IN THE BACKGROUND
Surely as the world of night goes round, with clusters of stars
thronging after one another, and loose wafts of vapour ever ready to
flout them, and the spirit of dreams flitting over us, without any
guidance of mind or matter, so surely will the dawn of our own little
days bring new things to us, which we cannot understand in the clearest
light of our wits beneath the sun. And of this I must give an instance
now, sorry as I am to do it.
My sister Grace (the very sweetest girl, always excepting one of course,
that ever tied a hat-string), what did she do but take a little touch of
Cupid, without knowing anything about it? She denied it strongly, and
hotly even; as a Swiss hotel-keeper abjures scarlet fever. But I
insisted the more upon it; because it was quite picturesque to see Grace
Cranleigh in a passion. I found it worth while to go as near the brink
of a downright lie as a truthful man can step, without falling over, in
order to rouse and work up this dear girl, till she actually longed to
stamp her feet. There was a vivid element--the father calls it gold, and
the brother calls it carrots--in her most abundant locks; and if you
could only hit upon a gentle strain of chaff, which must have a little
grain left in it, and pour it upon her with due gravity, she became a
charming sight to a philosopher.
Her affection was so deep, and her character so placid, that a sharp
word or two, or a knowing little sneer, produced nothing better than a
look of wonder, or sometimes a smile that abased us. She made no
pretence to any varied knowledge, or power to settle moot
questions,--though she would have known where Daghestan was,--and as for
contradiction, her tongue was never made for it, though her mind must
have whispered to her often enough that brother George's words outran
his wits. In spite of all this, it was possible to put her in a very
noble passion, when one had the time to spare. And it certainly was
worth while for the beauty of the sight, as well as for increase of
perception concerning the turns of the feminine mind. The first sign of
success for the most part was a deepening of the delicate and limpid
tint that flitted on the soft curves of cheek; and then if one went on
with calm aggravation, that terrible portent, lightning in the blue sky
of the eyes, and a seam (as of the finest needlework of an angel who
hems her own handkerchief), just perceptible and no more, in the white
simplicity of forehead. And after that (if you had the heart to go on),
no tears, none of that opening of the dikes, which the Low Country
quenches an invasion with, but a genuine burst of righteous
wrath--queenly figure, and all that sort of thing, such as Britannia
alone can achieve, when unfeeling nations have poked fun at her too
long.
Filled with a spirit of discontent, and a longing to know how girls
behave, when they are beginning to think about somebody,--for Dariel
must be a girl, as well as an Arch-female-Angel,--I contrived to fetch
Grace to a prime state of wrath, the very first morning after her return
from London. And I assure you that I learned a lot of things by that,
which served me a good turn in my own case. A woman might call this a
selfish proceeding. But what is love, except self flown skyward, and
asking its way among the radiance of Heaven?
"This is a nice trick of yours," I said, with a careless air and an
elderly smile, "to go waltzing about in hot weather with young Earls, as
if you thought nothing of your brother hard at work."
"I have not the least idea what you mean, brother George. I am thinking
of you, George, wherever I may be. I never see anybody to compare with
you."
"Thousands of much better fellows everywhere." True enough that was,
although I did not mean it. "Brilliant young men in gorgeous apparel. I
am not fit to hold a candle for them."
"Then hold it for yourself, George, as you have the right to do. And for
all of us as well. For if ever there was an industrious, simple,
unselfish fellow--"
"I never like to hear about that, as you know. The little I can do is
altogether useless. I only want to hear about the romantic young Earls."
"Young Earls!" exclaimed Grace, with an innocence so pure that it
required a little mantle on her cheeks; "I fear that you have not been
looked after properly, while I have been away, dear George; or else you
have over-exerted yourself. Coming home also so late at night, several
times, they tell me! Continuing your labours for our benefit, nobody
seems to know exactly where! Such frightful work makes you quite red in
the face."
If that were true, all that I can say is, that the idea of being brought
to book by a young girl like this, was enough to annoy the most superior
brother. But to let her see that was beneath me.
"I have thriven very tidily, while you have been away. My buttons never
come off, when I sew them on myself. But you know well enough what I
mean about young Earls, and for you to prevaricate is quite a new thing.
What I mean is about that young milksop of a fellow who writes verses,
makes sonnets, stuff he calls poems--fytte 1, and fytte 2, enough to
give you fifty fits. Lord Honey--something. What the deuce is his name?"
"If you mean the Earl of Melladew, the only thing I regret, dear George,
is that you have not a particle of his fine imagination. Not that you
need write poems, George; that of course would be wholly beyond you; but
that the gift of those higher faculties, those sensitive feelings, if
that is the right name, makes a man so much larger in his views, so very
superior to coarse language, so capable of perceiving that the universe
does not consist of men alone."
"Sensitive feelings! I should rather think so. He has got them, and no
mistake, my dear girl. Why the year we licked Eton at Lord's, I happened
just to graze him on the funny-bone with a mere lob, nothing of a whack
at all for a decent fellow; and what did he do but throw down his bat,
and roll about as if he was murdered? What could ever be the good of
such a Molly-coddle?"
"It comes to this then. Because you hurt him sadly when he was a boy,
you are inclined to look down upon him for life. Nice masculine logic!
And you nearly broke his arm, I daresay."
"Scarcely took the bark off. But I'll break something else, if I catch
him piping love-ditties down here. I should have hoped that you would
have shown a little more self-respect."
"Well, I don't quite understand what my crime is, George. And to fly
into a passion with anybody who dares so much as to look at me! That is
all Lord Melladew has done. And even that seemed too much for his
courage. I believe if he had to say boh to a goose, he would call for
pen and paper, and write it down. But your anxiety about me is quite a
new thing. Is there any favoured candidate of yours down here?"
How sharp girls are! This was too bad of her, when I was doing my utmost
for her good. The twinkle in her eyes was enough to show that she
suspected something; and if she found it out, all up thenceforth with
the whole of my scheme for her benefit.
"Yes, to be sure there is," I answered in some haste, for if I had said
no, it would have been untrue, for I thought more highly every day of
Jackson Stoneman, whereas Lord Melladew might be soon pulled down as we
were, and through the same ruinous policy; "where will you find a nicer
fellow, or one more highly esteemed (at any rate by himself), than my
old friend, Tom Erricker? And when the tinning business comes to you,
Harold will invent you a new process every day, until we are enabled to
buy back all our land. Though that would be a foolish thing to do,
unless he could find some new crop to put upon it. I cannot see why you
think so little of Tom Erricker."
"Do you think much of him, George, in earnest? Is he a man to lead one's
life? Would you like to see your favourite sister the wife of a man she
could turn round her finger?"
"Confound it! There is no such thing as pleasing you," I spoke with a
sense of what was due to myself, having made the great mistake of
reasoning. "All of you girls begin to talk as if you were to rule the
universe. No man is good enough for you, unless he is a perfect wonder
of intellect. And then if you condescend to accept him, his mind is to
be in perfect servitude to yours--yours that are occupied nine minutes
out of ten with considerations of the looking-glass."
"Can you say that of me, George? Now with your love of truth, can you
find it in your conscience to say such a thing of me?"
"Well, perhaps not. And for excellent reason. You have no need to make a
study of it. Whatever you do, or whatever you wear, it makes no
difference; for you are always--"
"What? What am I? Come, tell me the worst, while you are so put out with
me. What are you going to call me now?"
"The sweetest and the best girl in the world." I should not have put it
quite so strongly, except for the way she was looking at me. But it was
too late to qualify my words. Before I could think again, Grace was in
my arms, and her hair in a golden shower falling on my breast. "After
all, this is the best way to reason," she said with a smile that
contained a world of logic; and I only answered, "At any rate for
women;" because it is not for them to have the last word always.
However I had not changed my opinions, and did not mean to change them.
For Jackson Stoneman, whom I had at first repulsed and kept at a very
stiff arm's length, was beginning to grow upon me,--as people say,--not
through any affection for his money; so far from that indeed, that the
true reason was, I could think of him now without thinking of his money.
When we first know a man of great wealth, especially if we happen to be
very short of cash ourselves, we are apt to feel a certain shyness and
desire to keep away from him; not from any dislike of his money, or
sense of injustice at his owning such a pile, but rather through
uneasiness about ourselves, and want of perfect certainty in the bottom
of our hearts, that we may not try--like a man who steals his gas--to
tap the "main chance" behind the meter, and fetch a little into our own
parlour on the sly. And even if our conscience is too brave to shrink
from that, we know that if we walk too much in amity with this man of
gold he will want, or at least he ought to want, to pay the piper who
besets every path of every kind in England; whereas it hurts our dignity
to be paid for, except by our Uncles, or the Government.
But supposing Jackson were to become a member of our family, what could
be more inspiring and graceful, as well as delightful, for him, than the
privilege which must fall to his share, of endeavouring to please his
relatives? And looking at the matter from a point of view even more
exalted, I began to perceive the course of duty very clearly staked out
for me. And the conversation above recorded made it doubly manifest. My
sister had neither admitted, nor denied, that this young Melladew had
been attracted by her, while she was staying at her sister's house. She
had spoken of his courage with some contempt; and any perception of such
a defect would be fatal to his chances with nine girls out of ten. But
Grace had her own little pet ideas; and to shoot with swan-shot at a
swarm of gnats is better worth the cost than to reason with such girls.
They are above reason; and there's an end of it.
To pass from all this to the things one can see, it was either that very
same day or the next, that I came away out of the harvest-field, just
for a morsel to eat and a pipe, in a snug place under the fringe of a
wood, where a very small brook, fit only for minnows and grigs, made a
lot of loops and tinkles. Two or three times I had been there before,
and in fact was getting fond of it, because I believed, or as good as
believed, without knowing every twist of it, that this little water in
its own modest way never left off running until it reached the
Pebblebourne; and after that it must have gone a little faster, till it
came to the place where Dariel lived.
Possibly if I threw in a pint bottle, after scraping off the red
pyramid, who could say that it might not land at the very feet to which
all the world they ever trod upon must bow?
Encouraging these profound reflections, I sat upon the bank, and pulled
out my pocket-knife, being a little sharp-set for the moment, and aware
of some thrills in a quarter near the heart. There was very little more
to be done that afternoon, the week having ripened into Saturday, when
no man of any self-respect does more than congratulate himself upon his
industry; and on this point few have a stronger sense of duty than the
cultivator of the soil of Surrey. No matter what the weather is, or how
important the job in hand may be, his employer may repose the purest
confidence in him, that he will make off with holy zeal, right early on
a Saturday.
Therefore when I heard a step behind me, I knew that it could be none of
our "enlightened operatives;" not even Bob Slemmick would pull his coat
off at that hour, though he would sometimes stop long enough to put away
his tools. Correct was my reasoning, and with pleasure I beheld the
active figure and expressive countenance of Mr. Jackson Stoneman. Not
that every one would like this man, or care to have very much to do with
him. Universal benevolence was not by any means the polestar of his
existence, neither was it his chief employment to saunter amicably in
the Milky Way. Butter for his bread, and that the very best butter, had
probably been the main quest of his life; until his good stars brought
him down into our county, and toward our Grace. He was even beginning to
relax his mind, while he braced up his body already; and we thought that
a year or two of our fine air would bring a lot of hard gold out of him.
"Glad to see you again. Somebody told us that you were off for the
Mediterranean." In this careless manner did I shake hands with this 70
cubit and 20 carat Colossus of gold. There is humbug in all of us--even
in me.
"Well, I was thinking of it," he replied, as he sat down beside me, and
stretched his long legs, trousered a thousand times better than mine,
though I knew which had most inside the cloth; "but after all, what's
the good of foreign parts?"
Knowing but little about them as yet, and believing that he might
traverse many thousand leagues without finding anything to come up to
Surrey, I answered very simply, "You are quite right there."
"But isn't it disgusting, that in your native land, you can never make
anything go to your liking?"
This was very difficult for me to answer. I could not get along for a
thousand wicked reasons--Free-trade, Democracy, adulteration,
sewage-butter, foot-and-mouth complaint, living wage for men who have no
life, and all the other wrong end of the stick we get.
"What I mean has nothing to do with your ideas," he continued as if all
my ideas must be wrong, just when I was hoping that he began to see the
right; "for Constitutional questions, I don't care twopence. It has
become a race of roguery between both sides. Don't look savage, George,
you know it as well as I do. Your party would do anything to get into
power again. When the bone is in their own mouths, will they even try to
crack it? But I have not come to talk all that stuff. I am under your
directions in a matter nearer home. Are you going to play fast and loose
with me, while your sister is being truckled away to an idiot of an
Earl?"
If my mind had not been very equable and just, I must have had a quarrel
with him over this. And if he had looked at me with any defiance--but
his gaze was very sorrowful, as if all his hopes were blasted.
"Jackson," I answered in a rather solemn voice, having sense of my own
tribulation, and I saw that he liked me to address him thus, though the
name is not purely romantic, "you are not a bit worse off than any other
fellow. Do you suppose that nobody has ever been in love before? You
look at things from such a narrow point of view. Consider how much worse
it must be for a woman."
"Well, I wish it was." His reply upset my arguments; I found it very
difficult to re-arrange them on that basis.
"So far as that goes, I can get on well enough," he proceeded as I
looked at him sensibly; "I shall feel it for years, no doubt, but
still--but still the blackness and the bitterness of it is this, that
such a girl, such a girl as never before trod the face of the earth, or
inhaled the light of the sun--" "Don't get mixed," I implored, but he
regarded me with scorn--"should be sold, I say sold, like a lamb in the
market, to an idiot, just because he has a title!"
"You will be sorry when you have offended me," I spoke with
extraordinary self-control, taking a side glance at my own case; "for I
don't come round in a hurry, I can tell you. But you really don't know
what you are talking of. My father and mother have heard of no proposal,
neither have I. And as for Grace herself, she despises that milksop as
heartily as I do."
"George Cranleigh, I have not known you long; but this I can say without
hesitation, and I should like to see any man deny it, you are the very
noblest fellow that ever--"
"Trod the face of the earth, or inhaled the light of the sun. And why?
Because I happen to agree with you. Ah, Jackson, allow me to improve the
moment. Is there any human praise that does not flow from the like
source, from the sense that the other fellow thinks as we do, and the
subtle flattery of our own wisdom, and concurrence with our wishes."
"Shut up," he cried with a smile, which must have procured him much
lucrative business in the City; "what has Farmer Jarge to do with
moralising? But are you quite sure of what you said--that she despises
him heartily?"
"Unless anybody runs him down, she never has a good word to say for him.
He will be here upon some pretext or another; but you need have no fear.
I see exactly how to treat the case--to praise him to the nines, and
exalt him as the paragon of all manliness, and self-denial, and every
tip-top element. And then to let her observe him closely, to see if he
comes up to that mark--and behold she finds him a selfish little funk!
That is the true policy with women, Jackson Stoneman."
The stock-broker looked at me, with puzzle in his eyes, which were ever
so much keener than mine, and had a gift of creating a gable over them,
like a pair of dormer-windows with the frames painted black.
"Bless my soul, if you wouldn't do up our way!" he said; and what higher
praise could be given to a man? "Friend George, you are a thousand times
sharper than I thought. But all I wish is fair play, and no favour;
except of course favour in a certain pair of eyes."
"You shall have it, my dear fellow, you shall have it. If only you will
keep yourself in the background, and do the most benevolent things you
can think of, without letting anybody know it. Your money is the main
point against you with her. Could you manage anyhow to be bankrupt?"
"That comes to most of us in the end," he replied, with a sigh, which I
did not like at all, but hoped that it was rather of the heart than
pocket; "if that were so, George, would you still take my part?"
"Not unless my sister were really committed. But if she had set her
heart upon you, Stoneman, your wealth or your poverty would make no
difference to me; and I am sure that it would make none to her."
"What more could a man wish? And I am sure you mean it. Come what will,
I will play my game in an open and straightforward way. We must never
try any tricks with women, George. Bless them, they know us better than
we know ourselves. Perhaps because they pay so much more attention to
the subject."