Demos. George Gissing
a cup of tea, Mr. Wyvern? we make a meal of it, in the country way. My boy and girl are sure to be in directly.’
‘I should like to make their acquaintance,’ was the grave response.
‘Alfred, my son,’ the lady proceeded, ‘is with us for his Easter holiday. Belwick is so short a distance away, and yet too far to allow of his living here, unfortunately.’
‘His age?’
‘Just one-and-twenty.’
‘The same age as my own boy.’
‘Oh, you have a son?’
‘A youngster, studying music in Germany. I have just been spending a fortnight with him.’
‘How delightful! If only poor Alfred could have pursued some more—more liberal occupation! Unhappily, we had small choice. Friends were good enough to offer him exceptional advantages not long after his father’s death, and I was only too glad to accept the opening. I believe he is a clever boy; only such a dreadful Radical.’ She laughed, with a deprecatory motion of the hands. ‘Poor Adela and he are at daggers drawn; no doubt it is some terrible argument that detains them now on the road. I can’t think how he got his views; certainly his father never inculcated them.’
‘The air, Mrs. Waltham, the air,’ murmured the clergyman.
The lady was not quite sure that she understood the remark, but the necessity of reply was obviated by the entrance of the young man in question. Alfred was somewhat undergrown, but of solid build. He walked in a sturdy and rather aggressive way, and his plump face seemed to indicate an intelligence, bright, indeed, but of the less refined order. His head was held stiffly, and his whole bearing betrayed a desire to make the most of his defective stature. His shake of the hand was an abrupt downward jerk, like a pull at a bell-rope. In the smile with which he met Mr. Wyvern a supercilious frame of mind was not altogether concealed; he seemed anxious to have it understood that in him the clerical attire inspired nothing whatever of superstitious reverence. Reverence, in truth, was not Mr. Waltham’s failing.
Mr. Wyvern, as his habit was at introductions, spoke no words, but held the youth’s hand for a few moments and looked him in the eyes. Alfred turned his head aside uneasily, and was a trifle ruddy in the cheeks when at length he regained his liberty.
‘By-the-by,’ he remarked to his mother when he had seated himself, with crossed legs, ‘Eldon has turned up at last. He passed us in a cab, or so Adela said. I didn’t catch a glimpse of the individual.’
‘Really!’ exclaimed Mrs. Waltham. ‘He was coming from Agworth station?’
‘I suppose so. There was a trunk on the four-wheeler. Adela says he looked ill, though I don’t see how she discovered so much.’
‘I have no doubt she is right. He must have been ill.’
Mr. Wyvern, in contrast with his habit, was paying marked attention; he leaned forward, with a hand on each knee. In the meanwhile the preparations for tea had progressed, and as Mrs. Waltham rose at the sight of the teapot being brought in, her daughter entered the room. Adela was taller by half a head than her brother; she was slim and graceful. The air had made her face bloom, and the smile which was added as she drew near to the vicar enhanced the charm of a countenance at all times charming. She was not less than ladylike in self-possession, but Mr. Wyvern’s towering sableness clearly awed her a little. For an instant her eyes drooped, but at once she raised them and met the severe gaze with unflinching orbs. Releasing her hand, Mr. Wyvern performed a singular little ceremony: he laid his right palm very gently on her nutbrown hair, and his lips moved. At the same time he all but smiled.
Alfred’s face was a delightful study the while; it said so clearly, ‘Confound the parson’s impudence!’ Mrs. Waltham, on the other hand, looked pleased as she rustled to her place at the tea-tray.
‘So Mr. Eldon has come?’ she said, glancing at Adela. ‘Alfred says he looks ill.’
‘Mother,’ interposed the young man, ‘pray be accurate. I distinctly stated that I did not even see him, and should not have known that it was he at all. Adela is responsible for that assertion.’
‘I just saw his face,’ the girl said naturally. ‘I thought he looked ill.’
Mr. Wyvern addressed to her a question about her walk, and for a few minutes they conversed together. There was a fresh simplicity in Adela’s way of speaking which harmonised well with her appearance and with the scene in which she moved. A gentle English girl, this dainty home, set in so fair and peaceful a corner of the world, was just the abode one would have chosen for her. Her beauty seemed a part of the burgeoning spring-time, She was not lavish of her smiles; a timid seriousness marked her manner to the clergyman, and she replied to his deliberately-posed questions with a gravity respectful alike of herself and of him.
In front of Mr. Wyvern stood a large cake, of which a portion was already sliced. The vicar, at Adela’s invitation, accepted a piece of the cake; having eaten this, he accepted another; then yet another. His absence had come back upon him, and he talked he continued to eat portions of the cake, till but a small fraction of the original structure remained on the dish. Alfred, keenly observant of what was going on, pursed his lips from time to time and looked at his mother with exaggerated gravity, leading her eyes to the vanishing cake. Even Adela could not but remark the reverend gentleman’s abnormal appetite, but she steadily discouraged her brother’s attempts to draw her into the joke. At length it came to pass that Mr. Wyvern himself, stretching his hand mechanically to the dish, became aware that he had exhibited his appreciation of the sweet food in a degree not altogether sanctioned by usage. He fixed his eyes on the tablecloth, and was silent for a while.
As soon as the vicar had taken his departure Alfred threw himself into a chair, thrust out his legs, and exploded in laughter.
‘By Jove!’ he shouted. ‘If that man doesn’t experience symptoms of disorder! Why, I should be prostrate for a week if I consumed a quarter of what he has put out of sight.’
‘Alfred, you are shockingly rude,’ reproved his mother, though herself laughing. ‘Mr. Wyvern is absorbed in thought.’
‘Well, he has taken the best means, I should say, to remind himself of actualities,’ rejoined the youth. ‘But what a man he is! How did he behave in church this morning?’
‘You should have come to see,’ said Mrs. Waltham, mildly censuring her son’s disregard of the means of grace.
‘I like Mr. Wyvern,’ observed Adela, who was standing at the window looking out upon the dusking valley.
‘Oh, you would like any man in parsonical livery,’ scoffed her brother.
Alfred shortly betook himself to the garden, where, in spite of a decided freshness in the atmosphere, he walked for half-an-hour smoking a pipe. When he entered the house again, he met Adela at the foot of the stairs.
‘Mrs. Mewling has just come in,’ she whispered.
‘All right, I’ll come up with you,’ was the reply. ‘Heaven defend me from her small talk!’
They ascended to a very little room, which made a kind of boudoir for Adela. Alfred struck a match and lit a lamp, disclosing a nest of wonderful purity and neatness. On the table a drawing-board was slanted; it showed a text of Scripture in process of ‘illumination.’
‘Still at that kind of thing!’ exclaimed Alfred. ‘My good child, if you want to paint, why don’t you paint in earnest? Really, Adela, I must enter a protest! Remember that you are eighteen years of age.’
‘I don’t forget it, Alfred.’
‘At eight-and-twenty, at eight-and-thirty, you propose still to be at the same stage of development?’
‘I don’t think we’ll talk of it,’ said the girl quietly. ‘We don’t understand each other.’
‘Of course not, but we might, if only you’d read sensible books that I could give you.’
Adela shook her head. The philosophical youth sank into his favourite attitude—legs extended,