Red as a Rose is She: A Novel, Page 6

  CHAPTER VI.

  "Something new! something new!" cried the Athenians; and across twothousand years we catch up and echo their greedy cry. But why do we?We all know well enough that there is nothing new; there was not evenin King Solomon's time--not even in all his treasure-house, nor amonghis seven hundred wives. What an advantage those ancients who saw theworld's infancy had over us--over us, who have to content ourselveswith the lees of the wine, which the few dropped ears scattered aboutthe great reaped harvest field! Who would not fain have lived in thedays when nothing had yet been said--when everything, consequently,remained to be said? Who could be trite then, in that blest epoch whenplatitudes were unborn, when _Tupper_ was an impossibility, and eventhe statement that two and two make four had something startlinglynovel about it? _Then_ a man's thoughts were his own, his _very_ own,his own by the best of all rights--creation; _now_ they are the bastardproduct of ten thousand buried men's dead ideas.

  Original is a pleasant word, is it not?--fair and well-sounding; but itis like the sample figs at the top of the box: it represents nothing,or something infinitely smaller than itself behind and underneath it.Is it too much to say that it is impossible to find an original idea inany writer we wot of? You meet, perhaps, some day in a book a thought,an image that strikes you. You say, "This is this thinker's own; thereis the stamp of this one individual mind upon it;" when lo! mayhap buta few hours later you are reading the thoughts of some elder scribe,one that has been dust nigh ten or twenty centuries back, and you findthe same thought, half fledged or quarter fledged, only in the egg,perhaps--but still it is there. There is nothing new under the sun.

  And if this is true of other subjects, how much truer of that mostoutworn, threadbare old theme, Love! The world has been spinninground six thousand years at the lowest, most exploded computation;in any thousand years there have been thirty or forty generations,and each unit in every one of those generations, if he has lived toman's estate, has surely loved after one fashion or another. Whosoeverhas done any worthy thing, whosoever has sent out his thoughts inwriting or speech or action to the world, has felt the stirrings ofthis strange instinct; unconsciously it has moulded and permeated hisdeeds and his words: and yet, old as it is, we are not tired of it,any more than we are of the back-coming green of the spring, or thenever-extinguished lamps of the stars.

  "The harvest is past, the summer is ended;" at least well nigh ended.Jack and Esther are at breakfast: outside the scarlet geraniums areblazing away in the morning sun, trying their best to shine as brightlyas he is doing, and the gnats are dancing round and round on thebuoyant floor of their ball-room--the air. I wonder that that incessantvalsing does not make them giddy. I am not sure that human beings, likethe lions and tigers and uneasy black bears in the Zoological, looktheir best at feeding-time; but such as they are, here they are.

  Esther in a chintz gown, sown all over with little red carnations asthickly as the firmament with heavenly bodies. She looks as fresh asa daisy--as an Englishwoman, to whom morning _deshabille_, wrapper,slippers, undressed hair, are unknown Gallic abominations--and iseating porridge with a spoon. Jack reading his letters, which look allbills and circulars, after the fashion of men's correspondence; forwhat man made after the fashion of a man, would sit down to indite anepistle to another man, were it his _alter ego_ unless he had somethingto say about a horse or a dog or a gun? Presently he finishes thiscursory survey, crumples up the last blue envelope in his hand, flingsit with manly untidiness into the summer-dressed grate, and says,resuming a conversation which had been interrupted a quarter of an hourago by the entrance of prayers and the urn, "I cannot imagine what youhave done to the fellow! he used not to be half a bad fellow to talkto. Never a genius, you know, but still I used to like to have him towalk over the farm with me--not that he knows a swede from a mangold:don't see much sign of his old mother's farming mantle falling uponhim. But now he has not a word to throw to a dog; he is as stupid as astuck pig."

  "I have not cut out his tongue or tied it up in a bag, if that is whatyou are hinting at," says Esther, with a smile as confused as a dog's,when, not quite sure of his reception, he sneaks up to you sideways,lifting his upper lip, and from tail to muzzle one nervous wriggle."Perhaps he is like the birds, and gets silent towards the end of thesummer."

  "Why you keep him dangling after you, like the tail of a kite, Icannot conceive," Mr. Craven cries, crumbling his bread with a littleirritation. "It must be such a nuisance having a great long thing likehim knocking about under your feet morning, noon, and night."

  Esther is silent; only her head droops lower, lower, till her littlenose almost immerses itself in her stirabout.

  "Whereas," pursues Jack, helping himself to a great deal of coldbeef, "if you were to give him his _conge_ now (Jack is by no meansneglectful of the _g_ in the French word), he would be all right againin a fortnight, ready for the shooting."

  "He would, would he?" says Esther, lifting up her nose and reddeningwith vexation.

  No woman likes to think of her empire as anything short of eternal.

  "If you don't like to do it yourself, I'll do it for you," pursues herbrother, making a magnanimously handsome offer. "I would say to him,'My dear fellow, it is no good, she does not seem to care about you,'as soon as look at him."

  "What a delicate way of breaking the news!" cries Esther, ironically."Commend me to a man for gentle _finesse_."

  "I don't believe in _breaking_ news," replies Jack, sturdily. "Ifyou were to go off in a fit, or the bay colt was to break his leg, oranything to go wrong, I'd far sooner people would tell me so withoutany humming and hawing and keeping me on the tenter hooks. Breakingnews is like half cutting your throat before you are hanged, making youdie two deaths instead of one."

  "But suppose I do seem to care a little about him?" suggests Esther,blushing furiously, but holding up her head bravely, and lookingstraight at her brother.

  "Suppose the cow jumped over the moon," replies Jack with incredulity.

  "I don't know whether the cow has accomplished her feat, but I haveaccomplished mine," says Esther, trying to make her face as brass, andfailing signally.

  Jack puts up his hand, and strokes the future birthplace of hismoustache, to hide an unavoidable smile.

  "I don't wish to be rude," he says; "but may I ask, since when? Was ita week ago, or less, that you requested me to accompany you on one ofyour joint excursions to that everlasting wood, and told me you thoughtyour watch wanted cleaning, the time seemed to go so slow?"

  "A week!" cries his sister, indignantly. "Three weeks, or a month, atleast."

  "Wrong, Essie, wrong; it was this day fortnight, Ryvel Horse Fair,which was the reason why I had to decline your invitation."

  "What does a week one way or another signify?" she cries, becomingirrational, as a worsted woman mostly does.

  "Nothing to a woman or a--weathercock."

  This last insult is too much for Miss Craven.

  "I see you are determined to turn me into ridicule; I see you don'tbelieve me!" she cries, preparing to rush from the room like a tornado.

  "My good Essie," says Jack, jumping up, taking her two hands, andmanfully repressing his inclination to laugh--"here I am; tell me_anything_, and I'll swear by the tomb of my grandmother to believe it."

  "Why should not I like him? What is there in him so hateful as to makemy being fond of him incredible?" asks Essie, unreasonable and sobbing.

  "Nothing that I know of--except his _boots_, and you told me _they_were--"

  "So they are," she says, smiling through her tears--"more than hateful;they haunt one like a bad dream."

  "He is not the least penitent about them, I can tell you: onlyyesterday he showed them me with ungodly glee, told me he had got themat Hugh Hughes's, at Naullan, and advised me to go and do likewise."

  "But--but--his boots are not he; he is not his boots, I mean," remarksMiss Craven, with meek suggestion; "mercifully, they are separable."

  "He was not born in them, you
mean? I did not suppose he was; he wouldhave been worse than Richard the Third, who made his appearance withall his teeth in his head--didn't he?--if he had."

  "It is quite true--perfectly true," continues Esther, leaning hertwo hands on the back of a chair, and tilting it up and down, "whatyou say about his being so stupid; he _is_ extremely stupid: oftenI feel inclined to box his ears, for the thing he says, and for notunderstanding things, and having to have them explained to him; butafter all, do you know, I am not sure that it is the people who sayclever things, and snap one up all in a minute, that are the best tolive with."

  "You contemplate living with him then, eh? Last time I was favouredwith your plans, you were to be a vestal to the end of the chapter."

  "A provision for old age: I cannot expect you to be satisfied withme always," she answers, with rather a sad smile. "And when I amsuperseded, a good worthy simpleton, with obsolete chivalrous ideasof _Woman_ in the abstract--_Woman_ with a big _W_--who will laugh atmy worst jokes whether he sees them or not, and make none himself, isbetter than nothing."

  "All right," says Jack, calmly, walking towards the door, and unfoldingthe _Times_ with a crackling that nearly drowns his voice: "pleaseyourself and you'll please me: only be so good as to tell me when thewedding day is fixed, as I must get a new coat. I suppose that the oneI had for Uncle John's funeral will not do, will it?"

  Who is it says in the "Tempest," if neither Ferdinand nor anyother beautiful young Prince had come on the scene, yet if Mirandahad remained alone with her father, and the storms and winds andwater-spirits, she would have ended by loving Caliban? I do not knowabout Miranda, but I am sure that if Esther had been in Miranda's placeshe would have so ended; would have carried faggots in her slender armsfor the shaggy monster--have called him caressing diminutives, andasked him little interested questions about his dam Sycorax.

  The desire to be loved is strong enough in us all; in this girlit amounted to madness: it is the key to all the foolish, wicked,senseless things you will find her doing through this history's shortcourse. If she could have had her will, every man, woman, and child,every cow and calf and dog and cat that met her, would have watched hercoming with joy and her going with grief. Add to which, in the summertime most women like to have a lover; it is almost as necessary to themas warm clothes at Christmas. In winter the fire is lover enough forany one. The frosty splendour of the stars and the chill flashing ofthe northern lights provoke no yearning in any one human soul towardsany other; we peep at them through our icy casements, then drop thecurtain shivering, and leave them alone to their high cold play in thesky. But who can look at a July moon alone?

  You will say that Esther was not alone, that she had her brotherto look at it with her; but who will deny that a brother who makesagricultural remarks about the Queen of Night, and observes thatthe haze round her royal head looks well for the turnips, is worse,immeasurably worse than nobody? To me it seems that there is nothingabsolute, positive in all this shifting, kaleidoscope world; everythingis comparative. There is nothing either good, bad, pretty, ugly, large,small, except as compared with something better, worse, prettier,uglier, larger, smaller. Measure two men together, and you find onetall and the other short; put the short one by himself or among a worldof pigmies, and straightway he grows tall. Lacking a standard to go by,we make egregious errors. I have known many a woman to pass throughlife with a pigmy beside her, taking him for a giant all the while, norundeceived to the end. Esther has no man to measure her Robert by; noneat all, save the cowman, the carter, and the groom. Intellectually,morally, physically, he outtops them in stature, and that is all shecan as yet know about him. Moonlight, propinquity, total absence ofobjects of comparison--these three must be Esther's excuses.

  Robert is not much like her ideal, certainly--the ideal whose pictureshe has been painting life-size on the canvas of her mind during thevacant moments of the last two transitional years; but if we all waitedto be wed till our ideal came knocking at our doors, the world wouldbe shortly dispeopled of legitimate inhabitants. Miss Craven's idealis dark; at seventeen, most ideals are dark: he has long, fierce,sleepy, unfathomable eyes. Robert is straw-coloured: his eyes areblue; very wide awake: they say exactly what his tongue does, neithermore nor less, and there is absolutely no harm in them--a doubtfulrecommendation to a woman. The ideal's nose is fine cut, delicatelychiselled; his cheeks are a little haggard, slightly hollowed andpaled by five and thirty years or so of the reckless life of one thathas lived, not existed. Robert's nose is broad and blunt; his cheekshave the roundness and bloom of a countryman's five and twenty. Theideal breaks most of the commandments with easy grace; is inclined tobe sceptical and a little sarcastic over the old world beliefs, andfacts hoary with time and reverence. Robert nightly prays on bent kneesto be "not led into temptation but delivered from evil;" he believesfirmly every thing that he ever was taught, from the Peep of Dayupwards, and he could no more shape his honest lips into a sneer thanhe could square the circle. Before the fell shafts of the ideal's eyeswomen lie slain as thick as Greeks lay beneath the arrows of Apollo inthe Iliad's opening clash; the number of Robert's female victims isrepresented by a duck's egg.

  "Je ne comprends pas l'amour sans effroi," says one of the charactersin the best French novel I have read this many a day. The idealinspires fear equally with love; you can imagine his being harsh,fierce, cruel, to the woman he loves. In none of the most hard-heartedof created beings could Robert provoke alarm. Children who see him forthe first time come and thrust their little dimpled hands into his,and laugh up with confident impudence in his face. Dogs to whom hehas never been introduced come and rub their shaggy heads against hisknees, and curl and wriggle about his friendly feet.

  Esther can indulge no faintest hope that he will bully her. The idealrides straight as a die, and is as much a part of his horse as acentaur. Robert is very fond of getting a day's hunting when he canafford the two guineas requisite for the hiring of a horse, which isnot very often; and he likes to get his money's worth by blunderingblindly over everything that comes in his way, but he has about asmuch idea of _riding_ as a tailor or a cow. The ideal is an idol to beset up and worshipped--a Baal to be adored with tears and blood andknife-gashings. Robert is a worshipper to be encouraged by a cold lookand smile flung to him every now and then, like a bone to a dog, orspurned away with disapproving foot, as Cain was from his unacceptedaltar. To worship is to a woman always sweeter than to be worshipped.To worship one must look up; to be worshipped one must look down....

  Come with me this August Sunday through the wood from Glan-yr-Afon toPlas Berwyn--from Esther's home to Robert's. It is but a few hundredyards of shade and shine, a small, scarce trodden wood-path whosenarrow, faint track the ripe grasses and the seeded ferns have wellnighobliterated, flinging themselves across it in all the _abandon_ oftheir unspeakable grace. The apples' round faces are reddening in thelittle Plas Berwyn orchard; the shorn fields slope barely, slantwisealong the hill-side in their yellow stubble. For weeks and weeks thecorn has been whitening under the sun's hard, veilless stare, and nowat last it has fallen; the barley has bowed its bearded head beneaththe sickle's stroke, and the oats their tremulous ringlets. They areall gathered in, and garnered in Mrs. Brandon's stout, well-thatchedstacks; to thatch a stack is the one thing a Welshman can do.

  It is an hour past noon, and the Reverend Evan Evans has released thebodies of his congregation from that white-washed, tumble-down old barnthat he is pleased to call his church, and their minds from the tensionnecessary to take in the ill-strung-together, misapplied texts that heis pleased to call his sermon.

  Plas Berwyn is a house of about the same size as Glan-yr-Afon, butthe rooms do not look so large, they are so full of large things andlarge people. The dining-room is crowded up with a great mahoganytable, a great mahogany sideboard, great mahogany chairs--inconvenientrelics, fondly clung to by people who from a larger house have subsidedinto a smaller one--a sort of warranty of past respectability likethe cottager's japanned t
ea-tray and brass candlesticks. There is anatmosphere of lumbersome age and gravity about the whole place; noneof the fragrance and light and melody that youth, sheer youth, evendivorced from any other attractive qualities, brings with it.

  Of all the gods of the Greek mythology I will bring my votive crownsand my salt cakes to Bacchus. Not the bloated old gentleman stridingdrunk over a barrel, as we figure him, but Bacchus eternally young.What is there so worthy of adoration in this aging, wrinkling world asnever ending youth?

  Most people are cross and most people are unusually hungry on Sunday.I do not know why it is, but if you observe your acquaintance youwill find it to be true. Hungry or not, the Brandons are at dinner,dining frugally and sparely on cold roast beef and cold apple tart.Nothing hot ever figures on the Brandons' Sabbath table, not evenpotatoes; indeed, unless they boiled themselves, and hopped out ofthe pot judiciously when they found themselves done, I do not see howthey could, as on the Sabbath morn every living soul at Plas Berwyn,every reluctant scullion and recalcitrant housemaid, is trundled off tochurch, the house-door locked, and the key deposited in Mrs. Brandon'spocket.

  All the Brandons hate dining in the middle of the day, consequentlythey always dine in the middle of the day on Sunday. Everybody knowsthat there are few things more distinctly unpleasant than to sit inthe same room in which you have your meals; to live with the unendingsmell and steam of departed viands up your nose and eyes and ears:consequently the Brandons always sit in the dining-room on Sunday.Sunday is to them a sort of aggravated Ash Wednesday and Good Fridayrolled into one. On Saturday night Miss Bessy Brandon swoops down uponall novels, travels, biographies, magazines, poetry books, that may belying about, makes a clean sweep of them and consigns them to disgraceand a cupboard till the return of Monday releases them.

  The Brandon family at the present moment have got their Sunday facesand their Sunday clothes on, and they misbecome most of them verysorely. Very few men look their best in their Go-to-Meeting clothes.For some unexplained reason, a black coat made by a country tailorshows its shortcomings more plainly than a coloured one. The garmentthat cases Bob's broad shoulders would draw tears from Mr. Poole'seyes, could he see it. As for Mrs. Brandon, she always has more or lessof a Sunday face on--which I do not say in any dispraise, but merelyto express a sober, steadfast face, unfurrowed by any violent gust ofmirth or blast of anger. She is like Enid and her mother,

  "clad all in faded silk,"

  and on her breast she has a miniature of the departed Brandon, inGeneva gown and bands, about as big as a teacup, and with two smallglutinous curls of the departed's hair at the back. It is so long agosince he died, that she must have forgotten all about him--what he waslike, even; but she still wears his effigy, as an old inn continues tohang out the sign of the Saracen's Head, though it is centuries sinceever a Saracen has been seen on the earth's face.

  Opposite each other, like little bad mirrors of one another, sit theMisses Brandon, in melancholy little gowns of no particular stuff andno particular colour, and little wisps of thin, fine hair well downover their ears, and minute chignons on the napes of their necks--theirlittle, bustless, waistless, hipless figures, long plaintive noses, andmeek, dull eyes proclaiming them of that virgin band to whom St. Paulhas awarded the palm of excellence. The Sunday literature is scatteredabout on the hard-bottomed chairs. "Stop the Leak" lies on the pit ofits stomach, open at the spot where Miss Bessy abandoned it in favourof the cold beef; the "Saturday Night of the World," with its mouthopen, and a paper-knife in it.

  "Cut two or three good large slices, Bob, dear; they will be so nicefor old John Owen," Mrs. Brandon is saying, in her benignant, cracked,old voice.

  "We can leave them as we go by to church; Bob can carry them," saysMiss Brandon, with authority.

  Robert is silent.

  "Bob does not like the idea of being seen carrying a basket; he thinksit would spoil his appearance."

  "Hang the appearance!" says Bob, with an easy laugh. "If a man is agentleman, it does not make him any the less a gentleman even if hewere seen wheeling a perambulator down Regent Street; but, to tell thetruth, I don't think I shall go to church this afternoon."

  "Not go to church! Not go to church!! Not go to church!!!" in threedifferent keys, rising from astonishment to horrified incredulity.

  But seldom has Mr. Brandon missed attending divine service from theauspicious day, two and twenty years ago, when, at the tender age ofthree years, being, Eutychus-like, overcome with sleep, he fell downwith much clamour from a high bench, and raised a mountainous red lumpon his baby forehead, coming into contact with the hard pew floor:

  "And his head, as he tumbled, went knicketty-knock, Like a pebble in Carisbrook well."

  Robert feels the weight of public opinion to be heavy, but he stickslike a man to what he said.

  "Not to-day, mother, I think. Esther said she would be coming inby-and-by to say good-bye to you all, and, as it is her last day, Ithought I might as well have as much as I could of her."

  "What _do_ you mean, Bob? Is the girl going to die to-night?" inquiresMiss Brandon, perking up her little tow-coloured head sharply.

  "God forbid!" he cries, with a hasty shudder; "don't suggest anythingso frightful; but she is off to-morrow for a week or ten days on avisit to some friends."

  "Going away without mentioning a word about it!"

  "Going away _now!_"

  These two sentences shoot out with simultaneous velocity from twomouths.

  "Are you surprised at her not telling _us_ where she is going? Does sheever tell _us_ anything? Does she make _us_ her confidants!" subjoinsMiss Bessy, with mild spite.

  Spite is permissible on the Sabbath, though hot potatoes and novels arenot.

  "She did not know herself till yesterday," says Bob, briefly, cuttingaway rather viciously at the beef.

  "But who are these sudden friends that have sprung up all at once? Whatare their names? Where do they live? Tell us all about them, dear boy,"says the old woman, gently, seeing that her son is chafed.

  "Their names are Sir Thomas and Lady Gerard; they are old friends ofthe Cravens' father, and they live in ----shire; that is all I knowabout them."

  "A steady-going old couple, I suppose? Will not that be rather dull fora little gay thing like Esther?"

  "There is a girl of about her own age, I believe, a ward of SirThomas's."

  "A ward!--oh!"

  "And also a son."

  "A son! o--h!"

  "Well, why should not there be a son? What harm is there in that?" asksRobert, raising his voice a little in irritation.

  "No harm whatever! Much better thing than a daughter! Can push his ownway in the world. Not that I know in the least what you are talkingabout," cries a young, saucy voice, which, with the little sleek, darkhead it belongs to, appears uninvited at the door at this juncture."Oh! I see you are all at dinner, so I'll stay outside till you havefinished; it is so horrible to be watched when one is eating, isn'tit? I hate it myself." And the head and the voice disappear again asquickly as they came.

  A ruddier tinge rushes into Robert's already ruddy cheek--ruddy as KingDavid's when he tended his few sheep in the Syrian pastures, before theweight of the heavy Israelitish crown, and of his own wars and murdershad blanched it. Down go the carving knife and fork with a clatter,and, "like a doting mallard," he flies after the little vision, bangingthe door behind him with an impetus that makes his sisters bound upfrom their horsehair chairs like two small parched peas. Presently hebrings her back in triumph.

  "So you are going to run away from us, my love?" says Mrs. Brandon,holding Esther's young white hand in her old veiny one.

  "Yes, I'm afraid so; it is a great bore, isn't it?" answers Esther,trying her best to lengthen her round face and look miserable.

  "If it is a bore, why do you go?" inquires Miss Bessy, drily.

  "Because I think I ought to make some friends for myself; I nevermet anybody before that had no friends, as Jack and I have not; welitera
lly have not one--except all of you, of course," she ends with ahappy after-thought.

  "When you come to my age, my dear," says Mrs. Brandon, shaking herhead, and all the innumerous stiff frillings of her cap, and bringingto bear on Esther's sanguine youth the weight of her own gloomyexperiences, in the infuriating way that old people do, "you will havefound out that a few good friends are worth more than a great manyindifferent ones."

  "But why should not these people be good friends?" asks the girl, alittle incredulously. "Who knows? Surely there must be more good peoplein the world than bad ones; so the chances are in favour of them."

  "We are expressly forbidden to judge," begins Miss Bessy, charitably;"otherwise----There's the first bell beginning; we had better go andput on our things, Jane."