No More Learning

Every year they
had two hundred pounds among them, and once a year the son got a new
suit of clothes and went into the drawing-room to look at himself in
the mirror.

On the morning of the 10th of December Mrs. Sherman was down before her
son. A spare, delicate-featured woman, with somewhat thin lips tightly
closed as with silent people, and eyes at once gentle and distrustful,
tempering the hardness of the lips. She helped the servant to set the
table, and then, for her old-fashioned ideas would not allow her to
rest, began to knit, often interrupting her knitting to go into the
kitchen or to listen at the foot of the stairs. At last, hearing a
sound upstairs, she put the eggs down to boil, muttering the while,
and began again to knit. When her son appeared she received him with a
smile.

'Late again, mother,' he said.

'The young should sleep,' she answered, for to her he seemed still a
boy.

She had finished her breakfast some time before the young man, and
because it would have appeared very wrong to her to leave the table,
she sat on knitting behind the tea-urn: an industry the benefit of
which was felt by many poor children--almost the only neighbours she
had a good word for.

'Mother,' said the young man, presently, 'your friend the _locum
tenens_ is off to-day. '

'A good riddance. '

'Why are you so hard on him? He talked intelligently when here, I
thought,' answered her son.

'I do not like his theology,' she replied, 'nor his way of running
about and flirting with this body and that body, nor his way of
chattering while he buttons and unbuttons his gloves. '

'You forget he is a man of the great world, and has about him a manner
that must seem strange to us. '

'Oh, he might do very well,' she answered, 'for one of those Carton
girls at the rectory. '

'That eldest girl is a good girl,' replied her son.

'She looks down on us all, and thinks herself intellectual,' she
went on. 'I remember when girls were content with their catechism
and their Bibles and a little practice at the piano, maybe, for an
accomplishment. What does any one want more? It is all pride. '

'You used to like her as a child,' said the young man.

'I like all children. '

Sherman having finished his breakfast, took a book of travels in one
hand and a trowel in the other and went out into the garden. Having
looked under the parlour window for the first tulip shoots, he went
down to the further end and began covering some sea-kale for forcing.
He had not been long at work when the servant brought him a letter.
There was a stone roller at one side of the grass plot. He sat down
upon it, and taking the letter between his finger and thumb began
looking at it with an air that said: 'Well! I know what you mean. ' He
remained long thus without opening it, the book lying beside him on the
roller.

The garden--the letter--the book! You have there the three symbols of
his life. Every morning he worked in that garden among the sights and
sounds of nature. Month by month he planted and hoed and dug there. In
the middle he had set a hedge that divided the garden in two. Above
the hedge were flowers; below it, vegetables. At the furthest end from
the house, lapping broken masonry full of wallflowers, the river said,
month after month to all upon its banks, 'Hush! ' He dined at two with
perfect regularity, and in the afternoon went out to shoot or walk.
At twilight he set night-lines. Later on he read. He had not many
books--a Shakespeare, Mungo Park's travels, a few two-shilling novels,
_Percy's Reliques_, and a volume on etiquette. He seldom varied his
occupations. He had no profession. The town talked of it. They said:
'He lives upon his mother,' and were very angry. They never let him
see this, however, for it was generally understood he would be a
dangerous fellow to rouse; but there was an uncle from whom Sherman had
expectations who sometimes wrote remonstrating. Mrs. Sherman resented
these letters, for she was afraid of her son going away to seek his
fortune--perhaps even in America. Now this matter preyed somewhat on
Sherman. For three years or so he had been trying to make his mind up
and come to some decision. Sometimes when reading he would start and
press his lips together and knit his brows for a moment.

It will now be seen why the garden, the book, and the letter were
the three symbols of his life, summing up as they did his love of
out-of-door doings, his meditations, his anxieties. His life in the
garden had granted serenity to his forehead, the reading of his few
books had filled his eyes with reverie, and the feeling that he was not
quite a good citizen had given a slight and occasional trembling to his
lips.

He opened the letter. Its contents were what he had long expected.
His uncle offered to take him into his office. He laid it spread
out before him--a foot on each margin, right and left--and looked at
it, turning the matter over and over in his mind. Would he go? would
he stay? He did not like the idea much. The lounger in him did not
enjoy the thought of London. Gradually his mind wandered away into
scheming--infinite scheming--what would he do if he went, what would he
do if he did not go?

A beetle, attracted by the faint sunlight, had crawled out of its hole.
It saw the paper and crept on to it, the better to catch the sunlight.
Sherman saw the beetle but his mind was not occupied with it. 'Shall I
tell Mary Carton? ' he was thinking. Mary had long been his adviser and
friend. She was, indeed, everybody's adviser. Yes, he would ask her
what to do. Then again he thought--no, he would decide for himself. The
beetle began to move. 'If it goes off the paper by the top I will ask
her--if by the bottom I will not. '

The beetle went off by the top. He got up with an air of decision and
went into the tool-house and began sorting seeds and picking out the
light ones, sometimes stopping to watch a spider; for he knew he must
wait till the afternoon to see Mary Carton. The tool-house was a
favourite place with him. He often read there and watched the spiders
in the corners.

At dinner he was preoccupied.

'Mother,' he said, 'would you much mind if we went away from this? '

'I have often told you,' she answered, 'I do not like one place better
than another. I like them all equally little. '

After dinner he went again into the tool-house. This time he did not
sort seeds--only watched the spiders.


III

Towards evening he went out. The pale sunshine of winter flickered
on his path. The wind blew the straws about. He grew more and more
melancholy. A dog of his acquaintance was chasing rabbits in a field.
He had never been known to catch one, and since his youth had never
seen one, for he was almost wholly blind. They were his form of the
eternal chimera. The dog left the field and followed with a friendly
sniff.

They came together to the rectory. Mary Carton was not in. There was a
children's practice in the school-house. They went thither.

A child of four or five with a swelling on its face was sitting
under a wall opposite the school door, waiting to make faces at the
Protestant children as they came out. Catching sight of the dog she
seemed to debate in her mind whether to throw a stone at it or call
it to her. She threw the stone and made it run. In after times he
remembered all these things as though they were of importance.

He opened the latched green door and went in. About twenty children
were singing in shrill voices, standing in a row at the further end. At
the harmonium he recognised Mary Carton, who nodded to him and went on
with her playing. The whitewashed walls were covered with glazed prints
of animals; at the further end was a large map of Europe; by a fire at
the near end was a table with the remains of tea. This tea was an idea
of Mary's. They had tea and cake first, afterwards the singing. The
floor was covered with crumbs. The fire was burning brightly. Sherman
sat down beside it. A child with a great deal of oil in her hair was
sitting on the end of a form at the other side.

'Look,' she whispered, 'I have been sent away. At any rate they are
further from the fire. They have to be near the harmonium. I would not
sing. Do you like hymns? I don't. Will you have a cup of tea? I can
make it quite well. See, I did not spill a drop. Have you enough milk? '
It was a cup full of milk--children's tea. 'Look, there is a mouse
carrying away a crumb. Hush! '

They sat there, the child watching the mouse, Sherman pondering on his
letter, until the music ceased and the children came tramping down the
room. The mouse having fled, Sherman's self-appointed hostess got up
with a sigh and went out with the others.

Mary Carton closed the harmonium and came towards Sherman. Her face and
all her movements showed a gentle decision of character. Her glance was
serene, her features regular, her figure at the same time ample and
beautifully moulded; her dress plain yet not without a certain air of
distinction. In a different society she would have had many suitors.
But she was of a type that in country towns does not get married
at all. Its beauty is too lacking in pink and white, its nature in
that small assertiveness admired for character by the uninstructed.
Elsewhere she would have known her own beauty--as it is right that all
the beautiful should--and have learnt how to display it, to add gesture
to her calm and more of mirth and smiles to her grave cheerfulness. As
it was, her manner was much older than herself.

She sat down by Sherman with the air of an old friend. They had long
been accustomed to consult together on every matter. They were such
good friends they had never fallen in love with each other. Perfect
love and perfect friendship are indeed incompatible; for the one is a
battlefield where shadows war beside the combatants, and the other a
placid country where Consultation has her dwelling.

These two were such good friends that the most gossiping townspeople
had given them up with a sigh. The doctor's wife, a faded beauty and
devoted romance reader, said one day, as they passed, 'They are such
cold creatures'; the old maid who kept the Berlin-wool shop remarked,
'They are not of the marrying sort'; and now their comings and goings
were no longed noticed. Nothing had ever come to break in on their
quiet companionship and give obscurity as a dwelling-place for the
needed illusions. Had one been weak and the other strong, one plain and
the other handsome, one guide and the other guided, one wise and the
other foolish, love might have found them out in a moment, for love is
based on inequality as friendship is on equality.

'John,' said Mary Carton, warming her hands at the fire, 'I have had a
troublesome day. Did you come to help me teach the children to sing? It
was good of you: you were just too late. '

'No,' he answered, 'I have come to be your pupil. I am always your
pupil. '

'Yes, and a most disobedient one. '

'Well, advise me this time at any rate. My uncle has written, offering
me a hundred pounds a year to begin with in his London office. Am I to
go? '

'You know quite well my answer,' she said.

'Indeed I do not. Why should I go? I am contented here. I am now making
my garden ready for spring. Later on there will be trout fishing and
saunters by the edge of the river in the evening when the bats are
flickering about. In July there will be races. I enjoy the bustle. I
enjoy life here. When anything annoys me I keep away from it, that is
all. You know I am always busy. I have occupation and friends and am
quite contented. '

'It is a great loss to many of us, but you must go, John,' she said.
'For you know you will be old some day, and perhaps when the vitality
of youth is gone you will feel that your life is empty and find that
you are too old to change it; and you will give up, perhaps, trying
to be happy and likeable and become as the rest are. I think I can
see you,' she said, with a laugh, 'a hypochondriac, like Gorman, the
retired excise officer, or with a red nose like Dr. Stephens, or
growing like Peters, the elderly cattle merchant, who starves his
horse. '

'They were bad material to begin with,' he answered, 'and, besides, I
cannot take my mother away with me at her age, and I cannot leave her
alone. '

'What annoyance it may be,' she answered, 'will soon be forgotten. You
will be able to give her many more comforts. We women--we all like to
be dressed well and have pleasant rooms to sit in, and a young man at
your age should not be idle. You must go away from this little backward
place. We shall miss you, but you are clever and must go and work with
other men and have your talents admitted. '

'How emulous you would have me! Perhaps I shall be well-to-do some day;
meanwhile I only wish to stay here with my friends. '

She went over to the window and looked out with her face turned from
him. The evening light cast a long shadow behind her on the floor.
After some moments, she said, 'I see people ploughing on the slope of
the hill. There are people working on a house to the right. Everywhere
there are people busy,' and with a slight tremble in her voice she
added, 'and, John, nowhere are there any doing what they wish. One has
to think of so many things--of duty and God. '

'Mary, I didn't know you were so religious. '

Coming towards him with a smile, she said, 'No more did I, perhaps.
But sometimes the self in one is very strong. One has to think a great
deal and reason with it. Yet I try hard to lose myself in things about
me. These children now--I often lie awake thinking about them. That
child who was talking to you is often on my mind. I do not know what
will happen to her. She makes me unhappy. I am afraid she is not a good
child at all. I am afraid she is not taught well at home. I try hard to
be gentle and patient with her. I am a little displeased with myself
to-day, so I have lectured you. There! I have made my confession. But,'
she added, taking one of his hands in both hers and reddening, 'you
must go away. You must not be idle. You will gain everything. '

As she stood there with bright eyes, the light of evening about her,
Sherman for perhaps the first time saw how beautiful she was, and was
flattered by her interest. For the first time also her presence did not
make him at peace with the world.
'Will you be an obedient pupil? '

'You know so much more than I do,' he answered, 'and are so much wiser.
I will write to my uncle and agree to his offer. '

'Now you must go home,' she said. 'You must not keep your mother
waiting for her tea. There! I have raked the fire out. We must not
forget to lock the door behind us. '

As they stood on the doorstep the wind blew a whirl of dead leaves
about them.

'They are my old thoughts,' he said; 'see, they are all withered. '

They walked together silently. At the vicarage he left her and went
homeward.

The deserted flour-store at the corner of two roads, the house that
had been burnt hollow ten years before and still lifted its blackened
beams, the straggling and leafless fruit-trees rising above garden
walls, the church where he was christened--these foster-mothers of his
infancy seemed to nod and shake their heads over him.

'Mother,' he said, hurriedly entering the room, 'we are going to
London. '

'As you wish. I always knew you would be a rolling stone,' she
answered, and went out to tell the servant that as soon as she had
finished the week's washing they must pack up everything, for they were
going to London.

'Yes, we must pack up,' said the old peasant; she did not stop peeling
the onion in her hand--she had not comprehended. In the middle of the
night she suddenly started up in bed with a pale face and a prayer to
the Virgin whose image hung over her head--she had now comprehended.


IV

On January the 5th, about two in the afternoon, Sherman sat on the
deck of the steamer _Lavinia_ enjoying a period of sunshine between
two showers. The steamer _Lavinia_ was a cattle-boat. It had been his
wish to travel by some more expensive route, but his mother, with
her old-fashioned ideas of duty, would not hear of it, and now, as
he foresaw, was extremely uncomfortable below, while he, who was a
good sailor, was pretty happy on deck, and would have been quite so
if the pigs would only tire of their continual squealing. With the
exception of a very dirty old woman sitting by a crate of geese, all
the passengers but himself were below. This old woman made the journey
monthly with geese for the Liverpool market.

Sherman was dreaming. He began to feel very desolate, and commenced
a letter to Mary Carton in his notebook to state this fact. He was
a laborious and unpractised writer, and found it helped him to make
a pencil copy. Sometimes he stopped and watched the puffin sleeping
on the waves. Each one of them had its head tucked in in a somewhat
different way. 'That is because their characters are different,' he
thought.

Gradually he began to notice a great many corks floating by, one after
the other. The old woman saw them too, and said, waking out of a half
sleep: 'Misther John Sherman, we will be in the Mersey before evening.
Why are ye goin' among them savages in London, Misther John? Why don't
ye stay among your own people--for what have we in this life but a
mouthful of air? '


SECOND PART

MARGARET LELAND


I

Sherman and his mother rented a small house on the north side of St.
Peter's Square, Hammersmith. The front windows looked out on to the
old rank and green square, the windows behind on to a little patch
of garden round which the houses gathered and pressed as though they
already longed to trample it out. In this garden was a single tall pear
tree that never bore fruit.

Three years passed by without any notable event. Sherman went every day
to his office in Tower Hill Street, abused his work a great deal, and
was not unhappy perhaps. He was probably a bad clerk, but then nobody
was very exacting with the nephew of the head of the firm.

The firm of Sherman and Saunders, ship-brokers, was a long-established,
old-fashioned house. Saunders had been dead some years and old Michael
Sherman ruled alone--an old bachelor full of family pride and pride
in his wealth. He lived, for all that, in a very simple fashion. His
mahogany furniture was a little solider than other people's perhaps.
He did not understand display. Display finds its excuse in some taste
good or bad, and in a long industrious life Michael Sherman had never
found leisure to form one. He seemed to live only from habit. Year by
year he grew more silent, gradually ceasing to regard anything but his
family and his ships. His family were represented by his nephew and his
nephew's mother. He did not feel much affection for them. He believed
in his family--that was all. To remind him of the other goal of his
thoughts hung round his private office pictures with such inscriptions
as 'S. S. _Indus_ at the Cape of Good Hope,' 'The barque _Mary_ in the
Mozambique Channel,' 'The barque _Livingstone_ at Port Said,' and
many more. Every rope was drawn accurately with a ruler, and here and
there were added distant vessels sailing proudly by with all that
indifference to perspective peculiar to the drawings of sailors. On
every ship was the flag of the firm spread out to show the letters.

No man cared for old Michael Sherman. Every one liked John. Both were
silent, but the young man had sometimes a talkative fit. The old man
lived for his ledger, the young man for his dreams.

In spite of all these differences, the uncle was on the whole pleased
with the nephew. He noticed a certain stolidity that was of the family.
It sometimes irritated others. It pleased him. He saw a hundred
indications besides that made him say, 'He is a true Sherman. We
Shermans begin that way and give up frivolity as we grow old. We are
all the same in the end. '

* * * * *

Mrs. Sherman and her son had but a small round of acquaintances--a few
rich people, clients of the house of Sherman and Saunders for the most
part. Among these was a Miss Margaret Leland who lived with her mother,
the widow of the late Henry Leland, ship-broker, on the eastern side
of St. Peter's Square. Their house was larger than the Shermans', and
noticeable among its fellows by the newly-painted hall-door. Within
on every side were bronzes and china vases and heavy curtains. In all
were displayed the curious and vagrant taste of Margaret Leland: the
rich Italian and mediaeval draperies of pre-Raphaelite taste jostling
the brightest and vulgarest products of more native and Saxon
schools; vases of the most artistic shape and colour side by side
with artificial flowers and stuffed birds. This house belonged to the
Lelands. They had bought it in less prosperous days, and having altered
it according to their taste and the need of their growing welfare could
not decide to leave it.

Sherman was an occasional caller at the Lelands, and had certainly a
liking, though not a very deep one, for Margaret. As yet he knew little
more about her than that she wore the most fascinating hats, that the
late Lord Lytton was her favourite author, and that she hated frogs. It
is clear that she did not know that a French writer on magic says the
luxurious and extravagant hate frogs because they are cold, solitary,
and dreary. Had she done so, she would have been more cautious about
revealing her tastes.

For the rest, John Sherman was forgetting the town of Ballah. He
corresponded indeed with Mary Carton, but his laborious letter-writing
made his letters fewer and fewer. Sometimes, too, he heard from Howard,
who had a curacy at Glasgow and was on indifferent terms with his
parishioners. They objected to his way of conducting the services.
His letters were full of it. He would not give in, he said, whatever
happened. His conscience was involved.


II

One afternoon Mrs. Leland called on Mrs. Sherman. She very often
called--this fat, sentimental woman, moving in the midst of a cloud
of scent. The day was warm, and she carried her too elaborate and
heavy dress as a large caddis-fly drags its case with much labour and
patience. She sat down on the sofa with obvious relief, leaning so
heavily among the cushions that a clothes-moth fluttered out of an
antimacassar, to be knocked down and crushed by Mrs. Sherman, who was
very quick in her movements.

As soon as she found her breath, Mrs. Leland began a long history of
her sorrows. Her daughter Margaret had been jilted and was in despair,
had taken to her bed with every resolution to die, and was growing
paler and paler. The hard-hearted man, though she knew he had heard,
did not relent. She knew he had heard because her daughter had told his
sister all about it, and his sister had no heart, because she said it
was temper that ailed Margaret, and she was a little vixen, and that
if she had not flirted with everybody the engagement would never have
been broken off. But Mr. Sims had no heart clearly, as Miss Marriot and
Mrs. Eliza Taylor, her daughter's friends, said, when they heard, and
Lock, the butler, said the same too, and Mary Young, the housemaid,
said so too--and she knew all about it, for Margaret used to read his
letters to her often when having her hair brushed.

'She must have been very fond of him,' said Mrs. Sherman.

'She is so romantic, my dear,' answered Mrs. Leland, with a sigh. 'I am
afraid she takes after an uncle on her father's side, who wrote poetry
and wore a velvet jacket and ran away with an Italian countess who used
to get drunk. When I married Mr. Leland people said he was not worthy
of me, and that I was throwing myself away--and he in business, too!
But Margaret is so romantic. There was Mr. Walters, a gentleman-farmer,
and Simpson who had a jeweller's shop--I never approved of him! --and
Mr. Samuelson, and the Hon. William Scott. She tired of them all except
the Hon. William Scott, who tired of her because someone told him she
put belladonna in her eyes--and it is not true; and now there is Mr.
Sims! ' She then cried a little, and allowed herself to be consoled by
Mrs. Sherman.

'You talk so intelligently and are so well informed,' she said at
parting. 'I have made a very pleasant call,' and the caddis-worm toiled
upon its way, arriving in time at other cups of tea.


III

The day after Mrs. Leland's call upon his mother, John Sherman,
returning home after his not very lengthy day in the office, saw
Margaret coming towards him. She had a lawn-tennis racket under her
arm, and was walking slowly on the shady side of the road. She was a
pretty girl with quite irregular features, who though not really more
than pretty, had so much manner, so much of an air, that every one
called her a beauty: a trefoil with the fragrance of a rose.

'Mr. Sherman,' she cried, coming smiling to meet him, 'I have been ill,
but could not stand the house any longer. I am going to the Square to
play tennis. Will you come with me? '

'I am a bad player,' he said.

'Of course you are,' she answered; 'but you are the only person under a
hundred to be found this afternoon. How dull life is! ' she continued,
with a sigh. 'You heard how ill I have been? What do you do all day? '

'I sit at a desk, sometimes writing, and sometimes, when I get lazy,
looking up at the flies. There are fourteen on the plaster of the
ceiling over my head. They died two winters ago. I sometimes think to
have them brushed off, but they have been there so long now I hardly
like to. '

'Ah! you like them,' she said, 'because you are accustomed to them. In
most cases there is not much more to be said for our family affections,
I think. '

'In a room close at hand,' he went on, 'there is, you know, Uncle
Michael, who never speaks. '

'Precisely. You have an uncle who never speaks; I have a mother who
never is silent. She went to see Mrs. Sherman the other day. What did
she say to her? '

'Nothing. '

'Really! What a dull thing existence is! '--this with a great sigh.
'When the Fates are weaving our web of life some mischievous goblin
always runs off with the dye-pot. Everything is dull and grey. Am I
looking a little pale? I have been so very ill. '

'A little bit pale, perhaps,' he said, doubtfully.

The Square gate brought them to a stop. It was locked, but she had the
key. The lock was stiff, but turned easily for John Sherman.

'How strong you are,' she said.

It was an iridescent evening of spring. The leaves of the bushes had
still their faint green. As Margaret darted about at the tennis, a red
feather in her cap seemed to rejoice with its wearer. Everything was at
once gay and tranquil. The whole world had that unreal air it assumes
at beautiful moments, as though it might vanish at a touch like an
iridescent soap-bubble.

After a little Margaret said she was tired, and, sitting on a
garden-seat among the bushes, began telling him the plots of novels
lately read by her. Suddenly she cried: 'The novel-writers were all
serious people like you. They are so hard on people like me. They
always make us come to a bad end. They _say_ we are always acting,
acting, acting; and what else do you serious people do? You act before
the world. I think, do you know, _we_ act before ourselves. All the
old foolish kings and queens in history were like us. They laughed and
beckoned and went to the block for no very good purpose. I daresay the
headsmen were like you. '

'We would never cut off so pretty a head. '

'Oh, yes, you would--you would cut off mine to-morrow. ' All this she
said vehemently, piercing him with her bright eyes. 'You would cut off
my head to-morrow,' she repeated, almost fiercely; 'I tell you you
would. '

Her departure was always unexpected, her moods changed with so much
rapidity. 'Look! ' she said, pointing where the clock on St. Peter's
church showed above the bushes. 'Five minutes to five. In five minutes
my mother's tea-hour. It is like growing old. I go to gossip. Good-bye. '

The red feather shone for a moment among the bushes and was gone.


IV

The next day and the day after, Sherman was followed by those bright
eyes. When he opened a letter at his desk they seemed to gaze at him
from the open paper, and to watch him from the flies upon the ceiling.
He was even a worse clerk than usual.

One evening he said to his mother, 'Miss Leland has beautiful eyes. '

'My dear, she puts belladonna in them. '

'What a thing to say! '

'I know she does, though her mother denies it. '

'Well, she is certainly beautiful,' he answered.

'My dear, if she has an attraction for you, I don't want to discourage
it. She is rich as girls go nowadays; and one woman has one fault,
another another: one's untidy, one fights with her servants, one fights
with her friends, another has a crabbed tongue when she talks of them.