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 he would do if he went, what he would do if he did not go.
A beetle, attracted by the faint sunlight, had crawled out of his 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 recognized Mary Carton, who nodded to him and went on with her playing. The white-washed 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 longer 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 £100 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.