As for Mr. Germain, whatever his nightly meditations or dreams may have been, he was as good as his word, and stoutly took the field on the morrow when Misperton Brand, having lost the toss, spread itself over the greensward under Mr. Soames’s eye and imperative hand. Mr. Soames was a bowler and desperately in earnest; to see him marshal his field was a study in statesmanship. Knowledge of men went to it. “Can you throw?” he had asked the stately gentleman who had somehow to be accounted for; and when Mr. Germain replied that he would do his best to oblige him—“Verbum sap,” he said afterwards to Duplessis, “I knew what that meant all right, and put him cover. He only missed two catches, you know, and one of ’em was old Blacklock who simply has to make a run. I don’t call that so bad!” The game was played in the Rectory field, where the tent and trestle-tables, and in truth some of the baked meats of a recent festival did duty for to-day. Behind the railings, as before, sat Mrs. James and her Cantacutes. Miss de Speyne was not there, but Mrs. Duplessis was—a carefully preserved lady, handsome and fatigued. On the further side of the field were benches, and here also spectators clustered—farmers’ ladies, the doctor and his wife, Mr. Nunn, the retired solicitor, who lived at The Sanctuary and employed Miss Middleham to look after his children; young Perivale, the auctioneer’s son, from Townham, the Misses Finch, of Stockfield Peverel, the Misses Wake; and Mary Middleham was undoubtedly there, with white sunshade, her young charges about her, or running from her to papa and back as needs might be. And to Miss Middleham it undoubtedly was that Mr. Germain, on an occasion of attempting to retrieve a slashing cut by the butcher’s man—and fruitlessly, seeing he was outpaced by the second gardener from the Rectory—paid the distinction of a salute before he returned leisurely to the fray.
She had been standing with a group of acquaintances, of whom Miss Kitty Wake, Miss Sally Wake, and Miss Letty Wake—all of Whiteacre Farm—formed three, and young Perivale a fourth. Upon these young people the courtesy smote like a puff of wind. Perivale blinked, and “Gracious! Who’s that?” escaped Miss Sally, and was caught and expounded by her sister Kitty. “Stupid. It’s Mr. Germain, the Rector’s brother.”
“Then he bowed to you, Mary,” said Miss Sally, and, as Mary blushed, young Perivale ground his heel into a dandelion.
“I don’t wonder,” said this youth, whose complaint was not hard to diagnose; but the compliment was ignored by the Misses Wake.
“Whatever makes him play village cricket? Why, his lordship never does, nor the Rector—and Mr. Germain could buy up the pair of them, I hear. Don’t you call it singular, Mr. Perivale? I do.”
“Doesn’t make much of it, does he?” says Perivale, drily.
“No, certainly not. Why should he? An old gentleman like that!”
Friendship required a protest, and so Miss Kitty cried, “Oh, Sally, he’s not a bit old!” Mary’s corroboration being called for, she said that she should not call him old.
“Well, whatever he is, he’s very polite. That bow of his! My dear, you might have been Miss de Speyne! However did he know it was you, at this distance?”
“Perhaps he took his hat off to you, Sally,” Mary said, but Miss Sally would have none of that.
“He looks straight at you, as if he knew you by heart, and then stiffens himself, and off with his hat. Cricket! He’s no cricketer—but he’s a gentleman.”
So much all must admit. Mary, mildly elated, had no objection to further inquiries. The former encounter, Mr. Germain’s deliberate advance into the school-treat: these wonders were revealed, rolled on the tongue, absorbed. Young Mr. Perivale took a stroll and fiercely, in the course of it, asked a small boy what he was looking at, hey? But more wonders were to come. Mr. Germain refreshed himself with the players, during the tea interval, introduced himself to Mr. Nunn, of The Sanctuary, patted the heads of his brood, and meeting Miss Middleham by the trestle-table, shook hands with her and held her in talk. He deprecated his cricket with simplicity. “I reflect that it is five-and-twenty years since I chased a cricket ball; but you may see the force of your example, Miss Middleham. Had you not inspired me to effort the other day I should hardly have embarked upon to-day’s adventure.”
She was prettily confused—her friends’ eyes upon her; but he ambled on in his kindly way.
“I put myself in the hands of my friend Mr. Soames. I was sure of his charitable discretion. Therefore, when he asked me whether I could do this or that, I did not tell him the facts, because I did not know them and was so confident that he did. I said that I should be happy to serve him, which was perfectly true. I based myself upon a famous French exemplar. You know the anecdote? A gentleman of that nation was asked whether he could take the violin part in a quartette. He said that he did not know, but that he would try. One may admire his courage.”
Miss Middleham was in this difficulty, that she did not know whether the anecdote was amusing or not. “I suppose that he was not sure of the part,” she said.
“No,” Mr. Germain corrected her; “he meant that he did not know how to play the violin.” Then she laughed, more to cover her confusion than because she was tickled.
“I like his attitude of mind, I must say,” Mr. Germain continued, talking in the air. “The sonata doubtless mattered as little as this cricket match, but neighbourliness is the great thing. We have too little of that in England. We segregate too willingly I fear. I have no notion of—I beg your pardon. While I have no notions, you have no tea. Pray allow me to get you some.”
He was a long time on this errand—for short sight and a complete absence of assertion do not help one to tea in a crowd; but nobody dare engage Miss Middleham while she stood there, so to speak, ear-marked for the great man’s. Mr. Nunn, her employer, kept his flock carefully about him; Duplessis was over the railings in the Rectory garden; Mr. Soames was exercising the hospitalities due from a captain to his rival. The Perivales, Wakes, Finches, could but look on respectfully. That they did.
Her cup of tea, her plate of bread and butter were handed to her with another fine bow; but even then her cavalier did not consider himself discharged. He stood to his post, tall, unperturbed, using his pince-nez to observe with gentle interest the audience which stood about, not for a single moment realizing that it was an audience indeed. But as he talked his amiable commonplaces, he was very conscious of the young woman, object of his attentions; little escaped him there. It was evident to him that she was pleased, softly, quietly thrilled by them; and it gratified him extremely to feel that he could confer pleasure upon her while he took his own. Pleasure, you see, costs nothing, therefore it is priceless. It cannot be bought, and yet can only be got by giving. The distinction seemed to him material, but he could not remember to have remarked it until the other day, when Lady Cantacute—a kind woman—by a trivial remark had made this child forget her wariness and smile enchantingly.
Since that moment he had pursued the thought, and verified it. He was verifying it now; there was no possible doubt that he was giving and taking pleasure. Had there been any—of this you may be sure—he would have known it; he was sensitive in such matters. He would have retired with a fine bow, and resumed his isolation and his dreams, the nursing of his secret fire. I shall have described Mr. Germain ill if I do not make it plain that he was perfectly honest, simple, very solemn, rather dull, a gentleman from the bone outwards. Miss Sally was quite right there. It was, I am sure, rather his education than his breeding which made him look upon his world, his village, native land, the continent he happened to be visiting as either in his employment (like his valet) or a negligible quantity. The same straightness of categories, with an offensive twist, has been observed in Mr. Duplessis and is common to gentlemen by inheritance. Mr. Germain had that sickness mildly, but unmistakably. Take the weather. If the day was fine, he was not insensible to that: he wore white spats and took abroad a silver-headed cane; he snuffed the genial gale, said Ha! and perhaps gave sixpence to a little boy. All was as it should be; he was excellently served. But if the morn broke stormily, with a wailing, wet, west wind, with scudding rain or whirling snow, all that escaped his lips was “Provoking!” He ordered the brougham. And you may think that, in effect, these things are what any gentleman may do, and yet not be exactly right. Other gentlemen may damn the rain; but Mr. Germain, more in sorrow than in anger, gave nature a month’s warning. If there is offence to Miss Mary Middleham in likening her to the weather, I am sorry for it. There’s no doubt that that is how she stood in Mr. Germain’s regard, though he would have gone to the stake denying it.
No misgiving, therefore, disturbed his serenity while he talked to her of the art of teaching, which he understood she practised. It was truly, he thought, one of the great arts, to give it no prouder title. What more wonderful material could be put under the hands of any artist than humanity? More plastic than paint, more durable than the potter’s clay or the builder’s stone, more subtly responsive than the vibrations with which the musician must cope. He had been reading the other day a very excellent Life of Vittorino da Feltre, a great Italian educationist. He should be happy to send it to Miss Middleham. The man was as proud as a prince; and to the credit of the princes of Italy it must be said that he was treated as their peer. A remarkable career, full of suggestion.
A certain scare, faintly discernible in Miss Middleham’s open eyes, recalled him from so wide a cast. He told her that he had been renewing acquaintance with Mr. Nunn—“a worthy friend of some years’ standing”—and had received that gentleman’s testimony to her value, to the affection which all his children had for her. He had a great respect for Mr. Nunn—a widower with six young children. “I,” said he, “am a widower—but yet I can envy Mr. Nunn. I am childless and much alone. You are fond of children, Miss Middleham?”
She owned to that gladly. “I was sure of it,” he said. “You betrayed yourself at the school-treat. Not so much by what you did—though you worked nobly—as by what was done to you. I watched the children; they could not let you alone. They must touch you—children express themselves by their antenn?. Again I envy you, Miss Middleham.”
At this point Mr. Soames most happily, if abruptly, intervened. We were to go in. Mr. Germain started, ha’d for his mental balance, poised so for an uncertain moment, and then broke away as desired. “My stout commander! Ha, yes. I am ready. Lead, leader, and I follow.” He bowed to his late captive, left her rosily confused, and bent himself to his duty in the field.
He faced the bowling of the lower end, with carefully adjusted glasses and a resolute chin. He out-lived four balls, and actually hit two of them, but forgot to run the first—to the discomfiture of Wilcox, the saddler, who did run for it, and lost his wicket. The second he ran when he should not, though Soames’s hand and “No! No!” pealed coming disaster; and then he walked back to the tent, and thence to the Rectory garden, while Duplessis, joining Soames, made vigourous practice of the Cromberton bowling. His enthusiasm held out to the end; he marked every ball, cheered every notch. He was impartial—the fall of Soames’s wicket received his plaudits, the hundred on the telegraph got no more. For so sedate a personage he was in great spirits; he rallied the Rector on his timidity, urged Lord Cantacute to put James to the blush. He went so far, even, as to congratulate Duplessis upon his 76 not out; and when all was over reverted more than once during a leisurely stroll among the box-edged walks to the pleasures of village life. He deplored his “great, shut-up Southover.” We were too fond of our fenced enclosures. According to Tacitus the trick must be inveterate, but just now there were signs of its losing hold. Our American kindred would have none of it—a park-pale, even a garden hedge was an offence against public conscience over there. The convenience of appartements was gaining upon London, and in the country allotments were recalling the old days of the common fields. Well, he was good Liberal enough to welcome the breaking down of our grudging defences. Why should an Englishman’s house be his castle, while England, surrounded by its briny moat, was sufficient castle for us all? Merry England! England might be merry enough if Englishmen could forget themselves, and remember each other. Mrs. James did not agree with him, and shortly said so, but Lord Cantacute, who may have seen further than she cared to look, said it would never do. “It’s been tried over and over again, you know. You can’t mix people up, because they won’t meet you. If you go and make a fuss with a fellow, you’ll gratify him, you know; but what will he do? Will he make a fuss with his next-door neighbour? Not he! He’ll kick him. You’ve made him feel that he’s somebody, d’you see? So he can afford himself the luxury. No, no, Germain. I wish you were right—you ought to be—but you’re not.”
“There’s a queer kind of fellow,” his lordship went on, while Mr. Germain seemed to be holding his opinion firmly in his clasped hands behind his back, “who lives in a tilt-cart and mends kettles when the fancy takes him. Paints a good picture, too, and has plenty to say for himself. Hertha found him at that the other day, out riding—but the kettles were not far off, and the sawder bubbling in a pot on a fire. From what she says, he’s come as near to your standard as any one. No hedges there. And he’s a gentleman, mind you. Hertha says that’s clear. But look at the difference. He steps down you see. You are for pulling ’em up. That don’t do, as I say.”
Mr. Germain explained himself. “I deny the imputation; I cannot admit the possibility. Pulling up, my dear Cantacute! How can you pull up, when there is no eminence? I spoke of enclosures, of artificial barriers—a very different matter.”
“Same thing,” said my lord. “We didn’t plant ’em. They grew.”
“I met to-day again,” said Mr. Germain, pointedly to his sister-in-law, “your Miss Middleham—a charming girl—with whom I gave myself the pleasure of some little talk during the interval allowed me by my stalwart friend Soames. I became a hedge-breaker, my dear Constantia, deliberately”—Lord Cantacute’s shrewd eye being upon him, he turned to the attack—“and I can assure you that I found her in every respect worthy of my homage, in every respect. We discussed her art——”
“What’s that?” asked the lord.
“The art of teaching, my dear friend. I maintained that it was the finest art—and Miss Middleham quite agreed with me.”
Mrs. James asked him tartly what else Mary Middleham could have done, or been supposed to do. Lord Cantacute contented himself by saying that he believed she was a nice young woman.
“There are, at any rate, no hedges about her,” said Mrs. James.