AN INDIGNANT SPECTATOR.
Hester Vernon had been, during the most important years of her
existence, a sort of outlaw from life. She had been unacquainted
altogether with its course and natural order, out of all its usual
habits, separated from every social way of thinking or discipline of
mind. She belonged to a little community which thought a great deal of
itself, yet had no foundation for so doing; but, strangely enough,
though she saw through the fallacy of its general pretensions, she yet
kept its tradition in her own person and held her head above the
ordinary world in unconscious imitation of the neighbours whom she knew
to have no right to do so. She kept the spirit of the Vernons, though
she scorned them, and thought them a miserable collection of ungrateful
dependents and genteel beggars, less honourable than the real beggars,
who said "thank you" at least. And she had no way of correcting the
unfortunate estimate of the world she had formed from this group, except
through the means of Catherine Vernon, and the society in her house, of
which, at long intervals, and on a doubtful footing which set all her
pride in arms and brought out every resentful faculty, she and her
mother formed a part. If the Vernon-Ridgways and Mr. Mildmay Vernon were
bitterly critical of Catherine, missing no opportunity to snarl at the
hand that fed them, Catherine, on her part, was so entirely undeceived
in respect to them, and treated them with such a cynical indulgence and
smiling contempt, as if nothing save ingratitude and malice were to be
expected from humanity, that Hester had found no relief on that side
from her painful thoughts. She was so conscious in her own person of
meanings more high, and impulses more noble, that the scorn with which
she contemplated the people about her was almost inevitable. And when,
deeply against her will, and always with an uneasy consciousness that
her mother's pleasure in the invitations, and excitement about going,
was childish and undignified, Hester found herself in a corner of the
Grange drawing-room, her pride, her scornful indignation and high
contempt of society, grew and increased. Her poor little mother standing
patiently smiling at all who would smile at her, pleased with the little
recognition given her as "one of the poor ladies at the Vernonry," and
quite content to remain there for hours for the sake of two minutes'
_banal_ conversation now and then, to be overlooked at supper, and taken
compassion upon by a disengaged curate, or picked up by some man who had
already brought back a more important guest, made Hester furious and
miserable by her complacency. Hester herself was one of some half dozen
girls in white muslin, who kept a wistful eye upon the curate in the
hope of being taken away to the supper-room down stairs, from which such
a sound of talk and laughter came up to the forlorn ones left above. But
no curate, however urgent, ever persuaded Hester to go down, to stand at
the tail of the company and consume the good things on Catherine's
table. She saw it all from that point of view which takes the glitter
off the brightest surface. Why did those poor girls in white muslin, not
being compelled, like Hester, continue to go? There were two sisters,
who would chatter together, pretending to be very merry, and point out
to each other the pictures, or some new piece of furniture, and say that
Miss Vernon had such taste. They were always of the number of those who
were forgotten at supper, who were sent down after the others came up
stairs with careless little apologies. Why did they come? But Hester was
not of a temper to chatter or to look at the pictures, or to make the
best of the occasion. She stood in the corner behind her mother, and
made it quite clear that she was not "enjoying herself." She took no
interest in the pieces that were performed on the piano, or the songs
that were sung, and even rejected the overtures of her companions in
misfortune to point out to her the "very interesting photographs" which
covered one table. Some of the elder ladies who talked to her mother
made matters worse by compassionately remarking that "the poor girl" was
evidently "terribly shy." But, otherwise, nobody took any notice of
Hester; the other people met each other at other houses, had some part
in the other amusements which were going on, and knew what to say to
each other. But Hester did not know what to say. Edward Vernon, her
early acquaintance, whom she would still often meet in the morning, and
between whom and Hester there existed a sort of half-and-half alliance
unlike her relations with any one else, took no open notice of her; but
would sometimes cast a glance at her as he passed, confidential and
secret. "How are you getting on?" he would say; and when Hester answered
"Not at all," would shrug his shoulders and elevate his eyebrows and say
"Nor I" under his breath. But if he did not "get on," his manner of
non-enjoyment was, at least, very different from Hester's. He was, as it
were, Catherine Vernon's son and representative. He was the temporary
master of the house. Everybody smiled upon him, deferred to him,
consulted his wishes. Thus, even Edward, though she regarded him with
different eyes from the others, helped to give a greater certainty to
Hester's opinion on the subject of Society. Even he was false
here--pretending to dislike what he had no reason to dislike, and, what
was perhaps worse, leaving her to stand there neglected, whom he was
willing enough to talk with when he found her alone.
Hester felt--with her head raised, her nostrils expanded, a quiver of
high indignation in her lip--that she herself would never suffer any one
to stand thus neglected in any room of hers. Those women in their
diamonds, who swept down stairs while her mother stood and looked on
wistfully, should not be the first in her house. She would not laugh and
say "One of the Vernonry," as Catherine permitted herself to do. It
seemed to Hester that the poor and the small would be the first whom she
would think of, and amuse and make happy. They should have the best of
everything, they who had not the best of anything in life. Society (she
thought, always in that corner, where there was full time to make
theories, and the keen prick of present humiliation to give animation to
them) should be a fine compensation to those who were not so happy as
the others. A true hostess should lay herself out to make up to them,
for that one genial moment, for the absence of beauty and brightness in
their lives. It should be all for them--the music, and the wit, and the
happy discourse. Those who lived in fine houses, who had everything that
wealth could give, should stand aside and give place to the less happy.
There should be no one neglected. The girl whom no one noticed stood
apart and invented her high magnanimous court, where there should be no
respect of persons. But it was not wonderful if in this real one she
felt herself standing upon a pedestal, and looked out with scorn upon
the people who were "enjoying themselves," and with a sense of bitter
mortification watched her poor little mother curtseying and smiling,
pleased to go down to supper after the fine people were satisfied, on
somebody's benevolent arm who was doing duty for the second time. "No, I
thank you," Hester said to the curate, who stood offering his arm,
tossing her head like a young princess. "I never go to supper." She was
not without a consciousness either, that Catherine, hearing this, had
been mightily amused by her airs and her indignation, and next time
looked out for them as one of the humours of the night.
Thus it will be seen that all Hester's small experience of society
taught her to despise it. She was outside of the life of families, and
knew little or nothing of the ordinary relations of parents and
children, and of that self-sustaining life where there are no painful
bonds of obligation, no dependence, no forced submission of one set of
people to another. She thought the mass was all the same, with such
exceptions as old Captain Morgan and his wife rarely appearing, and here
and there a visionary, indignant soul such as herself, free as yet from
all bonds, looking on with proud consciousness that were power in her
hands it should not be so. The great question of love had scarcely
flitted at all across her firmament. She had indeed a trembling sense of
possibility such as youth itself could not be youth if destitute of, a
feeling that some time suddenly there might come down upon her path out
of the skies, or appear out of the distance, some one--in whom all the
excellences of earth should be realised; but this, it need not be said,
was as entirely unlike an ideal preference for dark eyes and moustaches,
as it was unlike the orthodox satisfaction in a good match which her
mother had so abruptly revealed. It was like the dawn upon the horizon
where as yet there is no sun and no colour, a visionary, tremulous
premonition of the possible day. A girl who has this feeling in her
heart is not only horrified but angry, when the fact comes down upon her
in the shape of a dull man's proposal or a parent's recommendation. It
is a wrong to herself and to him, and to the new earth and the new
heaven which might be coming. Hester left her mother on that memorable
morning with the glow of a fiery resentment in her heart. Everything
seemed to grow vulgar under that touch, even things which were heavenly.
Not a magnanimous hero, but Harry--not a revelation out of heaven, out
of the unknown, but a calculation of his good qualities and the comforts
he could bestow. All this no doubt was very highflown and absurd, but
the girl knew no better. She felt it an insult to her, that her mother
should have set such a bargain before her--and oh, worse than an insult,
intolerable! when poor Mrs. John, in her ignorance, invited the
confidence of this high visionary maiden on the subject of love. This
drove the girl away, incapable of supporting such profanation and
blasphemy. She went out upon the Common, where she could be quite alone,
and spent an hour or two by herself beyond reach of anybody, trying to
shake off the impression. She had nothing to do to occupy her mind, to
force out of it an unpleasant subject. She could only rush out and
secure for herself solitude at least, that she might master it and get
it under her feet.
But sometimes to appoint a meeting with yourself to discuss such a
question, ends in another way from that which has been foreseen. Sitting
alone under a bush of whins, some chance touch of fancy made Hester
think of her mother's aspirations towards the White House, the ormolu
set, and the portrait in short sleeves. Thoughts arise sometimes in a
curious dramatic order, to all appearance independent of the mind of the
thinker, as if certain pictures were presented to it by some independent
agency outside. In this way there gleamed across the mind of Hester a
sudden presentation of her mother in those same short sleeves, her
pretty dark hair in two large bows on the top of her head, her feet in
white satin shoes with sandals, like an artless beauty out of the
_Keepsake_ or the _Forget-me-not_. The imagination was so sudden that in
the midst of thoughts so different it tempted the girl to a smile. Poor
mother, so young and pretty--and silly, perhaps! And then Hester
recollected old Mr. Rule's story, how she had rushed to her desk and
produced twenty pounds to save the bank from bankruptcy. The girl
recollected, with an indignant pang of compassion, that Catherine had
produced thousands of pounds, and _had_ saved the bank. What virtue was
that in her? She had the money whilst the other had not, and Mrs. John's
helpless generosity was just as great. Poor little mother! and the house
she was so proud of, her "married home," her ideal of everything that
was fine and handsome. Hester's imagination after this made a jump, and
beheld her mother in the widow's dress of black which she never left
off, standing, glad of any crumbs of notice which might fall to her in
the corner of the drawing-room where Catherine the successful reigned
supreme. It angered the girl that her mother should be so
humble-minded--but yet it was quite characteristic of her. And what a
contrast was in those two scenes! Who made her think of this at the very
moment when, rushing out to escape from her mother, she had felt the
gulf of incomprehension between them more bitterly than ever before? It
could not be anything but a kind influence that did it, a good fairy, or
even perhaps a friendly angel, grieved at the emancipation of this child
from the tenderest bonds of nature. Anyhow Hester thought, with a sudden
moistening of her eyelids, of the pretty creature in the picture and the
widow in the black gown at the same moment. From white satin to crape,
from twenty to fifty--ah, and more than these, from the thoughtless
prosperity of a creature who had never known anything different, to the
humiliation borne so sweetly of the too-submissive artless soul. Her
eyelids moistened, and the sun caught them, and amused himself making
tiny rainbows in the long lashes. Hester's heart too was caught and
touched. Poor _petite mère_! how much, as she would have said herself,
she had "gone through!"
And then something occurred to Hester which made her set her white teeth
and clench her hands. If she pleased she could set that right again
which was so wrong. She could put back her mother in the White House she
loved, take down the innocent portrait in white satin, and hang it in
the place of honour once more; throw open finer rooms than Catherine's
for the reception of, oh! so different a company--society in which no
one should be overlooked, and in which Catherine's gentle rival should
be supreme. She could do all this if she chose. The thought suddenly
bursting upon her made her head go round. She could put her mother in
the place from which it seemed (wrongly, but yet that was so natural an
impression) Catherine had driven her, turn the tables altogether upon
Catherine, and make a new centre, a new head, everything new. The girl
raised her head with a little shake and toss like a high-bred horse, as
this strange and sudden suggestion came into her mind like an arrow. She
could do it all. The suggestion that she could do it when it came from
her mother had been an insult and wrong; but when it came as it did now,
though there was horror in it, there was also temptation, the sharp
sting of an impulse. What was the dreadful drawback? Nothing but Harry:
no monster, nothing terrible, a good fellow, a docile mind--one who had
never been unkind. Hester had judged him with his sister for a long
time, but of late days she had learned to separate Harry from Ellen. He
had always been _nice_, as Mrs. John said--not great indeed or noble,
but honest and kind in his simple way. Once at least (Hester remembered)
he had--what was nothing less than heroic in the circumstances--stepped
forward, broken all the Redborough laws of precedence, and "taken down"
her mother at one of the Grange parties, in entire indifference to the
fact that ladies more great were waiting for his arm. This recollection
jumped suddenly into her mind as she sat in the solitude thinking it all
over. He had always done his best, coming to her, standing by her side,
with not much to say indeed, but with a sort of silent championship
which Hester had laughed at, but which she remembered now. He was not
very often present at the Grange parties; but when he was there, this
was what he had done. It was no great matter, but in the excited state
of her mind it told upon her. Edward came only by moments when the
company was otherwise engaged, and then spoke to her rather by signs, by
that shrug of the shoulders and elevation of the eyebrows, than in
words. But Harry had penetrated to her corner and stood by her, making
himself rather larger than usual that everybody might see him. The
ungrateful girl had laughed, and had not been proud of her large-limbed
champion; but when she thought of it now her heart melted to him. _He_
had not been afraid of what people would say. And after all, to be able
to set everything right, to restore her mother's comfort and exaltation,
to be free and rich, with no greater drawback than Harry, would that be
so difficult to bear? She shivered at the thought; but yet, that she did
so much as ask herself this question showed how far already her thoughts
had gone.
After the untoward conversation of this morning, Mrs. John took great
pains to keep Harry back. She ventured even to write a note to him,
composed in great anxiety, very much underlined and emphatic. "I have
sounded her, and find her mind _a complete blank_ on that subject. She
has never thought about it, and _she has seen no one_, as you remarked.
If you will but put off a little, I feel sure it will be followed by the
happiest results." Circumstances, as it happened, served Mrs. John's
purpose, and made it indispensable to put off a little any formal
advances. For Harry had to leave Redborough on business for a week or
two. His consequent absence from the Vernonry was seen with great
satisfaction by the neighbours, who knew no reason for that absence.
"He has seen his mistake in time," the Miss Vernon-Ridgways said,
congratulating each other, as if the destruction of poor Hester's
supposed hopes and projects was some gain to them; and Mr. Mildmay
Vernon nodded his head over his newspaper, and chuckled and announced
that Harry was no fool. They all remarked with much particularity to
Mrs. John that her visitor had not long continued his assiduities.
"But we can't expect, you know, that a young man should always be coming
out here," said Miss Matilda. "What was there to gain by it? and that is
the rule nowadays. Besides, dear Catherine does not like these nephews
of hers, as she calls them--no more nephews than I am!--to see too much
of _us_. They might hear things which she wouldn't wish them to hear."
Mr. Mildmay's remark was jaunty like himself. "So Harry has given you
up! Young dog, it's what they all do, you know. He loves and he rides
away. I was no better myself, I suppose."
Mrs. John could have cried with humiliation and pain. She explained that
Mr. Harry was absent; that he had told her he was going away; but these
kind people laughed in her face. Perhaps this too had a certain effect
upon Hester's mind. She heard the laugh, though her mother did all she
could to keep her from hearing; and an impulse to show them her
power--to prove once for all that she could have everything they prized,
the money, and the finery, and the "position," which they all envied and
sneered at, when she pleased--an impulse less noble, but also keener
than the previous one, came suddenly into her mind. When Harry came
back, however, Hester quailed at the thought of the possibility which
she had not rejected. She saw him coming, and stole out the other way,
round the pond and under the pine-trees, so as to be able to reach the
house of the Morgans without being seen. And when Harry appeared he had
to run the gauntlet of the three bitter spectators, the chorus of the
little drama, without seeing its heroine.
"Dear Harry, back again!" the Miss Vernon-Ridgways cried; "how nice of
you to come again. We made up our minds you had given us up. It was so
natural that you should tire of us, a set of shabby people. And dear
Catherine is so fond of you; she likes to keep you to herself."
"I don't know that she's so fond of me. I've been in town on business,"
Harry said, eager to escape from them.
Mr. Mildmay patted him on the shoulder with his newspaper. "Keep your
free will, my boy," he said; "don't give in to habits. Come when you
please, and go when you please--that's a man's rule."
Harry looked at this feeble Mephistopheles as if he would have liked to
kick him, but of course he did not; because he was feeble and old, and
"a cad," as the young man said in his heart; and so went in by the
verandah door to see Hester, and found her not, which was hard, after
what he had gone through. Mrs. John pinned him down for a talk, which
she was nervously anxious for, and which he, after the first moment,
liked well enough too; and perhaps it was as well, he consented to
think, that he should see how the land lay.
Meanwhile, Hester very cautiously had crept into the house of the old
people next door. The two houses were divided only by a partition, yet
how different the atmosphere was! The keen inquisitions of the Vernonry,
its hungry impatience to know and see everything, its satirical
comments, its inventions of evil motives, were all unknown here. And
even her mother's anxieties for her own advancement put a weary element
into life, which in the peaceful parlour of the old captain and his wife
existed no more than any other agitation. The old lady seated in the
window, putting down her book well pleased when the visitor came in, was
an embodiment of tranquillity. She had lived no easy life; she had known
many troubles and sorrows, laboured hard and suffered much; but all that
was over. Her busy hands were still, her heart at rest. Hester did not
know sometimes what this great tranquillity meant, whether it was the
mere quiet of age, almost mechanical, a blank of feeling, or if it was
the calm after great storms, the power of religious consolation and
faith. It filled her sometimes with a little awe--sometimes with a sort
of horror. To think that she, with all the blood dancing in her veins,
should ever come to be like that! And yet even in her small round she
had seen enough to be sure that these old people had a kind of happiness
in their quiet which few knew. Mrs. Morgan took off her spectacles, and
closed them within the book she had been reading, well pleased when
Hester appeared. The captain had gone out; she was alone; and perhaps
she did not care very much for her book. At all events, Hester was her
favourite, and the sight of the girl's bright looks and her youth, her
big eyes always full of wonder, her hair that would scarcely keep
straight, the "something springy in her gait," pleased the old lady and
did her good.
"May I stay and talk to you?" Hester said.
"You shall stay, dear, certainly, if you think it right; but I see
everything from my window, and Harry Vernon has just gone in to see your
mother. Do you know?"
"I saw him coming," Hester said, with a cloud upon her face, which
looked like displeasure, but was indeed the trouble of her
self-discussion and doubt as to what she should do.
"Something is wrong," said the old lady, "and you have come to tell me.
Are you going to marry Harry Vernon, Hester?"
"Would that be something wrong?" cried the girl, looking up quickly,
with a certain irritation. She did not mean to have so important a
question fore-judged in this easy way.
"That is according as you feel, my dear; but I fear he is not good
enough for you. Catherine says----"
Now the Morgans were altogether of Catherine's faction, being her
relations, and not--as the other members of the community remembered
with much resentment--Vernons at all. It was a sinful use of the family
property as concentrated in Catherine's hand, to support these old
people who had no right to it. More or less this was the sentiment of
the community generally, even, it is to be feared, of Mrs. John herself;
and consequently, as an almost infallible result, they were on
Catherine's side, and took her opinions. Hester stopped the mouth of the
old lady, so to speak, hastily holding up her hand.
"That is a mistake," she cried; "Catherine is quite wrong! She does not
like him; but he is honest as the skies--he is good. You must not think
badly of him because Catherine has a prejudice against him."
"That is a rash thing for you to say. Catherine is a great deal older,
and a great deal wiser than you."
"She may be older, and she may be wiser; but she does not know
everything," said Hester. "There is one prejudice of hers you don't
share--she thinks the same of me."
This staggered the old lady.
"It is true--she does not understand you somehow; things seem to go the
wrong way between times."
"Am I difficult to understand?" cried Hester. "I am only nineteen, and
Catherine is sixty----"
"You are not quite so easy as A B C," said Mrs. Morgan, with a smile;
"still I acknowledge that is one thing against her judgment. But you do
not answer my question. Are you going to marry Harry Vernon?"
Hester, seated in the shelter of the curtain, invisible from outside,
hardly visible within, looked out across the Common to the place where
she had sat and pondered, and breathed a half-articulate "No."
"Then, Hester, you should tell him so," said the old lady. "You should
not keep him hanging on. Show a little respect, my dear, to the man who
has shown so much respect to you."
"Do you call that respect?" said Hester, and then she added, lowering
her voice, "My mother wishes it. She thinks it would make her quite
happy. She says that she would want nothing more."
"Ah!" said the old lady, "that means----" It is to be feared that she was
going to say something not very respectful to Hester's mother, about
whom, also, Catherine's prejudice told: but she checked herself in time.
"That gives it another aspect," she said.
"Do you think it would be right to marry a man only because your mother
wished it?" asked Hester, fixing her eyes on Mrs. Morgan's face.
"Sometimes," said the old lady, with a smile.
"Sometimes! I thought you were like the captain, and believed in love."
"Sometimes," she said again. "It does not do in every case: that is what
I object to the captain and you for. You are always so absolute. Love
rejects suitableness; and if Catherine is not quite wrong--"
"She is quite wrong!" cried Hester again, vehemently. "She does not know
Harry any more than she knows me. He is not clever, but he is true."
"Then marry him, my dear."
"Why should I marry him?--one does not marry every one whom Catherine
misjudges--oh, there would be too many!--nor even to please mother."
"I am perhaps as poor a judge as Catherine, Hester."
"Now you are unjust--now you are unkind!" cried the girl, with anger in
her eyes.
"Come," said Mrs. Morgan, "you must not assault me. You are so young and
so fierce: and my old man is not here to take my part."
"I cannot ask him, because he is a man," said Hester; "but I know what
he would say. He would not say 'Sometimes' like you; he would say
'Never!' And that is what I think too."
"Because you are so young, my dear; and my old man, bless him, he is
very young. But this world is a very strange place. Right and wrong, are
like black and white; they are distinct and easy. The things that baffle
us are those that perhaps are not quite right, but certainly are not
wrong."
"Do you call it not wrong--to do what your heart revolts at to please
your mother?"
"I call that right in one sense; but I would not use such strong
language, Hester," the old lady said.
"This must be metaphysics," said the girl. "Sophistry, isn't it?
casuistry, I don't know what to call it; but I see through you. It would
be right to do a great many things to please her, to make my dress her
way instead of mine, to stop at home when she wanted me though I should
like to go out; but not--surely not, Mrs. Morgan----"
"To marry the man of her choice, though he is not your own?"
Hester nodded her head, her face glowing with the sudden blush that went
and came in a moment. She was agitated though she did not wish to show
it. The impulse to do it became suffocating, the shiver of repugnance
stronger as she felt that the danger was coming near.
"I am not so sure," said the old lady in her passionless calm.
"Sometimes such a venture turns out very well; to please your mother is
a very good thing in itself, and if you are right about his character,
and care for no one else, and can do it--for after all that is the great
thing, my dear--_if you can do it_--it might turn out very well, better
than if you took your own way."
"Is that all that is to be thought of, whether it will turn out well?"
cried Hester, indignantly. "You mean if it is successful; but the best
way is not always successful."
"Success in marriage means almost everything," the old lady said.
Then there was a pause. Separated only by the partition, Harry Vernon
was discoursing with Mrs. John on the same subject. He was telling her
all he would do for his wife when he got her. The White House should be
refurnished; but if she pleased the best of the old things, "the ormolu
and all that rubbish," Harry said, which gave the poor lady a wound in
spite of her great and happy emotion, should be put into the rooms which
were to be her rooms for life; but for Hester he would have everything
new. And he thought he saw his way to a carriage: for the phaeton,
though Ellen was fond of it, was not quite the thing, he allowed, for a
lady. He had got just about that length, and was going on, a little
excited by his own anticipations, and filling his future mother-in-law
with delight and happiness, when Hester, on the other side of the wall,
suddenly sprang up and cried, throwing up her hands--
"But I cannot do it!" in tones so painful and so clear that it was a
wonder they did not penetrate the wainscotting.
Mrs. Morgan, who had been waiting for a reply, folded her old
fingers--worn with the hard usage of life, but now so quiet--into each
other, and said, softly--
"That was what I thought."