Such stories came to Westray’s ears, and stirred in him the modicum of chivalry which leavens the lump of most men’s being. He was still smarting under his repulse, but he would have felt himself disgraced if he had allowed the scandal to pass unchallenged, and he rebutted it with such ardour that people shrugged their shoulders, and hinted that there had been something between him, too, and Anastasia.
Clerk Janaway was inclined to take a distressingly opportunist and matter-of-fact view of the question. He neither reprobated nor defended. In his mind the Divine right of peers was firmly established. So long as they were rich and spent their money freely, we should not be too particular. They were to be judged by standards other than those of common men; for his part, he was glad they had got in place of an old curmudgeon a man who would take an interest in the Church, and spend money on the place and the people. If he took a fancy to a pretty face, where was the harm? ’Twas nothing to the likes of them, best let well alone; and then he would cut short the churchwarden’s wailings and godly lamentations by “decanting” on the glories of Fording, and the boon it was to the countryside to have the place kept up once more.
“Clerk Janaway, your sentiments do you no credit,” said the pork-butcher on one such occasion, for he was given to gossip with the sexton on terms of condescending equality. “I have seen Fording myself, having driven there with the Carisbury Field Club, and felt sure it must be a source of temptation if not guarded against. That one man should live in such a house is an impiety; he is led to go about like Nebuchadnezzar, saying: ‘Is not this great Babylon that I have builded?’ ”
“He never builded it,” said the clerk with some inconsequence; “ ’twere builded centuries ago. I’ve heard ’tis that old no one don’t know who builded it. Your parents was Dissenters, Mr. Joliffe, and never taught you the Catechism when you was young; but as for me, I order myself to my betters as I should, so long as they orders themselves to me. ’Taint no use to say as how we’re all level; you’ve only got to go to Mothers’ Meetings, my old missus says, to see that. ’Tis no use looking for too much, nor eating salt with red herrings.”
“Well, well,” the other deprecated, “I’m not blaming his lordship so much as them that lead him on.”
“Don’t go for to blame the girl, neither, too hardly; there’s faults on both sides. His grandfather didn’t always toe the line, and there were some on her side didn’t set too good an example, neither. I’ve seen many a queer thing in my time, and have got to think blood’s blood, and forerunners more to blame than children. If there’s drink in fathers, there’ll be drink in sons and grandsons till ’tis worked out; and if there’s wild love in the mothers, daughters’ll likely sell their apples too. No, no, God-amighty never made us equal, and don’t expect us all to be churchwardens. Some on us comes of virtuous forerunners, and are born with wings at the back of our shoulders like you”—and he gave a whimsical look at his listener’s heavy figure—“to lift us up to the vaulting; and some on us our fathers fits out with lead soles to the bottom of our boots to keep us on the floor.”
Saturday afternoon was Lord Blandamer’s hour, and for three Saturdays running Miss Joliffe deserted the Dorcas meeting in order to keep guard at home. It rejoiced the moral hearts of ill-natured and talebearing Miss Sharp and of lying and mischief-making Mrs. Flint that the disreputable old woman had at least the decency not to show herself among her betters, but such defection was a sore trial to Miss Joliffe. She told herself on each occasion that she could not make such a sacrifice again, and yet the love of Anastasia constrained her. To her niece she offered the patent excuse of being unwell, but the girl watched her with wonder and dismay chafe feverishly through the two hours, which had been immemorially consecrated to these meetings. The recurrence of a weekly pleasure, which seems so limitless in youth and middle age, becomes less inexhaustible as life turns towards sunset. Thirty takes lightly enough the foregoing of a Saturday reunion, the uncongenial spending of a Sunday; but seventy can see the end of the series, and grudges every unit of the total that remains.
For three Saturdays Miss Joliffe watched, and for three Saturdays no suspicious visitor appeared.
“We have seen nothing of Lord Blandamer lately,” she would remark at frequent intervals with as much indifference as the subject would allow.
“There is nothing to bring him here now that Mr. Westray has gone. Why should he come?”
Why, indeed, and what difference would it make to her if he never came again? These were questions that Anastasia had discussed with herself, at every hour of every day of those blank three weeks. She had ample time for such foolish discussions, for such vain imaginings, for she was left much to herself, having no mind-companions either of her own age or of any other. She was one of those unfortunate persons whose education and instincts’ unfit them for their position. The diversions of youth had been denied her, the pleasures of dress or company had never been within her reach. For pastime she was turned back continually to her own thoughts, and an active imagination and much desultory reading had educated her in a school of romance, which found no counterpart in the life of Cullerne. She was proud at heart (and it is curious that those are often
