fine fellow in his way; but what did he not think of Mysie Crofton?

“There’s nothing new in it; is there, Mysie?” he continued, as he took her prettily-gloved hand, with the freedom of old intercourse, just touched with something sweeter. “Nothing new. We were always the friends of the family, and it must have come to this soon.”

“Yes,” said Mysie, simply; “but I thought – I thought – those things never did come to anything.”

“You thought? Ah, Mysie, I have my answer now: You thought, you little worldly-minded thing, that first love was all humbug, eh? Well, we’ll be an instance to the contrary.”

Mysie blushed.

“I’m sure,” she said, “you were always telling me about young ladies.”

“But I always told you about them, Mysie! And now I could not go on any longer without having it out. I knew it; and you knew it – oh, yes, you did; and Aunt Lily was beginning to find out.”

“But there’s Hugh?”

“Ah, Hugh. I daresay he won’t quite like it; those things are not in his line. But he is too good to make foolish objections. To be sure, there is one he may fairly make.”

“What’s that?” said Mysie, frightened.

“Your fortune, Mysie; and when I think of it, it half frightens me.”

“I don’t think it is so very much,” said Mysie.

“It is enough to give you a right to all this,” said Arthur, touching her pretty dress; “and if I thought I could not give it you, I would be silent. But, Mysie, I have not much of my own; but I think I have earned the right to say I have a good chance of success in any career I might choose; and there is always the Bank. I know I cannot marry you now, Mysie, my darling,” he continued, with a sort of frank, eager deference; “and if anyone you like better comes by I will never hold you to your promise. But in the meantime are we the worse for acknowledging that which has existed so long – so long? Oh, Mysie, I don’t know how to make love to you. I think it’s all made, but you are part of myself. I could have no life without you. I cannot imagine myself not loving you, not looking to have you one day for my own.”

If Mysie was a little slow to answer, it was not because she could imagine her life without Arthur. All this was only the right name for that which had always been. They were Arthur and Mysie; and they would be Arthur and Mysie to the end of the chapter.

“Yes,” she said, “that’s quite true. It just is. But I’ll try and be a great deal better to you than ever I have been. It ought to be like ‘John Anderson.’”

Mysie had ideas, and was not afraid to express them. She used nice, pretty language, and when a thought struck her she would say it out in a way sometimes formal, but always genuine and sweet.

“John Anderson?” said Arthur – not that he did not know.

And Mysie repeated the sweetest of all sweet love-songs, the one fulfilment in the midst of so much longing desire.

As Arthur heard her gentle, fearless voice, and saw her clear eyes raised to his own, as she repeated, without fear or falter:

 
“And sleep thegither at the foot,
John Anderson, my jo,”
 

a great awe came over him.

“Oh, Mysie, my love, my darling, may God grant it! For nothing in life could ever come between us.”

And with this hope, that in its intensity was almost fear, he drew her towards him, and gave her his first lover’s kiss. She was silent; and then, recovering herself, said, in a different tone:

“And I don’t think it will be inconvenient to have a little money!”

The revulsion of ideas made Arthur laugh.

“Worldly wisdom!” he exclaimed; then suddenly sprang up from the other end of the roller as a tall handsome lady, in a garden hat, came out of the green gate.

“Miss Crofton!”

“I – I was only taking Mysie to school, Miss Venning,” said Arthur; while Mysie, pink and fluttered, picked up her books and hurried off up the path.

Miss Venning was a stately, blue-eyed woman of forty or thereabouts; with a fair, fresh complexion, and a manner that twenty-years of school-keeping had rendered somewhat condescending, as if the world consisted of pupils to be at once governed and encouraged; while her blue eyes had a certain look of enquiry in them, as if she was in the habit of passing judgment on those who came before her. But, that the judgment would be just and kind, the handsome face gave every promise; and, perhaps, the scales might even drop a little in favour of a kind of culprit that did not often come before her. Besides, if Arthur Spencer had brought the girls to school once within her recollection, he had done so fifty times.

But Arthur did not give time for this awful monosyllable to frame itself into an objection.

“Miss Venning,” he said, persuasively, “I’m doing no harm. I daresay you have often thought of it before; it couldn’t be helped, you see, any longer.”

“Arthur,” said Miss Venning, in a deep, full voice, somewhat appalling to hear, “if you had anything particular to say to Miss Crofton, you have ample opportunities without following her here.”

Arthur did not look much discomfited. Perhaps there was the slightest turn in the formidable voice that showed that the humour of the situation was not quite lost on the speaker.

He blushed, and then said, with a straightforwardness that few ladies would have resisted:

“Miss Venning, I want to have Mysie for my wife, if my aunt and Hugh will consent to our engagement. I don’t know when we began to think of it, but I suppose to-day it – well – came to a head.”

“And what does Mysie say?” said Miss Venning, still judicial, but interested. She considered Arthur Spencer a very promising young man.

“Mysie sees no objection, Miss Venning. I didn’t mean to take a liberty, I’m sure, with the sacred precincts of the Manor House; but, since it has happened so, I do wish you would let me consult you.”

Whether this appeal was the result of a delicate tact, or of the overflowing happiness that longed for sympathy, it caused Miss Venning to walk along the path beside him, saying:

“Well?”

“Well,” said Arthur, “you see how it is with us; and we have our lives before us, and there is time for me to make myself worthy of Mysie’s money – I’ll not say of herself,” he added, with a little softening of his confident voice.

“Well?” said Miss Venning again, with a yet deeper intonation.

“I have not hitherto made up my mind as to my profession,” said Arthur. “I hardly looked beyond the examination; but the Bank has always been my destination, and you know my uncle’s kindness marked out my career there long ago.”

“And haven’t you any further ambition?” said Miss Venning, who thought young men ought to push themselves.

“Why,” said Arthur, “I don’t like teaching, in which career my degree would be of most use to me; and the bar is very slow work. Hugh really wants help; and, in short, Miss Venning, when life is so crowded and the world so over-full I think if a man has the good luck to have a line marked out for him he ought to stick to it, unless his tastes point very decidedly the other way. Besides, I like Oxley. And I think,” he added, laughing and colouring, “I should say this under any circumstances. But if not, one must take life as a whole, you know.”

Miss Venning thought Oxley Bank rather a flat ending to so creditable a career as Arthur’s had been; but then, on the other hand, it was eminently safe and respectable, and, with this early marriage, would effectually “keep him out of mischief.”

“But what will your cousin say?” she asked.

“Why, I’m afraid he’ll think it his duty to object a little. But Hugh is such a good fellow, and has always been so thoroughly kind to me, and is so fair in judgment, that I am sure he will own I have as good a right to try for the prize as anyone else. It’s very odd that he has never looked out for himself. But, dear me! he would be so awfully particular!”

“Well, Arthur,” said Miss Venning, “I approve of young men marrying. It’s far more necessary for them than for girls.”

“One couldn’t well manage it without a girl,” murmured Arthur.

“So that,” said Miss Venning, “it’s well young women have different opinions on the subject. Go home, and take the responsibility off my shoulders by telling your aunt at once.”

“I’ll never do it in your garden again, Miss Venning,” cried Arthur, as he left her with a very hearty shake of the hand.

Certainly life lay fair before and behind Arthur Spencer. He was clever, with the technical skill needed for the attainment of his scholastic honours more developed than the general power behind it. That is to say, all his brains – and they were good ones – had been given to the composition of Greek and Latin, and to the acquirement of the knowledge necessary to the attainment of a good degree. He was naturally active, and industrious; and ambition and conscience had both urged him to do well the work that nature had made easy to him. He had won plenty of praise, which he liked exceedingly; and plenty of popularity, which came so naturally that he was hardly conscious of it. But he had hitherto taken life outside the schools very much for granted; thought Hugh infallible on matters of business, and James an oracle in matters of art. Indeed, Arthur’s power of appreciation was one of his best points. Unlike many of her sons, he loved and believed in Oxford – perhaps because he had given her his best and she had well repaid him; and, while there, his time and thoughts had been fully occupied with the work before him. At once affectionate and self-reliant, he took readily to the independence that circumstances indicated, and at a very early age took good care of himself. And, though there was no one in his boyhood to bestow on him exclusive affection, his warm heart gave out enough to all to make his kindly home a happy and sunny one. For Arthur liked most people. It had been said with some truth that one person was much the same as another to him, he “got on” so well with all. It would be praising the gay untried boy far too highly to say that he had a spirit of universal charity; but he did possess a sort of loving-kindness, a gift in whose soil the greatest of all graces might grow; an entire absence of depreciating ill-nature.

But Arthur himself had long known that for him the human race was divided into two parts – Mysie and other people.