You must not be angry with me if I say nothing more
about Positive Education. It is a great strain
on me to talk upon such matters, and when I do I always
feel afterwards that I have said much which is mere
words. That is a sure test; I must obey my daemon.
I wish I could give you what you want for what you
have given me; but when do we get what we want in
exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is
a clumsy barter. A man sells me a sheep, and
I pay him in return with my grandfather’s old
sextant. This is not quite true for you and me.
Love is given and love is returned. A Dieu—not
adieu. Remember that the world is very big,
and that there may be room in it for a few creatures
like
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
The town of Langborough in 1839 had not been much
disturbed since the beginning of the preceding century.
The new houses were nearly all of them built to replace
others which had fallen into decay; there were no
drains; the drinking-water came from pumps; the low
fever killed thirty or forty people every autumn;
the Moot Hall still stood in the middle of the High
Street; the newspaper came but once a week; nobody
read any books; and the Saturday market and the annual
fair were the only events in public local history.
Langborough, being seventy miles from London and
eight from the main coach-road, had but little communication
with the outside world. Its inhabitants intermarried
without crossing from other stocks, and men determined
their choice mainly by equality of fortune and rank.
The shape of the nose and lips and colour of the eyes
may have had some influence in masculine selection,
but not much: the doctor took the lawyer’s
daughter, the draper took the grocer’s, and the
carpenter took the blacksmith’s. Husbands
and wives, as a rule, lived comfortably with one another;
there was no reason why they should quarrel.
The air of the place was sleepy; the men attended
to their business, and the women were entirely apart,
minding their household affairs and taking tea with
one another. In Langborough, dozing as it had
dozed since the days of Queen Anne, it was almost impossible
that any woman should differ so much from another
that she could be the cause of passionate preference.
One day in the spring of 1839 Langborough was stirred
to its depths. No such excitement had been felt
in the town since the run upon the bank in 1825, when
one of the partners went up to London, brought down
ten thousand pounds in gold with him by the mail,
and was met at Thaxton cross-roads by a post-chaise,
which was guarded into Langborough by three men with
pistols. A circular printed in London was received
on that spring day in 1839 by all the respectable
ladies in the town stating that a Mrs. Fairfax was
about to begin business in Ferry Street as a dressmaker.
She had taken the only house to be let in Ferry Street.
