her pleased, and took to teasing her
husband about Varden. At last he asked her to stop. He felt uneasy about
the boy--almost superstitious. His first morning's work had brought
sixty pounds a year to their hotel.

XIX

They did not get to Italy at Easter. Herbert had the offer of some
private pupils, and needed Rickie's help. It seemed unreasonable
to leave England when money was to be made in it, so they went to
Ilfracombe instead. They spent three weeks among the natural advantages
and unnatural disadvantages of that resort. It was out of the season,
and they encamped in a huge hotel, which took them at a reduction. By a
disastrous chance the Jacksons were down there too, and a good deal of
constrained civility had to pass between the two families. Constrained
it was not in Mr. Jackson's case. At all times he was ready to talk, and
as long as they kept off the school it was pleasant enough. But he was
very indiscreet, and feminine tact had often to intervene. "Go away,
dear ladies," he would then observe. "You think you see life because you
see the chasms in it. Yet all the chasms are full of female skeletons."
The ladies smiled anxiously. To Rickie he was friendly and even
intimate. They had long talks on the deserted Capstone, while their
wives sat reading in the Winter Garden and Mr. Pembroke kept an eye upon
the tutored youths. "Once I had tutored youths," said Mr. Jackson,
"but I lost them all by letting them paddle with my nieces. It is so
impossible to remember what is proper." And sooner or later their talk
gravitated towards his central passion--the Fragments of Sophocles. Some
day ("never," said Herbert) he would edit them. At present they were
merely in his blood. With the zeal of a scholar and the imagination of
a poet he reconstructed lost dramas--Niobe, Phaedra, Philoctetes against
Troy, whose names, but for an accident, would have thrilled the world.
"Is it worth it?" he cried. "Had we better be planting potatoes?" And
then: "We had; but this is the second best."

Agnes did not approve of these colloquies. Mr. Jackson was not a
buffoon, but he behaved like one, which is what matters; and from the
Winter Garden she could see people laughing at him, and at her husband,
who got excited too. She hinted once or twice, but no notice was taken,
and at last she said rather sharply, "Now, you're not to, Rickie. I
won't have it."

"He's a type that suits me. He knows people I know, or would like to
have