Dorothy found little difference between gossip in Essex and gossip in Middlesex. In either county she could hold her own with anybody alive, and she had a great deal to say about the Timsons, who, as wealthy newcomers, were naturally the talk of the place.
James was interested because he had reason to be. He had met Alfred Timson in London at a gathering of The Oratorical Friends which was one of the semi-jocular, but jealously select debating clubs then so popular.
James was chairman of this particular group of convivial talkers, and had condescended to notice and befriend the gentle little new boy, Timson, who was so shy and so apologetic about having made a fortune out of the paint factory he owned.
One evening after listening to a flowery, if rather pointless argument on the motion “Social Questions are more Important than Political” during which James had distinguished himself by quoting the recent trial of the Glasgow cotton-spinners with great effect, Mr. Timson had been carried away entirely. After congratulating James warmly, he confessed to a little country place in Sedgewick and begged him to do him the honour of visiting him there.
James was attracted by the familiar place name, and said he would go, but he was sufficiently a man of his time to decide upon making a call first. At that time in his life he never took social chances. All through the period in which he lived, there sounded the savage note of class war. It was not the lazy murmur of other days, but the vigorous spiteful crack of the efforts of a great middle-class forcing itself on and up into supremacy with the busy ruthlessness of a forest fire.
Dorothy went on talking about the Timsons, and her view of them was the view of the countryside, trained in observations, and gifted with the often brutal clear-sightedness of people who go by the senses, by the heart rather than the head.
Dorothy said that Mr. Timson was thought to be a good, kind-hearted, not-much-strength-to-him sort of a man, but that she was quite a “different bag of meal.” According to Dorothy, she came of better family than her husband and was “remarkable sour,” because she could not bring him and the children into “her yard” instead of “her staying in his as God intended.”
She also reported that they had not been called upon by the Castors and that in her opinion this had been a “wonderful blow to the lady.” She finished by saying that there was money there, and a great pew full of children on a Sunday, but that that was not of much account in these days, was it?
James allowed it to flicker through his mind that it really was astounding that he and Dorothy, who had lived together in such a simple world long ago, should now be talking of such complicated social distinctions with so much practice and interest, but the thought did not stay and he slipped back into the new world once again and took her remarks as seriously as the fashion demanded.
Dorothy continued to talk of Mrs. Timson.
“She’s a he-she,” she said, using the old local word. “Wonderful strong-minded. She’ll have her way if she gets more help from Satan than the Lord. I ’ouldn’t cross her, I ’ouldn’t!”
James kept this information in his mind, when about three in the afternoon he rode sedately down the road to pay his respects to Mr. Alfred Timson. He found a new, white brick house built with the fashionable semi-basement, although there was land and to spare, standing in a very decent little park newly planted with oak and beech.
A manservant conducted him into a hall whose chequered marble floor faded into the distance, and from which a staircase which had not quite the elegance of the great days which had inspired it rose up into mystery far above him. It was very elegant, and in spite of its size, slightly stuffy. An incredible number of pictures and mounted heads lined the walls, and the brilliant Turkey rug was quite three inches thick.
James thought it very charming and in most restrained taste. He also admired the drawing-room with the green silk damask curtains, which were stiff enough to stand alone; the ormulu; the clocks with the garden faces; the cast iron; the concert grand; the harp; the embroidery frames; the great baskets of flowers; the carpet with the multi-coloured pomegranates on it; the vast pictures and the tiny pictures; the marble and the gold. It all looked pretty good to James. He put it down as comfortable, wealthy, quiet, and oddly enough in one brought up at Groats, not at all overdone.
It transpired that his friend was out but that Ma’am was in, and would be graciously pleased to receive him. She kept him waiting only a little time and made her entrance through a little door at the far end of the room, pausing for an instant on the threshold in a way which told him she had either seen, or heard, a very detailed account of Miss O’Neill in comedy. She was not at all what he had expected, having prepared himself for one of the battleship matrons of the period. Instead he found an unusual-looking woman in the late thirties, very tall and thin, with a straight back and a square, wide face like a cat. She had wide mouth, too, and widely set cold, moonlight eyes edged with startlingly thick dark, black lashes, not very long.
She received him with quiet ease and revealed a much deeper voice than he had heard in a woman. James had charm for the opposite sex, and therefore knew a great deal about it. Mrs. Timson interested him enormously, but he did not like her; there was something reckless about her which made him uneasy at first.
At that time the rules for conversation at a first, formal call were laid down almost to the letter, so that the business of getting acquainted was made as simple as possible. James answered discreet enquiries, and put others. The whole point of the proceeding, which was intensely practical, as were all the social antics of the time, was for each party to find out without giving offence to the other, if there was any real reason why they should not associate. At the time it was an important matter, for admission to some houses could easily deny access to others. The little conference was quite as gruelling as any modern commercial encounter, and it went well enough. The wary phase passed, and Mrs. Timson relaxed a little.
She was evidently very disappointed that he did not live in the district, and was sufficiently unguarded to admit that they were newcomers and knew very few people round about as yet. Then, since James was sitting in front of her, very handsome and solid looking, with his round black eyes twinkling gallantly, she smoothed down the folds of her green silk dress and said: “Of course; that will come.”
It was the queer way she said it that startled him, and he remembered what Dorothy had said about her being a “he-she.” There was tremendous strength of purpose there.
“Of course,” he said smoothly, and asked her if she found the country dull. She glanced round the crowded room, so elegant and so unworn.
“Sometimes a little,” she said very cautiously. “Of course, I have my children.”
James gathered that there were five of them. Willie, the eldest, was already in London with his dear Papa; Elizabeth, the next, was just back from a finishing school; she was a dear child, but of course a great responsibility just now. A beautiful innocent child of sixteen was a responsibility, was she not?
James thought she might be, but he also thought it a very odd thing to say to a stranger. He asked what Miss Elizabeth found to do with herself alone in the country. Mrs. Timson lifted her square, cat’s face to his and said that there was something so beautiful in the sweet purity of budding womanhood that one was sorely tempted to keep it unsullied as long as one possibly could. Soon dear Lizzie must have a ball, and come out, like other young ladies of her age. But just for a little while it was too tempting to keep her helping in the nursery with the younger children, practising her music and sewing with her beloved Mama.
James had heard this sort of talk before. It was growing more and more fashionable. Ruskin was about nineteen at the time and the ideas which he was to crystallize a few years later had already many devotees. James did not altogether like it, he had very much the countryman’s view of life and the reproduction of it, and he did not believe in leaving the training of any young animal too late. Once or twice lately he had heard of young women, and boys too, brought up with such a rarefied outlook that some of the common animal functions were considered shocking by them. James, who had been brought up by Larch and Jason, regarded such a fashion with deep misgiving, although he could not deny that from his own purely masculine point of view there was something physically exciting in the idea of a virgin so virginal that even her mind was unopened.
He was acute in this sort of matter though, and he saw the underlying motive of the mode, one he was sure which was never admitted or even guessed by the ladies who embraced it. It did not altogether shock him; like most people interested in the breeding of animals, he was inured to such shifts and had no belief in the polite fiction of the inexhaustible virility of any male, but he did not like it, hoped it was not necessary, and thought, too, that if the older ladies were not very careful there might easily be a lot of trouble arising out of it.
He was human enough to want to see the young paragon, and he said so, half laughing, adding that he supposed such innocence was kept safely under lock and key.
Mrs. Timson’s reply startled him. She professed herself horrified at this suggestion, which she affected to take literally, and assured him that she had such complete faith in the inviolable qualities of little Lizzie’s sweetness that she never imposed any of the foolish restraints upon her to which she saw other mothers subject their unfortunate offspring. In her opinion, she said, any such move might give the child ideas which could be almost indelicate.
James listened to her and wondered why she was so vehement. He sincerely hoped she was lying. The topic was a trifle heavy for a first call and he steered the conversation into easier channels.
Some minutes later when he was leaving and the manservant was again conducting him across the marble chessboard, he saw something which reminded him of the conversation. Just before he reached the threshold a girl came hurrying in. She was about sixteen, he judged, but tall and well developed for her age. He guessed who she was, for she was startlingly like her father and had the same short nose and ingenuous blue eyes. She was hatless and breathless, and her hair, which was silken with much brushing, was slightly disarranged. Her muslin skirts were dimpled round the hems with the little sweethearts which grow on the jack-by-the-hedge, and her round, white collar was crumpled.
James observed all these things casually, but her expression held his attention. There is a certain look, which in very young people is apt to be nothing short of transfiguring; it is an expression of intoxication, of unconcealable, inexpressible, overpacked happiness. There was blood in Miss Lizzie’s face, a shine in her eyes, and an unhidden smile on her mouth.
James, who was not given to poetic thought, fancied that if flowers had sprung up between the marble blocks underneath her feet it would hardly have been astonishing.
She ignored him and quite possibly did not see him, but ran on past him and up the stairs. The two men, James and the servant, had seen her though, and James, looking sharply at the other, intercepted the same wary glance from him.
James rode off thinking of Mrs. Timson and wondering if she could be as much of a fool as she appeared, and too, idly, who it was Miss Lizzie had been meeting among the jack-by-the-hedge.