Born in Exile (21 page)

In Miss Moorhouse there was no defect of refinement, but her
conversation struck a note of sprightliness at once more energetic
and more subtle than is often found in English girls. Thus, though
at times she looked so young that it might be doubted whether she
had long been out of her teens, at others one suspected her older
than Sidwell. The friends happened to be as nearly as possible of
an age, which was verging to twenty-six.

When he spoke to Miss Moorhouse, Buckland's frank tone subdued
itself. He watched her face with reverent attention, smiled when
she smiled, and joined in her laughter with less than his usual
volume of sound. In acuteness he was obviously inferior to her, and
there were moments when he betrayed some nervousness under her
rejoinders. All this was matter of observation for Peak, who had
learnt to exercise his discernment even whilst attending to the
proprieties.

The sounding of the first luncheon-bell left the young men free
to go upstairs. When at length they presented themselves in the
drawing-room, Mrs. Warricombe and her younger daughter sat there
alone. The greeting of his hostess did not quite satisfy Godwin,
though it was sufficiently courteous; he remembered that ten years
ago Mrs. Warricombe had appeared to receive him with some
restraint, and his sensation in renewing her acquaintance was one
of dislike. But in a moment the master of the house joined them,
and no visitor could have had a more kindly welcome than that he
offered to his son's friend. With genial tact, Mr. Warricombe
ignored the interval since his last conversation with Godwin, and
spoke as if this visit were the most natural thing in the
world.

'Do you already know the country about Exeter?'

'I have seen very little of it yet.'

'Oh, then, we must show you our points of view. Our own garden
offers a glimpse of the river-mouth and a good prospect of
Haldon—the ridge beyond the Exe; but there are many much better
points within easy reach. You are in no hurry, I hope?'

Louis Warricombe and Miss Moorhouse's brother were away on a
long walk; they did not return for lunch. Godwin was glad of this,
for time had wrought the change in him that he felt more at ease in
female society than under the eyes of young men whose social
position inclined them to criticism. The meal proved as delightful
as luncheon is wont to be in a luxurious country-house, when
brilliant sunshine gleams on the foliage visible from windows, and
the warmth of the season sanctions clear colours in costume. The
talk was wholly of country pleasures. It afforded the visitor no
little satisfaction to be able to make known his acquaintance with
parts of England to which the Warricombes had not penetrated.
Godwin learnt that the family were insular in their tastes; a
mention by Miss Moorhouse of continental scenes led the host to
avow a strong preference for his own country, under whatever
aspect, and Sidwell murmured her sympathy.

No less introspective than in the old days, though he could
better command his muscles, Peak, after each of his short remarks,
made comparison of his tone and phraseology with those of the other
speakers. Had he still any marks of the ignoble world from which he
sprang? Any defect of pronunciation, any native awkwardness of
utterance? Impossible to judge himself infallibly, but he was
conscious of no vulgar mannerism. Though it was so long since he
left Whitelaw, the accent of certain of the Professors still
remained with him as an example: when endeavouring to be graceful,
he was wont to hear the voice of Dr Nares, or of Professor Barber
who lectured on English Literature. More recently he had been
observant of Christian Moxey's speech, which had a languid elegance
worth imitating in certain particulars. Buckland Warricombe was
rather a careless talker, but it was the carelessness of a man who
had never needed to reflect on such a matter, the refinement of
whose enunciation was assured to him from the nursery. That now was
a thing to be aimed at. Preciseness must be avoided, for in a young
man it seemed to argue conscious effort: a loose sentence now and
then, a colloquialism substituted for the more grammatical
phrase.

Heaven be thanked that he was unconcerned on the point of garb!
Inferiority in that respect would have been fatal to his ease. His
clothes were not too new, and in quality were such as he had the
habit of wearing. The Warricombes must have immediately detected
any pretentiousness, were it but in a necktie; that would impress
them more unfavourably than signs of poverty. But he defied
inspection. Not Sidwell herself, doubtless sensitive in the highest
degree, could conceive a prejudice against him on this account.

His misgivings were overcome. If these people were acquainted
with the 'dining-rooms' joke, it certainly did not affect their
behaviour to him, and he could hope, by the force of his
personality, to obliterate from their minds such disagreeable
thoughts as they might secretly entertain. Surely he could make
good his claim to be deemed a gentleman. To Buckland he had
declared his position, and no shame attached to it. A man of
scientific tastes, like Mr. Warricombe, must consider it
respectable enough. Grant him a little time, and why should he not
become a recognised friend of this family?

If he were but resident in Exeter.

For the first time, he lost himself in abstraction, and only an
inquiry from Sidwell recalled him.

'You have seen the Cathedral, Mr. Peak?'

'Oh yes! I attended service there yesterday morning.'

Had he reflected, perhaps he would not have added this
circumstance; even in speaking he suffered a confused doubtfulness.
But as soon as the words were uttered, he felt strangely glad.
Sidwell bestowed upon him an unmistakable look of approval; her
mother gazed with colder interest; Mr. Warricombe regarded him, and
mused; Buckland, a smile of peculiar meaning on his close lips,
glanced from him to Miss Moorhouse.

'Ah, then, you heard Canon Grayling,' remarked the father of the
family, with something in his tone which answered to Sidwell's
facial expression. 'How did you like his sermon?'

Godwin was trifling with a pair of nut-crackers, but the
nervousness evident in his fingers did not prevent him from
replying with a natural air of deliberation.

'I was especially struck with the passage about the barren
fig-tree.'

The words might have expressed a truth, but in that case a tone
of sarcasm must have winged them. As it was, they involved either
hypocrisy or ungenerous irony at the expense of his questioner.
Buckland could not but understand them in the latter sense; his
face darkened. At that moment, Peak met his eye, and encountered
its steady searching gaze with a perfectly calm smile. Half-a-dozen
pulsings of his heart—violent, painful, and the fatal hour of his
life had struck.

'What had he to say about it?' Buckland asked, carelessly.

Peak's reply was one of those remarkable efforts of mind—one
might say, of character—which are sometimes called forth, without
premeditation, almost without consciousness, by a profound moral
crisis. A minute or two ago he would have believed it impossible to
recall and state in lucid terms the arguments to which, as he sat
in the Cathedral, he had barely given ear; he remembered vaguely
that the preacher (whose name he knew not till now) had dwelt for a
few moments on the topic indicated, but at the time he was
indisposed to listen seriously, and what chance was there that the
chain of thought had fixed itself in his memory? Now, under the
marvelling regard of his conscious self, he poured forth an
admirable rendering of the Canon's views, fuller than the
original—more eloquent, more subtle. For five minutes he held his
hearers in absorbed attention, even Buckland bending forward with
an air of genuine interest; and when he stopped, rather suddenly,
there followed a silence.

'Mr. Peak,' said the host, after a cough of apology, 'you have
made that clearer to me than it was yesterday. I must thank
you.'

Godwin felt that a slight bow of acknowledgment was perhaps
called for, but not a muscle would obey his will. He was enervated;
perspiration stood on his forehead. The most severe physical effort
could not have reduced him to a feebler state.

Sidwell was speaking:

'Mr. Peak has developed what Canon Grayling only suggested.'

'A brilliant effort of exegesis,' exclaimed Buckland, with a
good-natured laugh.

Again the young men exchanged looks. Godwin smiled as one might
under a sentence of death. As for the other, his suspicion had
vanished, and he now gave way to frank amusement. Luncheon was
over, and by a general movement all went forth on to the lawn in
front of the house. Mr. Warricombe, even more cordial than
hitherto, named to Godwin the features of the extensive
landscape.

'But you see that the view is in a measure spoilt by the growth
of the city. A few years ago, none of those ugly little houses
stood in the mid-distance. A few years hence, I fear, there will be
much more to complain of. I daresay you know all about the
ship-canal: the story of the countess, and so forth?'

Buckland presently suggested that the afternoon might be used
for a drive.

'I was about to propose it,' said his father. 'You might start
by the Stoke Canon Road, so as to let Mr. Peak have the famous view
from the gate; then go on towards Silverton, for the sake of the
reversed prospect from the Exe. Who shall be of the party?'

It was decided that four only should occupy the vehicle, Miss
Moorhouse and Fanny Warricombe to be the two ladies. Godwin
regretted Sidwell's omission, but the friendly informality of the
arrangement delighted him. When the carriage rolled softly from the
gravelled drive, Buckland holding the reins, he felt an animation
such as no event had ever produced in him. No longer did he
calculate phrases. A spontaneous aptness marked his dialogue with
Miss Moorhouse, and the laughing words he now and then addressed to
Fanny. For a short time Buckland was laconic, but at length he
entered into the joyous tone of the occasion. Earwaker would have
stood in amazement, could he have seen and heard the saturnine
denizen of Peckham Rye.

The weather was superb. A sea-breeze mitigated the warmth of the
cloudless sun, and where a dark pine-tree rose against the sky it
gave the azure depths a magnificence unfamiliar to northern
eyes.

'On such a day as this,' remarked Miss Moorhouse, dividing her
look between Buckland and his friend, 'one feels that there's a
good deal to be said for England.'

'But for the vile weather,' was Warricombe's reply, 'you
wouldn't know such enjoyment.'

'Oh, I can't agree with that for a moment! My capacity for
enjoyment is unlimited. That philosophy is unworthy of you; it
belongs to a paltry scheme called "making the best of things".'

'In which you excel, Miss Moorhouse.'

'That she does!' agreed Fanny—a laughing, rosy-cheeked
maiden.

'I deny it! No one is more copious in railing against
circumstances.'

'But you turn them all to a joke,' Fanny objected.

'That's my profound pessimism. I am misunderstood. No one
expects irony from a woman.'

Peak found it difficult not to gaze too persistently at the
subtle countenance. He was impelled to examine it by a
consciousness that he himself received a large share of Miss
Moorhouse's attention, and a doubt as to the estimation in which
she held him. Canon Grayling's sermon and Godwin's comment had
elicited no remark from her. Did she belong to the ranks of
emancipated women? With his experience of Marcella Moxey, he
welcomed the possibility of this variation of the type, but at the
same time, in obedience to a new spirit that had strange possession
of him, recognised that such phenomena no longer aroused his
personal interest. By the oddest of intellectual processes he had
placed himself altogether outside the sphere of unorthodox spirits.
Concerning Miss Moorhouse he cared only for the report she might
make of him to the Warricombes.

Before long, the carriage was stopped that he might enjoy one of
the pleasantest views in the neighbourhood of the city. A gate,
interrupting a high bank with which the road was bordered, gave
admission to the head of a great cultivated slope, which fell to
the river Exe; hence was suddenly revealed a wide panorama. Three
well-marked valleys—those of the Creedy, the Exe, and the
Culm—spread their rural loveliness to remote points of the horizon;
gentle undulations, with pasture and woodland, with long winding
roads, and many a farm that gleamed white amid its orchard leafage,
led the gaze into regions of evanescent hue and outline. Westward,
a bolder swell pointed to the skirts of Dartmoor. No inappropriate
detail disturbed the impression. Exeter was wholly hidden behind
the hill on which the observers stood, and the line of railway
leading thither could only be descried by special search. A foaming
weir at the hill's foot blended its soft murmur with that of the
fir branches hereabouts; else, no sound that the air could convey
beyond the pulsing of a bird's note.

All had alighted, and for a minute or two there was silence.
When Peak had received such geographical instruction as was
needful, Warricombe pointed out to him a mansion conspicuous on the
opposite slope of the Exe valley, the seat of Sir Stafford
Northcote. The house had no architectural beauty, but its solitary
lordship amid green pastures and tracts of thick wood declared the
graces and privileges of ancestral wealth. Standing here alone,
Godwin would have surveyed these possessions of an English
aristocrat with more or less bitterness; envy would, for a moment
at all events, have perturbed his pleasure in the natural scene.
Accompanied as he was, his emotion took a form which indeed was
allied to envy, but had nothing painful. He exulted in the
prerogatives of birth and opulence, felt proud of hereditary pride,
gloried that his mind was capable of appreciating to the full those
distinctions which, by the vulgar, are not so much as suspected.
Admitted to equal converse with men and women who represented the
best in English society, he could cast away the evil grudge, the
fierce spirit of self-assertion, and be what nature had proposed in
endowing him with large brain, generous blood, delicate tissues.
What room for malignancy? He was accepted by his peers, and could
regard with tolerance even those ignoble orders of mankind amid
whom he had so long dwelt unrecognised.