‘No, she wants nothing for the present. Friends have been very anxious to help her. That’s what I say,—only let your misery drive you out of the world, and people will find out all at once how very easily they might have saved you. A hundredth part of the interest that has been shown in the family since poor Mr. Hood’s death would have found endless ways of making his life very different. All sorts of people have suddenly discovered that he really was a very deserving man, and that something ought long since to have been done for him. I don’t know what has been told you of his history. He was once in independent business; I don’t know exactly what. It was only utter failure that drove him to the miserable clerkship. How admirable it was of a man in such circumstances to have his daughter so well educated!’
Wilfrid smiled.
‘Emily,’ he said with gentle fervour, ‘would have found her own way.’
‘Ah, don’t depreciate his care!’ Mrs. Baxendale urged. ‘You’ll find out by degrees what a great deal of heathen doubt there is in me; among other things, I am impressed by the power of circumstances. Emily would always have been a remarkable girl, no doubt; but, without her education, you and I should not have been talking about her like this, even if we had known her. We can’t dispense with these aids; that’s where I feel the cruelty of depriving people of chances. Men and women go to their graves in wretchedness who might have done noble things with an extra pound a week to live upon. It does not sound lofty doctrine, does it? But I have vast faith in the extra pound a week. Emily had the advantage of it, however it was managed. I don’t like to think of her as she might have been without it. What was it Beatrice called me yesterday? A materialist; yes, a materialist. It was a reproach, though she said it in the kindest way; I took it as a compliment. We can’t get out of the world of material; how long will the mind support itself on an insufficient supply of dry bread?’
Wilfrid’s intellectual sympathies were being aroused by his new friend’s original way of talking. He began to feel a keen satisfaction at having her near him in these troubles.
‘Do you think,’ he asked, returning to his immediate needs, ‘that I might write to her?’
‘Not yet; you mustn’t think of it yet.’
‘Does Mrs. Hood—’ he hesitated. ‘Do you think Emily has told her mother—has spoken to her of me?’
Mrs. Baxendale looked surprised. ‘I can’t say; I took it for granted.’
‘I wonder why she was reluctant to do so?’ Wilfrid said, already speaking with complete freedom. ‘Her father cannot have known; it would have relieved his worst anxieties; he would surely never have been driven to such things.’
‘No; I think not. The poor girl will feel that, I fear. I suppose one can get a glimpse of her reasons for keeping silence?’ She gave Wilfrid a friendly glance as she spoke.
‘How glad I am,’ he exclaimed, ‘to be able to talk to you! I should have been in the utmost difficulties. Think of my position if I had been without a friend in the town. Then, indeed, but for Miss Redwing I should have heard nothing even yet.’
‘She wrote to you?’
‘Not to me; she mentioned the matter in a letter to my aunt, Mrs. Rossall.’
‘Did Beatrice—you let me question?—did she know?’
‘Only, she says, in consequence of a letter my father addressed to Mr. Baxendale.’
The lady smiled again.
‘I ask because Beatrice is now and then a little mysterious to me. I spoke to her of that letter in the full belief that she must have knowledge of the circumstances. She denied it, yet, I thought, as if it were a matter of conscience to do so.’
‘I think it more than likely that my aunt had written to her on the subject. And yet—no; she would not have denied it to you. That would be unlike her.’
‘Yes, I think it would.’
Mrs. Baxendale mused. Before she spoke again a servant entered the room with tea.
‘You will be glad of a cup, I am sure,’ said the lady. ‘And now, what do you propose to do? Shall you return to London?’
‘Oh, no! I shall stay in Dunfield till I am able to see her.’
‘Very well. In that case you will not refuse our hospitality. The longer you stay the better pleased I shall be.’
She would hear of no difficulties.
‘I wouldn’t ask you,’ she said, ‘if I were not able to promise you any degree of privacy you like. A sitting-room is at your disposal—begging to be occupied since my boy Charlie went away. My husband is over head and ears in electioneering business, foolish man, and I can’t tell you how I feel the need of someone to talk to on other subjects than the manufacture of votes. Where is your luggage?’
Wilfrid named the hotel.
‘It shall be fetched. And now I’ll ask my niece to come and pour out tea for us.’
With the entrance of Beatrice the conversation naturally took a different turn. She heard with becoming interest of Wilfrid’s establishment as a guest, and, after a little talk of Mrs. Rossall and the twins, led to the subject of certain ‘revivalist’ meetings then being held in Dunfield, an occasion of welcome excitement to such of the inhabitants as could not absorb themselves in politics. Mrs. Baxendale seemed to regard the religious movement dispassionately, and related a story she had from her husband of a certain prominent townsman driven to such a pass by his wife’s perpetual absence from home on revivalist expeditions, that he at length fairly turned the key on her in her bedroom, and through the keyhole bade her stay there till she had remembered her domestic duties. He was that night publicly prayed for at a great meeting in the Corn Exchange as one who, not content with losing his own soul, did his best to hold back others from the way of grace.
Beatrice affected to pay no heed to this anecdote.
‘What is your side in politics?’ she asked Wilfrid. ‘Here we are all either Blues or Yellows.’
‘What do they represent?’ Wilfrid inquired.
‘Oh, you shouldn’t ask that,’ said Mrs. Baxendale. ‘Yellow is yellow, and Blue, blue; nothing else in the world. I think it an excellent idea to use colours. Liberal and Conservative suggest ideas; names, therefore, quite out of place in Dunfield politics—or any other politics, I dare say, if the truth were known. My husband is a Yellow. It pleases him to call himself a Liberal, or else a Radical. He may have been a few months ago; now he’s a mere Yellow. I tell him he’s in serious danger of depriving himself of two joys; in another month a cloudless sky and the open sea will he detestable to him.’
‘But what are you, Mr. Athel?’ Beatrice asked. ‘A Liberal or a Conservative? I should really find it hard to guess.’
‘In a Yellow house,’ he replied, ‘I am certainly Yellow.’
‘Beatrice is far from being so complaisant,’ said Mrs. Baxendale. ‘She detests our advanced views.’
‘Rather, I know nothing of them,’ the girl replied. The quiet air with which she expressed her indifference evinced a measure of spiritual pride rather in excess of that she was wont to show. Indeed, her manner throughout the conversation was a little distant to both her companions. If she jested with Wilfrid it was with the idleness of one condescending to subjects below the plane of her interests. To her aunt she was rather courteous than affectionate.
Whilst they still sat over tea, Mr. Baxendale came in. Like his wife, he was of liberal proportions, and he had a face full of practical sagacity; if anything, he looked too wide awake, a fault of shrewd men, constitutionally active, whose imagination plays little part in their lives. He wore an open frock-coat, with much expanse of shirt-front. The fore part of his head was bald, and the hair on each side was brushed forward over his ears in a manner which gave him a singular appearance. His bearing was lacking in self-possession; each of his remarks was followed by a short laugh, deprecatory, apologetic. It seemed impossible to him to remain in a state of bodily repose, even with a cup of tea in his hand he paced the room. Constantly he consulted his watch—not that he had any special concern with the hour, but from a mere habit of nervousness.