Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/57

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 29..
 * SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 1869.
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neat cob was not standing in a loose box in the Woolgreaves stable, as was he usual wont when its master had paid a visit to that hospitable mansion. On this occasion the schoolmaster had walked over from Helmingham, and, though by nature an indolent man, Mr. Benthall was exceedingly pleased at the prospect of the walk before him on emerging from Woolgreaves after his interview in the library with Mrs. Creswell. He felt that he required a vent for the excitement under which he was labouring, a vent which could only be found in sharp and prolonged exercise. The truth was that he was very much excited and very angry indeed. "It is a very charitable way of looking at it—a more than charitable way," he muttered to himself as he strode over the ground, "to fancy that Mrs. Creswell was ignorant of what she was doing! did not know that she was offering me a bribe to vote for her husband, and to influence the farmers on this estate to do the same! She knew it fast enough; she is by far too clever a woman not to understand all about it! And if she would try that game on with us, who hold a comparatively superior position, what won't she do with those lower on the electoral roll? Clever woman, too, thorough woman of the world! I wonder at her forgetting herself and showing her hand so completely. How admirably she emphasised the 'any of the inmates,' in that sentence when she gave me my congé! It was really remarkably well done! When I tell Gertrude this, it will show her the real facts at once. She has had a firm impression that, up to the present time, 'madam,' as she calls Mrs. Creswell, has had no idea as to the state of the case between us; but I don't think even incredulous Gertrude would have much doubt of it if she had been present, and caught the expression of Mrs. Creswell's face as she forbade my communication with 'any' of the inmates of her house. Neither look nor tone admitted of the smallest ambiguity, and I took care to appreciate both. Something must be done to circumvent our young friend the hostess of Woolgreaves."

Thus soliloquised the Reverend George Benthall, as he strode across the bleak barren fields, chopping away with his stick at the thin, naked hedges as he passed them, pushing his hat back from his brow, and uttering many sounds which were at least impatient, not to say unclerical, as he progressed. After his dinner, feeling that this was an exceptional kind of evening, and one which must be exceptionally treated, he went down to his cellar, brought therefrom a bottle of excellent Burgundy, lit up his favourite pipe, placed his feet on the fender, and prepared himself for a careful review of the occurrences of the day. On the whole, he was satisfied. It may seem strange that a man, indolent, uncaring about most things, and certainly desirous of the opportunity for the acquisition of worldly goods, should have refused the chance of such a position as Marian hinted he might aspire to—a position which her own keen natural instinct and worldly knowledge suggested to her as the very one which he would most covet—but it must be remembered that Mr. Benthall was a man of birth and family, bound to endorse the family politics in his own person, and likely to shrink from the merest suggestion