A Tale of a Lonely Parish Part 12

"Do you think so?" she inquired with a demure smile. "I am very much older than you think."

"You must be--I mean, you know, you must be older than you look."

"Thank you," said Mrs. G.o.ddard, still smiling, and just resting the tips of her fingers upon his arm as she stepped across a slippery place in the frozen road. "Yes, I am a great deal older than you."

John would have liked very much to ask her age, but even to his youthful and unsophisticated mind such a question seemed almost too personal. He did not really believe that she was more than five years older than he, and that seemed to be no difference at all.

"I don't know," he said. "I am nearly one and twenty."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. G.o.ddard, who had heard every detail concerning John from Mr. Ambrose, again and again. "Just think," she added with a laugh, "only one and twenty! Why when I was one and twenty I was--" she stopped short.

"What were you doing then?" asked John, trying not to seem too curious.

"I was living in London," she said quietly. She half enjoyed his disappointment.

"Yes," he said, "I daresay. But what--well, I suppose I ought not to ask any questions."

"Certainly not," said she. "It is very rude to ask a lady questions about her age."

"I do not mean to be rude again," said John, pretending to laugh. "Have you always been fond of skating?" he asked, fixing his eye upon a distant tree, and trying to look unconscious.

"No--I only learned since I came here. Besides, I skate very badly."

"Did Mr. Juxon teach you?" asked John, still gazing into the distance.

From not looking at the path he slipped on a frozen puddle and nearly fell. Whereat, as usual, when he did anything awkward, he blushed to the brim of his hat.

"Take care," said Mrs. G.o.ddard, calmly. "You will fall if you don't look where you are going. No; Mr. Juxon was not here last year. He only came here in the summer."

"It seems to me that he has always been here," said John, trying to recover his equanimity. "Then I suppose Mr. Ambrose taught you to skate?"

"Exactly--Mr. Ambrose taught me. He skates very well."

"So will you, with a little more practice," answered her companion in a rather patronising tone. He intended perhaps to convey the idea that Mrs.

G.o.ddard would improve in the exercise if she would actually skate, and with him, instead of submitting to be pushed about in a chair by Mr.

Juxon.

"Oh, I daresay," said Mrs. G.o.ddard indifferently. "We shall soon be there, now. I can hear them on the ice."

"Too soon," said John with regret.

"I thought you liked skating so much."

"I like walking with you much better," he replied, and he glanced at her face to see if his speech produced any sign of sympathy.

"You have walked with me; now you can skate with Nellie," suggested Mrs.

G.o.ddard.

"You talk as though I were a child," said John, suddenly losing his temper in a very unaccountable way.

"Because I said you might skate with Nellie? Really, I don't see why. Mr.

Juxon is not a child, and he has been skating with her all the morning."

"That is different," retorted John growing very red.

"Yes--Nellie is much nearer to your age than to Mr. Juxon's," answered Mrs. G.o.ddard, with a calmness which made John desperate.

"Really, Mrs. G.o.ddard," he said stiffly, "I cannot see what that has to do with it."

"'The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the lady so much older than myself has charged--' How does the quotation end, Mr. Short?"

"'Has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny,'" said John savagely. "Quite so, Mrs.

G.o.ddard. I shall not attempt to palliate it, nor will I venture to deny it."

"Then why in the world are you so angry with me?" she asked, suddenly turning her violet eyes upon him. "I was only laughing, you know."

"Only laughing!" repeated John. "It is more pleasant to laugh than to be laughed at."

"Yes--would not you allow me the pleasure then, just for once?"

"Certainly, if you desire it. You are so extremely merry--"

"Come, Mr. Short, we must not seem to have been quarrelling when we reach the pond. It would be too ridiculous."

"Everything seems to strike you in a humorous light to-day," answered John, beginning to be pacified by her tone.

"Do you know, you are much more interesting when you are angry," said Mrs. G.o.ddard.

"And you only made me angry in order to see whether I was interesting?"

"Perhaps--but then, I could not help it in the least."

"I trust you are thoroughly satisfied upon the point, Mrs. G.o.ddard? If there is anything more that I can do to facilitate your researches in psychology--"

"You would help me? Even to the extent of being angry again?" She smiled so pleasantly and frankly that John's wrath vanished.

"It is impossible to be angry with you. I am very sorry if I seemed to be," he answered. "A man who has the good fortune to be thrown into your society is a fool to waste his time in being disagreeable."

"I agree with the conclusion, at all events--that is, it is much better to be agreeable. Is it not? Let us be friends."

"Oh, by all means," said John.

They walked on for some minutes in silence. John reflected that he had witnessed a phase of Mrs. G.o.ddard's character of which he had been very far from suspecting the existence. He had not hitherto imagined her to be a woman of quick temper or sharp speech. His idea of her was formed chiefly upon her appearance. Her sad face, with its pathetic expression, suggested a melancholy humour delighting in subdued and tranquil thoughts, inclined naturally to the romantic view, or to what in the eyes of youths of twenty appears to be the romantic view of life. He had suddenly found her answering him with a sharpness which, while it roused his wits, startled his sensibilities. But he was flattered as well. His instinct and his observation of Mrs. G.o.ddard when in the society of others led him to believe that with Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose, or even with Mr. Juxon, she was not in the habit of talking as she talked with him. He was therefore inwardly pleased, so soon as his pa.s.sing annoyance had subsided, to feel that she made a difference between him and others.

It was quite true that she made a distinction, though she did so almost unconsciously. It was perfectly natural, too. She was young in heart, in spite of her thirty years and her troubles; she had an elastic temperament; to a physiognomist her face would have shown a delicate sensitiveness to impressions rather than any inborn tendency to sadness.

In spite of everything she was still young, and for two years and a half she had been in the society of persons much older than herself, persons she respected and regarded as friends, but persons in whom her youth found no sympathy. It was natural, therefore, that when time to some extent had healed the wound she had suffered and she suddenly found herself in the society of a young and enthusiastic man, something of the enforced soberness of her manner should unbend, showing her character in a new light. She herself enjoyed the change, hardly knowing why; she enjoyed a little pa.s.sage of arms with John, and it amused her more than she could have expected to be young again, to annoy him, to break the peace and heal it again in five minutes. But what happened entirely failed to amuse the squire, who did not regard such diversions as harmless; and moreover she was far from expecting the effect which her treatment of John Short produced upon his scholarly but enthusiastic temper.