Jim, accordingly, when he left the girls to stroll down the village street, did so against the remonstrances of Florry, who tried hard to persuade him to come back and hear what mamma and Emmy had been doing at the Hall, then offered herself to share his walk, with equal seriousness. ‘I like a stroll by myself,’ Jim said.
‘It will very soon be dark, Jim; it is no fun walking in the dark.’
‘Not for you. But let me alone; if I like it, that’s enough, Flo.’
‘Oh, Jim, mamma is so pleased when you come in early,’ cried Florence, pleading; ‘it does us all so much good. If you only saw the difference in poor papa’s face when he knows you’re in the drawing-room.’
‘I shouldn’t be in the drawing-room in any case. I’ve got my Greek to do.’
‘Still better if you are at your Greek. Oh, Jim, do for once come home with me!’
‘I’ll come in in half an hour—will that satisfy you? I only want to shake myself up a bit after sitting there with nothing to do.’
‘Well, mind you don’t forget: in half an hour,’ said Florence.
He went off waving his hand to her. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, with that idle lounging step of the man who is ready for any mischief, but has none immediately in sight, he strolled away. Florence stood looking after him, with anxiety in every line of her face, until she remembered Mab looking on, whom it was necessary to keep from knowing if possible: and then the poor girl laughed. ‘Isn’t he lazy?’ she said; ‘and it does vex papa so. Papa thinks Jim should like Sophocles as much as he does, which is nonsense, isn’t it? But Jim says that old people never can understand young ones, and perhaps it’s true.’
‘Mother always understands me,’ said Mab, with a child’s unhesitating confidence.
‘Oh,’ said Florence. Her secret thought was, ‘What is there in you, you little thing, to understand?’ She said after a moment, ‘Boys are so different!’ with a sigh.
‘You should not nag at him so much,’ said Mab, with a reflection of her mother’s sentiments, who as yet knew little of Jim’s case, and gave her opinion privately in the bosom of her own home that the boy was being driven out of his senses by never being left alone.
‘I don’t think we nag at him,’ said Florence meekly: and then the two girls parted, Mab taking the way to the cottage, and Florry that which led to the Rectory. ‘You don’t want to hear what they have got to say?’ Florry said, with a faint smile, before the other left her.
‘I shall hear it from mother,’ said Mab, ‘and I don’t know that I care.’
So the cousins separated—with thoughts so different. And Jim strolled away in the other direction with a thirst which was both physical and mental, in his whole being. It was physical, alas! and that was perhaps in its immediate development the worst: but it was also mental, a craving for something he knew not what; something that would supply the atmosphere, the novelty, he wanted, the something he had not got. He knew very well at other moments that the inn parlour, and the village society, and the pipes and the glass—in his own case so often repeated—would not give that. Ordinarily, he thought Oxford would give it and the society of the young men with whom he sometimes talked metaphysics, though usually it was only horses and racing, and boats and bumps, and the qualities of the different dogs of the circle, that they discussed; but still, it was not to be denied that there was something in Jim’s being which thirsted, as well as that fatal thirst in his body, which, alas! it was so much more easy to satisfy. The drab-coloured house at home, with its habits fixed like iron; the evening round the lamp; the mother’s prolonged talk about her neighbours, and about people she once knew, and about getting on; his father’s scanty, careless replies; the girls’ talk, which was very often about their dresses, and how things were worn now—all these had become wearisome to the young man: and he did not care at all for his Sophocles. He had found in Oxford that opening out of the restricted household circle for which his young being craved; but it had not been the best of openings, and now poor Jim prowled down the village street, wanting that something which he could not tell how to attain to, neither what it was. He did not want to go to the ‘Blue Boar.’ He had never yet gone in daylight openly, but under cover of night, when the parlour window looked so bright in the dull village street. It wanted some courage to go now, in cold blood as it were, when there was no reason for it, and he felt all that it meant, the son of the Rectory going in, in the light of day, to the village public-house. He did not want to do it, if he could only find somewhere else to go.
It happened in this way that Jim was very ready to be led in any quarter where a little novelty or amusement was to be found. Not in any quarter; for supposing he had at that moment met the good old General, whose company could do him nothing but good, who had told him, perhaps, that he had a young nephew, perhaps a pretty niece, to whom he wished to introduce the Rector’s son, Jim would at once have found that he had to go back to his Greek: he would not have gone to the General’s, nor to any house, as his mother said, ‘in his own rank of life.’ And why this should be I am quite unable to tell. Houses which were in his own rank of life did not seem to him to have what he wanted; he would have felt sure in advance that the General’s nephew would be a prig, or perhaps an insolent young soldier, thinking nobody was anybody who was out of the service; and the General’s niece, ugly and stupid. This he would have felt sure of, though he could not have told why. Neither can I tell why, nor any of those to whom it would be of the greatest advantage to make this all-important discovery. It would be even more important than finding out how to resist a deadly disease; and in the one case as in the other, there are many surprises and many experiments. But nobody as yet has been able to find out the way.
It was while he was thus moving along on the other side of the street, not desiring to go to the ‘Blue Boar,’ yet not knowing where else to go, and having within him an imperious wish to go somewhere, that Jim suddenly heard in the soft stillness of the evening air—for the wind had quite fallen as night came on—a pleasant voice saying, ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden’; a voice which was quite new to him, and which he could not associate with anybody in Watcham. He knew everybody in Watcham, great and small, so that it was not easy to take him by surprise. He turned round, startled, and saw a woman, a lady, standing in the half-light in the door of the house next to the schools, which was appropriated to the village schoolmistress. He knew there was a new schoolmistress, for he had heard it talked of, but he had not seen her, so that this was about the only person in Watcham whose voice he did not know. Jim stopped suddenly and made a clutch at his cap. I hope he would on any occasion have taken off his hat to the schoolmistress, but at all events this voice made it imperative, for it was a refined voice, the voice of a lady, or else an exceedingly good make-believe.
‘Good evening,’ he replied vaguely. He could not very well make out her face, but yet there was something in it which it appeared to him he had seen before.
‘You do not remember me?’ she said.
‘You have newly come to the school, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I don’t think I have seen you before.’
‘You have seen me before, but not here, and if I were quite sure you did not remember me I should be very glad.’
‘That is rather a queer thing to say,’ said Jim.
‘Perhaps; but it is a true thing. I wanted to ask you, if you did remember me, not to do so—at least, to say nothing about it.’
‘This is more mysterious still.’
‘Yes, I daresay it does sound mysterious; but it is important to me. I don’t know whether to trust to you in this way, that if you remember me after you will say nothing about it; or to be frank and recall myself to your mind.’
‘You