THE RETURN OF A LAGGARD AND TRIFLER.

Only the other day visitors had been invited to Haybridge because crocuses were out in the garden borders and young lambs were to be seen on the hill. Now plumed lilac, trailing laburnum, and the clustering snow of double cherry blossom were making gay the Redcot shrubberies. Great red peonies, nodding white narcissus--flowers and tulips--striped all the colours of the rainbow or the sunset sky, were paving the way for the roses. As for the lambs, it is to be feared a goodly number had passed under the butcher’s knife, and figured at good men’s tables.

Those Oxford examinations in which Jane Prior and Bennet Gray desired to figure were close at hand. Jane had never swerved from her determination that Miss Gray should have the same opportunity of distinguishing herself that Jane had. It made no difference that Mat Crabtree took a frankly acknowledged interest in the subject. After the breaking of the ice, which his brother’s operations had created for a time between Haybridge and Redcot, Mr. Crabtree came more frequently than ever to the Priors’. It was evident to all that he had a great regard for Miss Gray, and that there was a growing friendship between them. In addition to lending her books, as he lent them to Jane, and discussing their contents, it was clear that he liked to talk on other topics with Bennet, and availed himself of every opportunity for a _tête-à-tête_. The air of a good understanding between the two, which had existed since the day at Haybridge, increased till it approached to a confidential intimacy. Such an intimacy between an exceedingly attractive young woman and even a ‘confirmed old bachelor’ like Mat Crabtree, especially if his years do not exceed forty-five, is apt to receive only one interpretation even from the least match-making of onlookers.

For the last three months Susie Crabtree had been saying more and more pointedly, ‘I told you so.’ She had plaintively reproached Jane for her imprudence in bringing such a governess to Redcot, and her parents for their supineness in the interests of Piers; Mr. and Mrs. Prior ought to have seen at once what Miss Gray’s little game was, without meaning any great offence to her. It was positively a woman’s duty to better her position. But it was also the duty of the master and mistress of Redcot to nip the governess’s chances in the bud, by throwing cold water on Mat Crabtree’s visits till she was honourably got rid of.

Even Mrs. Prior had alluded in conversation with Jane to such a termination of the acquaintance between the squire of Haybridge and Miss Gray, and in place of pouring forth wrath had bestowed pleased, disinterested smiles on the latter’s brightening prospects. For surely, however well-equipped, independent, and satisfied the young lady was as a schoolmistress, there was some foundation still for the old-fashioned prejudice in favour of a happy marriage and a comfortable, secure establishment. It would be a love-marriage on Mat Crabtree’s part, and there was nothing to hinder it from being the same on Miss Gray’s. He was his own master, and could please himself. He was an excellent, scholarly man, not past his prime, fine-looking for his years, in high repute in the neighbourhood--a man that any girl might be proud to win and not slow to love. It would be a lucky thing for everybody if, after they had all learned to be fond of Miss Gray, she should be established for life so near them. Of course, Mr. Crabtree might have chosen a wife with available connections and some amount of fortune, but he knew his own requirements best, and Mrs. Prior believed he had more than sufficient for the kind of life he preferred. He was in the habit of calling himself a farmer, though everybody knew the Crabtrees were gently born and had always been in the rank of squires. But he was totally without his brother’s taste for display and passion for filling the first place. It was nonsense about little Piers’s being deprived of his inheritance. It was one of Susie’s idle affectations. Mrs. Prior looked affronted and even angry when she referred to this extreme view of the case. The child’s father and mother had no right to count upon his uncle’s remaining unmarried for his sake. It was most unjust--a piece of selfish impertinence. It would show much more proper regard for little Piers and Molly’s interests, if Lambert Crabtree and Susie sought to make retrenchments in what had become the gross extravagance of the Bank House.

Jane listened and assented sedately to what her mother said. She delivered it as her opinion, not without a certain haughtiness and hardness, as well as an unswerving rectitude of tone, that nobody had the slightest call to interfere with Mr. Crabtree and Miss Gray as to what they thought fit to do, either in marrying or in not marrying. For her part, she thought people would often do better not to marry; but let the world judge for itself.

It was plain Miss Prior was not going to forbid her friend’s banns if it ever came to that. Jane was not the style of woman who played the dog in the manger. She did not even change her mind about Miss Gray’s being easily spared by the children to go for a day or two to Oxford. When it came to that, the candidates’ presence in the town with the examiners was not absolutely necessary. It was the women’s papers and not themselves that were wanted. The matter might have been managed by correspondence, only it would be so much more exciting to be on the spot, to learn their fate at once. The little Woods could remain under the care of their grandmother, to whom Bennett’s views on their education had been bringing the children nearer, thus restoring some of the privileges of the relationship which Jane had begun by impairing.

Neither did Jane Prior cause the whole project to crumple down like a house of cards by withdrawing from her share in the expedition, when she heard Mat Crabtree announce, half coolly, half mischievously, that he thought he would improve the occasion. He would see them to their destination, revisit his college, and be at hand to witness their triumph, though it should cause him to hide his diminished head. He even insisted on writing to an old landlady to secure lodgings for the ladies.

Jane accepted all these demonstrations very much as a matter of course, with a gravity of acquiescence that fitted in with the extent to which she was engrossed by her final preparations. The last ‘reading up’ was so close and persistent that Jane was driven to be more than ever, during all the moments she could call her own, reduced to the company of her books, and buried in them. She drifted away from her fellow-competitor no less than from her interim coach. Bennet Gray could not give herself up so thoroughly to the coming contest, but the absorption did not seem unnatural in Jane. Mat Crabtree was the only person who remarked upon it and was disturbed by it to no purpose, so far as producing any relaxation on Jane’s part. ‘She’ll study herself ill,’ he complained to his ally. ‘She is in a fair way to break down. Think of a Trojan of a young woman like Jane breaking down! and how will she stand it? It is too bad. I wanted this visit to Oxford to be pure enjoyment, an instance of “_veni, vidi, vici_” to everybody; and here is Jane, will not give an old friend the rise of making her angry, not to say of making her laugh. Why, I have not seen her eyes sparkle for a month. She has ceased to pay me the compliment of putting me down.’

But if Jane had become so impervious to her friends’ influence as not even to be nettled or amused by them against her will, she was incapable of standing in their way or of doing what is vulgarly called spoiling sport. She would never bring upon herself the humiliation of having to own, even in her secret chamber, that she had deliberately, of malice aforethought, as it were, come between the couple whom she had not only called friends, but who had been both of them, as she now knew, the most intimate and valued friends she had possessed. It would not signify whether the interference were successful or unsuccessful. They should never have that service to thank her for. Distrait as Jane Prior’s manner was apt to be at this time, while she was accused of being constantly in a brown study and laughed at because of it, there was a dignity about her silent, austere self-restraint that made itself dimly perceptible.

Jane had ceased to fret over the ambiguous circumstances in connection with Miss Gray’s introduction to Mat Crabtree, which in the beginning had so startled the listener. Whatever was the truth concerning Berkshire and the gentleman and lady’s encounter or non-encounter there, together with Miss Gray’s reasons for making a mystery of it, the responsibility of that too was shifted from Jane’s back, and rested on Mr. Crabtree’s broad shoulders. He had become accountable to his friends for the knowledge he possessed, so far as they might become implicated in its consequences. But if what people began confidently to anticipate were to be fulfilled, the matter concerned himself much more nearly than it concerned any other person. And Jane Prior was large enough minded, and pure enough hearted, to be able to trust both Mat Crabtree and Bennet Gray in the sequel.

An unthought-of and, in Jane’s mood, a vexatious interruption to the object on which the girls were bent thrust itself in between them and their visit to Oxford. Lambert Crabtree was Colonel of the Newton Volunteers, and, as one among his many noisy bids for popularity, he had established the practice of giving his men an annual jovial entertainment, to which each volunteer could bring one of his friends. Sometimes the entertainment had been a dinner, sometimes a railway excursion, supplemented by abundant opportunities and means for refreshment. This year it was to be a ball given in the Volunteer Hall, with the services of the adjoining White Hart Inn called into requisition.

For Lambert Crabtree’s credit it behoved his friends to support him in what was sometimes called his noble generosity. The feminine element in the entertainment this year also rendered it Susie’s affair, and she had set her heart on its being a complete success. It would be dreadful if her own family did not stand by her in her laudable wifely exertions to do her husband honour. There were so many things against her, she pleaded quite piteously, casting up her big dark eyes as if she were appealing to Heaven to interpose on her behalf. It was a bad time of the year for a ball, though it suited Lamb and the volunteers. The member, on whom they might have depended for help, was up in town in the heat of his duties at Westminster. Several families in the neighbourhood had started earlier than usual, after an epidemic of measles among the children, for their summer stay at the coast.

Painters had been in the Bank House, which had been running to seed and calling in the most crying manner to be done up. Susie and Lamb and the children had been cooped into corners and all but poisoned with the smell of paint. The smell was there yet, and the whole house was in disorder. She did not have it in her power to invite her friends to come down for a week from town--though it was in the height of the season--stay with her, attend the review, and make up a nice large party for the ball, as a proper compliment from the colonel’s wife to his troop. She had done what she could. She had gone evening after evening to be present at drill. She had taken rooms in the White Hart for any ladies with whom she could use the liberty of inviting them for a single night, and then finding accommodation for them out of her house. But the arrangement could neither be complimentary nor comfortable--though the White Hart was charming as an old inn--and naturally she had been disappointed in a good many of her guests. She might make a tolerable muster on the stand at the review, but she was very much afraid the attendance of her friends would fall short at the ball. It would look like a slight to the poor dear men, who had always been so good in presenting arms to her when she walked along the line. It would do Lamb harm with them and with everybody--especially since that low, pottering branch of a London bank had been opened in the town. Fancy any bank except Crabtree’s Bank in Newton! She knew a banker was a public servant, like a clergyman, or a physician, and people expected a great deal at his hands.

Surely Susie might count on her own sister and Miss Gray--dear Miss Gray--who was so obliging to her friends. She had probably not been at many balls--they could hardly have come in her way--so that this one, though it went without saying that it was of a mixed character, might be quite a little treat for her. She, Susie, would try and settle everything so as to suit the two young ladies from Redcot. She was aware they were just starting for Oxford to give an account of their studies and reap the fruit of them, in acquiring a right to put certain letters after their names--was not that it? It would be a most imposing conjunction, and the ambition to command it was meritorious in the extreme. Her anxieties did seem those of a frivolous wretch beside their aspirations. But what could she do? She was a married woman, and must do her little best to keep up her husband’s dignity and please him, poor soul! She would never dream of their appearing at the review, but just for a couple of hours at the ball. She would not detain them a minute longer than she could help, as they were to leave early the next morning. But for the very reason that the ball would be the last thing, even their books--if these were to be taken with them, though it sounded like carrying coals to Newcastle--would be packed, and minds like theirs were too superior to be unhinged by a poor piece of gaiety.

No, she was not jesting. She had never been further from jesting in her life. She felt hurt that they should think she was laughing when she was begging a tremendous favour of them. She would not ask her sister and Miss Gray to do more than dress comfortably at home, drive straight to the hall, dance a couple of dances or so, and, if the girls could not stay for supper, they might drive right out to Redcot, and be back by twelve o’clock. Any kind of evening dresses, even though they were a little old-fashioned or soiled, would do for a volunteer ball. The dear citizen soldiers were not hard to please, though she liked to give them her best--of course it was a different thing where she was concerned--their colonel’s wife, who belonged to them as Lamb did in a way.

Jane Prior could not refuse to lend her countenance to Susie and her husband in such a trifle, especially after Susie whispered aside to her sister that there was only one reason which could reconcile her to the absence of Jane and Miss Gray. Susie had a terrible fear that her brother-in-law might expose his deplorable infatuation. He might dance with Miss Gray, though he had said as far back as when Susie married that his dancing days were over, and he had not danced for a century. He might set all the laws of etiquette at defiance--he had always been a bungler when he had to do with these very necessary rules--by taking in Miss Gray instead of some officer’s wife to supper. The expression of that apprehension decided the question for Jane. Susie’s importunity prevailed with her sister whatever might be at its foundation. For it remained doubtful what caused Mrs. Lambert Crabtree to be so very urgent. It might be a determination on Susie’s part to get her own way, which had always been a passion with her. Or she might have an ardent desire to appear before the unappreciative Jane, and the more appreciative Bennet, in the glory of the unapproachable dress Mrs. Crabtree had provided for so humdrum and mixed a gathering as a Newton volunteer ball. Or she might really be prompted by a principle of policy in reference to Lambert Crabtree’s interests.

John Prior heard of the volunteer ball at his son-in-law’s expense with the gloomy brow which had become habitual to him. To Mrs. Prior’s secret disappointment there had been no lightening of the gloom coinciding with the withdrawal of the borers from Ladslove. ‘Did the fellow tell me a parcel of lies about the shaky state of the bank?’ John Prior asked himself. ‘I incline to think not, from sundry disquieting symptoms that have come under my notice lately. I wish to goodness people would take alarm and make themselves safe in time, if there be time. Good heavens! Crabtree’s Bank coming to grief would mean desolation far and wide round Newton. At the same time, for him to serve up the bank difficulties so as to make them appear in the worst light to me, in order to suit his own purpose, would be of a piece with the rest of the scoundrel’s conduct.’

But Mr. Prior did not forbid the attendance of his daughter and her friend at the festivity. He felt himself standing there gagged and fettered, unable, it might be, to prevent a great public wrong, but at least he would not precipitate it. He would not expose to the world any more than he could help--any more than he had exposed already--the terms on which he stood with Lambert Crabtree. What had occurred in the clover-field by the Rats’ Ditch must remain for ever a secret between the two men, even though its proclamation were to save the pockets of Newton and the neighbourhood from being turned inside out.

The night before the volunteer ball Newton from the highest to the lowest was astir, and engrossed with its preparations. One or two _bona fide_ upholsterers, and a score of willing amateurs of both sexes and every degree, were transforming the drill hall into a huge bower with evergreens. Susie had commissioned such a superabundance from Redcot and Haybridge, that not only were the stairs of the hall converted into an avenue--the box, holly, yew, and ivy flowed out into the streets, and littered both pavement and causeway there as with trophies strewn in a conqueror’s path. The greenery afforded uncloying delight to the small fry among the populace. They appropriated the spoil, and straightway converted themselves, in all unconsciousness, into a highly dramatic representation of miniature hosts advancing on haunted Birnam and doomed Macbeth.

In the White Hart Inn a marvellous man-cook, come straight from London, and dressed characteristically all in white like a ghost, flitted here and there. He caused the servants to give him room while he performed his incantations and displayed his achievements in jellied calves’ heads and pyramids of whipped cream, to match the iced champagne and the claret cup for the cross table, which was to accommodate the cream of the company. More substantial _pièces de résistance_, in roasts and rounds, pies and puddings, well flanked by pale ale, black stout, fiery sherry, and fierier gin, covered the long table running down from the cross, destined for the mass of the guests.

Dressmakers, professional and private, were working with their hearts in their seams, for their own hand as well as for their betters’ benefit.

There was a great addition of traffic at the station where Miss Gray had made her first acquaintance with Newton six months before. But the traffic was so thoroughly local, and belonged so entirely to the volunteer movement, that any traveller outside the special cause attracted less attention than usual.

It was a rainy evening, though the statement did not imply a tempest--on the contrary, a soft summer rain, more full of promise than of threat to the corn in the ear, the root crops in fresh green leaf, the fruit beginning to be well set. Still the state of the weather did not conduce to unnecessary travelling apart from the volunteer movement. The volunteers indeed disdained to notice the weather when there was a question of exhibiting their uniform; and the friends of the willing soldiers liked to share in the exhibition. Both friends and soldiers rushed to and from the nearest stations, though there were few arrivals by the trains which did not stop every half-dozen miles. It was from one of these ‘through’ trains, dashing in after ten o’clock, when the station lamps--which in summer were thriftily dealt with, and unless on great occasions like that of the ball, showed only a glimmer--that a gentleman with no more luggage than the portmanteau he carried in his hand, got out. Without looking round or asking his way, or even giving up his ticket, he walked through the gateway. He left the ticket collector, who was at that moment hailing a batch of volunteers in the act of entering the station to wait for their train, to account for his neglect of duty to the station-master, similarly engaged in receiving another detachment of the country’s defenders.

The traveller who set the railway authorities at defiance, was a young man, undersized, rather thick-set than slim, and at a single glance almost grotesquely plain, under an unusual amount of tanning. The bullet forehead, the shaggy eyebrows, the somewhat Tartar nose were a singularly close replica of the forehead, brows, and nose of John Prior as those might have been when he had just attained the five-and-twenty years of young manhood, fairly emancipated from the last lingering touches of boyhood. The full sensitive mouth might have been the same also, but it was hidden in this case by a heavy dark brown moustache, which, while it relieved the odd plainness of the features, and lent them a certain dignity of vigorous young manhood, was also too weighty for the thinness of the cheeks, and increased the bizarreness of the face otherwise. The face, barring the moustache, was the face of John Prior of Redcot grown young again; the figure, though stalwart enough, was inferior to his, and lost the quality of distinction which his amount of height conferred. This shorter, squatter figure was not that of a weakling. The walk and general gait were firm and easy, like those of a man who had been well trained, who might have come to the front in the cricket-field, and even been the best dancer in a ball-room when dancing and not lounging was the order of the day. In spite of these reservations the figure was not elegant any more than the face was handsome, and it was less striking for a figure than the face, with its gurgoyle peculiarities, was for a face.

People had always thought and said that young Jack Prior, who was so like his father bodily, bore not the smallest resemblance to him mentally--in fact, that he carried his mother’s spirit in his father’s person. Nothing was more bewildering than to detect the kindly, unworldly, fanciful, and determinedly-cheerful attributes of the one as they were expressed by traits which bore a very different association in the other.

But to-night Jack Prior looked as splenetic as his father was fit to do. In place of showing the pleasure which the young man might have been expected to feel on his unexpected, unannounced return safe and sound from his voyage to Australia; instead of displaying the liveliest inclination to shake every woman by the hand and take every man by the button-hole to exchange inquiries and congratulations, he looked decidedly out of sorts and verging on sulkiness. It may as well be said that this was a condition of mind remarkably foreign to the individual in question. But, as not infrequently happens with sweet-tempered mortals, wrath was no joke with Jack Prior, and tended to perpetuate itself in a kind of mulish doggedness, the germs of which he might have inherited from both father and mother. He did not seem inclined to greet or be greeted by his neighbours, as he thrust his disengaged hand down into his pocket, hunched up his shoulders in correspondence with the action, so that the collar of his coat was nearly coming in contact with the rim of his travelling cap, shouldered his portmanteau and strode on. If any enemy such as Lambert Crabtree had seen Jack Prior coming back in that mood, the assailant might have pointed to the lad and cried, ‘The Prodigal’s return,’ with some apology in his bearing for the slander.

As Newton was not Redcot--was, indeed, distant from it by a longish drive, and had not been frequented to any great extent by Jack Prior--above all, as the town was at that moment over head and ears in its volunteers and their ball, the newcomer carried his point and was not hailed and stopped while he pursued his way. It was not till he was well quit of the station, and entering the street in which the Volunteer Hall and the White Hart were situated, that he was sufficiently roused from his bad humour to observe the festive element in the town. ‘What the mischief is up?’ he asked himself more irritably than sympathetically. ‘Has there been an election, and is the new member coo-tooing the free and independent electors? Is the Duke dead, and has the new Duke come to his kingdom? Oh! the volunteers, is it?’ Comprehending the situation as he approached the lit-up Volunteer Hall, with its trail of evergreens, ‘then, of course, Susie and Crabtree have their fingers in the pie.’ He hesitated. Before him lay the road through the outskirts of the town to Redcot, which he could reach either by taking a trap from the White Hart, if an available trap were procurable at such a season, or by walking. He was a good walker, and it would be a relief to his hot young blood and the trouble on his mind to tramp through the wet and the friendly shrouding darkness all these miles.

But in that case Jack Prior would not arrive at home till after midnight. He would have to ring up the house and alarm his mother--not to say incense his father. No, Jack’s home-coming was not likely to be so welcome, unless where his mother was concerned, for him to propose to accomplish it with a ringing of bells.

On the other hand, Susie, unless her house were full--and if it were he had not gone so far without being able to rough it if she would let him--could put him up for the night, and tell him all that was going on. Crabtree, whatever he was, and he was no favourite with Jack, did not fail in hospitality, and Susie would dispense the news. Jack had met with one ‘extinguisher,’ as he called it, since he landed in England, and it had not only ruffled him to an unwonted extent, it had shaken his faith in what else might befall him. He had missed all the last letters from Redcot, and he had heard nothing of his family for a long time. If things had gone wrong in other quarters, why not here also? How did he know what changes might not have come to pass in the interval? A sudden consternation and cowardice seized upon the young man of another sort from the mere reluctance to encounter his father’s bitter disapproval.

Jack Prior’s steps grew slower and heavier as he drew near the High Street, at right angles from Market Street. Crabtree’s Bank and the Bank House, with the church and a cluster of the best houses in the town, were situated at the aristocratic end of the High Street. Should Jack Prior shirk for this night the ordeal that lay before him? Should he decline to face the worst without being forewarned and forearmed? Should he take refuge with Susie, who would at least be gushingly good-natured and amusing? Susie was not like Jane, who sat upon a fellow as if she were his senior instead of his junior, and had, to say the least, a maiden aunt’s right to find fault. He could tell Jane that cleverer women than she was had overlooked his lack of brains or application, or whatever it was, and listened to him in spite of his ugliness, and given him their best.

Ah! had they--had the one clever woman whom he had been generalising really given him her best, or had she, on second thoughts, changed her mind and drawn back in time? He was obliged to confess it looked like it after his interview with that prim young woman--that born schoolmistress, that ready-made spinster, Miss Burton. How on earth could Bennet pin her faith to such a stick, and lavish her confidence on a stickler for school forms and social etiquette? He had burst in on Miss Burton on his way south, after leaving his luggage at Hull, to ascertain at once--as he had a right, and she knew he had a right to know--whether Miss Gray had left Berkshire. She had thought it probable she might do so when he last saw her, and in that case he wished to learn where she was to be found, in order to prevent vexatious mistakes and delays. And Miss Burton had got red, and hummed and hawed, and been as much flurried as if she was Miss Gray, and had yet to be made acquainted with his intentions. She had managed to make him feel that it was an unwarrantable indiscretion for him to be there at all in the schoolmistress’s reception-room. She had hurried him away without a particle of satisfaction. Satisfaction! It had been anything save that. She had admitted that Miss Gray was no longer in Berkshire, but she had refused, absolutely refused, knowing what she knew, to give him Bennet’s present address till she had time to think and consult the person principally concerned. This detestable Miss Burton had been agitated, as if there was sufficient cause for what appeared to him her unpardonable reticence. Moreover, she had prevented Jack from seeing her father, who, as he was a man, might have listened to reason. (Jack would have come nearer the truth if he had put it--would have been more likely to see the difference between the spirit and the letter of an obligation.)

In the end Jack Prior had departed from the girls’ school half-stunned and wholly exasperated and affronted, without condescending to give Miss Burton any hint of what was to be his next destination.

The interview had only taken place that afternoon. The young man, who had been travelling for the greater part of the day, had not recovered from the effects of it, or made up his mind what step he should take to procure the information Miss Burton had most unjustifiably denied him. He had come on to Newton and there the question forced itself upon him, should he go straight to Redcot and perhaps receive another blow--be told that somebody was ill or----. Jack in the middle of his dudgeon did not say the other word, or have recourse to Susie, who would prepare him for what he had to expect. If nothing was wrong--what could be wrong? it was only his disturbed consciousness which fancied that something must be the matter--his sister would smooth him down and entertain him for the night.

Jack paused irresolute. The man or woman who hesitates is lost, says the adage. If ever human being was so lost it was Jack Prior. At that moment two ways lay before him in more senses than one, for that was the turning point, not only of his journey for the night, but of the journey of his life. He chose, as so many of us choose, the nearer, shorter, easier way, and suffered for it, as so many of us suffer for listening to the arguments of sloth and cowardice. The choice had been his, and if he had made it differently, if he had elected to play the braver, truer part, his history would have been different, he would have been saved the punishment which sooner or later overtakes the sinner. But with the punishment he would have missed the lesson which scotched the snakes’ heads of sloth and cowardice which beset him, then and for ever, and changed a loveable, vacillating lad into a man strong to bear and to do.