CHAPTER 7
A WEEK LATER: THE ROAD TO UPCHURCH: AND WHAT PASSED BETWEEN JACK MARDEN AND A BEREAVED WOMAN
Twenty-five miles south of Marden Fee, and within an hour’s slow ride of the coast, stands the little town of Featherham. So it is spelt by pedantic and official persons, in church registers and the like; but most of us, in this mid-eighteenth century, are content to write it (if we write at all) as we speak it: Fedrum. It is a mellow and friendly town, very small and compact, very clean and bright. Its High Street is cobbled; its half-timbered houses lean across to each other like gossiping cronies; its church is ancient. But the general effect is one not of age but of a timeless perfection, something neither ancient nor modern but at once fresh and mature like this January morning. In Fedrum the sun shines more brightly than elsewhere; rain falls like a benediction; an east wind is the kind of foe that a man of spirit is glad to cross swords with; snow is a wonder, and frost a tingling delight. Here nothing can happen, whether fair or foul, but its beauty is enhanced, or its foulness redeemed, by the kindness and candour and quiet self-assurance that seem to pervade the very air. The quintessence of this genius loci is to be found in the white house that stands, surrounded by a high-walled garden, in the middle of the town. It is but twenty years old and built in the best modern style, though already, being of Fedrum, it is mellow in quality as well as serene and sensible in design; and it has recently become the residence of Dr Humphrey and his daughter. This last circumstance is a matter of no little interest to Jack Marden, whom we now see riding towards Fedrum in the company of the bereaved young woman who played such havoc in Mr Bailey’s breast a week ago. For she, it appears, has friends in Upchurch; and Upchurch lies but a few miles to the east of Fedrum. . . .
And now, for the hundredth time in a few hours, that young woman broke the silence, snapped the golden thread of Marden’s thought, by her expressions of gratitude. She was vastly obliged for his civility, she was greatly beholden for the protection of his escort, she trembled to think what might have happened had he not so befriended her, and she wished it might be in her power to repay his kindness. Here she fetched a deep sigh, and flashed an almost tender glance at him, and, being caught in this act, was covered with a pretty blushing confusion. He had already taken her measure, and found it widely at variance with the measure of her pretensions. She owed him more than she knew: she owed him, indeed, that for which she was thanking her own cleverness, her liberty. But her provocativeness piqued him into taking a momentary interest in her person, which he now observed to be by no means lacking in feminine attractiveness. He knew her, or thought he knew her, for trash. An easy woman, he said to himself, mine for the asking, or any man’s. And there was nothing here, he told himself, to stir a man’s soul. But the soul can take care of itself: one need not always be exercising it. Nor need one, thought he, disdain an adventure merely because the soul is not engaged in it; for though he was a boy at heart, with a boy’s shy adoration of the beauty that is beyond sense, he was also a man and a man of his times: profoundly curious and questing, not uninfluenced by a tradition of gallantry, and no more disposed than the next man to ignore a woman’s challenge. In a word, he might, at any other time, have risen to the bait of that wistful sigh, that downcast look. But now he was triple-armed against such an assault: she was easy, she was of dubious honesty, and, above all, his mind as well as his heart was already crowded with another. His thoughts were all with Celia Humphrey, whom, as he hoped, he was soon to see again. For two days his heart had been beating with that hope, and a resolution was forming in him to put his fortune to the test as soon as might be. Reacting from the misery of the past week, he felt a new zest filling him. With Paul buried, he turned instinctively away from the dark thoughts that had oppressed him. The idea of death, the sharp reminder of his own mortality, set him hotfoot in quest of the more abundant life that only Celia, he vowed, could give him, if she but would; and his imagination glowed with the wonder of her. Hitherto he had hardly dared to do more than toy with the idea of winning her: he could not conceive that she, so perfect, and so securely and quietly in possession of herself, could ever come within reach of so ordinary a fellow as he. What have I to offer, he asked himself? And the answer was discouraging. His fortune was small; he was not dashing or witty; his prowess in the hunting field was nothing above the ordinary; he was comparatively untravelled; and there was nothing in his appearance that could make a woman look twice at him. Finally, though it counted in his favour that he professed her religious faith, it must tell against him that she was devout and he too desperately honest to conceal his indifference. He could find, indeed, no cause for hope, and no excuse for engaging in an enterprise manifestly impossible of success. But hope he did: or rather, giving rein to his wishes and leaving his reasons to limp along as best they could, he moved forward impetuously at last, neither stopping to consider his chances nor deterred by his lack of any personal merit. He felt joyous and ardent and irresistible, for an instinct wiser than reason told him that only by so feeling, in despite of logic, could he win his heart’s desire. The time for humility was not yet: courage, even a reckless courage, must come first. He, more than most men, needed this prompting of the blood; for by nature and habit, and by the circumstances of his childhood, he was lonely, and self-mistrustful, and proud with the pride of a heart so hungry for love, so eager to escape its prison of isolation, that it shrinks from the exposure involved in offering itself. But, today, spring was in his blood, though there was nothing but January frost and January sunlight in the air about him. As he rode through rural England, crossing commons and skirting severals, his gaze travelled lightly over the hedgeless fields; ribbons of cultivation shewing green spears or brown furrows; wooded hills; cattle at grass; small lanky lambs capering after their mothers. But these sights did not for a moment interrupt or blur his vision of Celia Humphrey. All that they possessed of beauty was somehow translated into terms of her. In his mind’s eye he saw her as he had seen her some three months ago: slim and brown, cool and friendly, very much mistress of herself and serenely unaware of being also mistress of him. Because she was town-bred he was very ready to feel himself something of a bumpkin in her presence, for his own excursions to the metropolis had taken him to the resorts of men, and of women indeed, but not of gentlewomen. There were memories in him that he would gladly have been rid of; and never more gladly than now, when he was riding into the presence of a being so far removed from that world of trivial desperate dissipations with which a lonely and obscurely frustrated man may sometimes seek to solace himself. But her urban antecedents did not dismay him as they might have done, for by adoption she was already heart and soul a countrywoman. She sat a horse bravely; took pleasure in the conversation of her humbler neighbours; humorously prided herself on being weather-wise; managed her rustic servants with discretion; and was a welcome and familiar figure in the streets of Fedrum. Of her inner mind he knew little enough, and so had the more scope for delighted and ardent conjecture. She had read a book or two; she could talk intelligently, as well as worshipfully, of David Garrick; she sang enchantingly in French, in Italian, and even in English, accompanying herself on her grandmother’s harpsichord. Her dark eyes looked upon the world with neither arrogance nor timidity. This he knew: the rest was mystery. What she could give a lover, what riches her heart might reveal to a husband, he dared not ask himself, yet could not abstain from radiantly surmising. His heart quickened its pace, and the horse he rode responded to that quickening. The young woman he escorted was forgotten.