第71章 A FEW CRUSTED CHARACTERS(16)

'She,being better educated than he,and caring nothing for the village notion of his mother's superiority to her aunt,did not give him much encouragement.But Longpuddle being no very large world,the two could not help seeing a good deal of each other while she was staying there,and,disdainful young woman as she was,she did seem to take a little pleasure in his attentions and advances.

'One day when they were picking apples together,he asked her to marry him.She had not expected anything so practical as that at so early a time,and was led by her surprise into a half-promise;at any rate she did not absolutely refuse him,and accepted some little presents that he made her.

'But he saw that her view of him was rather as a simple village lad than as a young man to look up to,and he felt that he must do something bold to secure her.So he said one day,"I am going away,to try to get into a better position than I can get here."In two or three weeks he wished her good-bye,and went away to Monksbury,to superintend a farm,with a view to start as a farmer himself;and from there he wrote regularly to her,as if their marriage were an understood thing.

'Now Harriet liked the young man's presents and the admiration of his eyes;but on paper he was less attractive to her.Her mother had been a school-mistress,and Harriet had besides a natural aptitude for pen-and-ink work,in days when to be a ready writer was not such a common thing as it is now,and when actual handwriting was valued as an accomplishment in itself.Jack Winter's performances in the shape of love-letters quite jarred her city nerves and her finer taste,and when she answered one of them,in the lovely running hand that she took such pride in,she very strictly and loftily bade him to practise with a pen and spelling-book if he wished to please her.

Whether he listened to her request or not nobody knows,but his letters did not improve.He ventured to tell her in his clumsy way that if her heart were more warm towards him she would not be so nice about his handwriting and spelling;which indeed was true enough.

'Well,in Jack's absence the weak flame that had been set alight in Harriet's heart soon sank low,and at last went out altogether.He wrote and wrote,and begged and prayed her to give a reason for her coldness;and then she told him plainly that she was town born,and he was not sufficiently well educated to please her.

'Jack Winter's want of pen-and-ink training did not make him less thin-skinned than others;in fact,he was terribly tender and touchy about anything.This reason that she gave for finally throwing him over grieved him,shamed him,and mortified him more than can be told in these times,the pride of that day in being able to write with beautiful flourishes,and the sorrow at not being able to do so,raging so high.Jack replied to her with an angry note,and then she hit back with smart little stings,telling him how many words he had misspelt in his last letter,and declaring again that this alone was sufficient justification for any woman to put an end to an understanding with him.Her husband must be a better scholar.

'He bore her rejection of him in silence,but his suffering was sharp--all the sharper in being untold.She communicated with Jack no more;and as his reason for going out into the world had been only to provide a home worthy of her,he had no further object in planning such a home now that she was lost to him.He therefore gave up the farming occupation by which he had hoped to make himself a master-farmer,and left the spot to return to his mother.

'As soon as he got back to Longpuddle he found that Harriet had already looked wi'favour upon another lover.He was a young road-contractor,and Jack could not but admit that his rival was both in manners and scholarship much ahead of him.Indeed,a more sensible match for the beauty who had been dropped into the village by fate could hardly have been found than this man,who could offer her so much better a chance than Jack could have done,with his uncertain future and narrow abilities for grappling with the world.The fact was so clear to him that he could hardly blame her.

'One day by accident Jack saw on a scrap of paper the handwriting of Harriet's new beloved.It was flowing like a stream,well spelt,the work of a man accustomed to the ink-bottle and the dictionary,of a man already called in the parish a good scholar.And then it struck all of a sudden into Jack's mind what a contrast the letters of this young man must make to his own miserable old letters,and how ridiculous they must make his lines appear.He groaned and wished he had never written to her,and wondered if she had ever kept his poor performances.Possibly she had kept them,for women are in the habit of doing that,he thought,and whilst they were in her hands there was always a chance of his honest,stupid love-assurances to her being joked over by Harriet with her present lover,or by anybody who should accidentally uncover them.

'The nervous,moody young man could not bear the thought of it,and at length decided to ask her to return them,as was proper when engagements were broken off.He was some hours in framing,copying,and recopying the short note in which he made his request,and having finished it he sent it to her house.His messenger came back with the answer,by word of mouth,that Miss Palmley bade him say she should not part with what was hers,and wondered at his boldness in troubling her.

'Jack was much affronted at this,and determined to go for his letters himself.He chose a time when he knew she was at home,and knocked and went in without much ceremony;for though Harriet was so high and mighty,Jack had small respect for her aunt,Mrs.Palmley,whose little child had been his boot-cleaner in earlier days.

Harriet was in the room,this being the first time they had met since she had jilted him.He asked for his letters with a stern and bitter look at her.