“HIGH LIFE.”
SIR EDWIN LANDSEER intended to produce a broad contrast when he painted
two dogs, and ticketed them respectively “Low Life” and “High Life.” I
need hardly say he succeeded in his attempt. Never were dog nature and
dog surroundings more widely opposed than those which are to be found
in the two pictures.
I have already described Prince’s appearance, and sketched his history,
while I have left my readers to study for themselves the copy which
the painter has supplied of the dog’s primitive abode. But I must turn
back and call attention to it at this point, in order to mark the gulf
between it and Carlo’s home. First, look at Prince’s lodging, with its
rude block for a table, the red-handled knife on the block, the pewter
pot which has contained his master’s beer and still holds his pipe
standing behind the dog, and, lying at his feet, a well-polished bone.
Next, contemplate Carlo sitting in an elegant, pensive attitude in his
master’s study; was there ever a deeper gulf alike between dogs and
their quarters?
Carlo belongs as unmistakeably to the castle—one turret of which,
with its fluttering flag when the family are at home, we see through
the study window in the picture—as the castle belongs to Carlo. Both
dog and scene—the table littered with books and writing materials,
the riding-gloves, the fine old bell glass and flask of rare old
wine, the foils, together with that glimpse through the window of
the castle turret—are products of centuries of civilisation and
generations of culture. Now look at the dog himself, as refined as
any fine lady, for no fine gentleman was ever so absolutely removed
from the faintest trace of rude nature—not to say from caddishness or
snobbishness. Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. Measure
him from the tip of his long nose to the point of his long tail, from
his small head and slender throat to his delicate haunches and fine
legs, and do not forget his large soft eyes and exquisite skin. Is he
not grace personified?—grace, not dignity, for dignity implies power.
Indeed there are critics who would limit Carlo’s dominant attribute
to superlative elegance, since they allege that perfect grace demands
natural vigour, and vigour or power is exactly the quality which the
dog lacks. Being a high-bred hound, he may be fleet as a bird—fleet as
Master Magrath of racing renown; but stamina, endurance (apart from
fleetness), simple force of constitution and character, are not in him.
I have said Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. You cannot
look at him without suspecting what a weight the vulgar world is on
his mind. It does not enrage him; he is too mildly superior for that.
Rage is more or less of a brutal quality, and Carlo is as little of a
savage brute as any four-footed creature ever was. The wilful low life
and rude practices of the mass of living beings simply depress his not
very strong spirits, and torture his keen sensibilities. He is often
rendered wretched by the mere coarseness of the world in general; and
this wretchedness bulks so largely in his excited imagination that
his peculiar trial shuts out from him every other dog’s trial. Carlo
has fared delicately all his days. He has never known what it is to
want food and shelter; the best and most suitable of everything has
been provided sedulously for his use by the men whose business it is
to wait upon him, instead of his having had to hunt hard to satisfy
his most pressing wants, and to submit to being hunted in turn, kicked
and abused for presuming to have wants, and for seeking to satisfy
them. He has hardly ever heard a rough word addressed to him, so that
he will mope for hours if he is merely overlooked—if his master has
not smiled upon him, stroked his head, taken in his hand one fine paw
after the other. Naturally, Carlo has little sympathy to spare from
his own sentimental woes, which he plaintively airs and nurses, for
the matter-of-fact miseries of homeless dogs, starved, beaten, done to
death for the idle amusement of the spectators.
Yet Carlo is a gentle, generous dog, by natural temperament, and,
so far from having no feelings, his feelings are only of too
fine a description. The truth is, there is a subtle—all the more
serious—danger to moral character in exquisitely fine feelings,
especially when they accompany a morbidly fastidious taste and
effeminate habits.
When I say effeminate habits, I wish not to be mistaken. I do not mean
that Carlo was a larger lap-dog, utterly idle and useless—that he sat
and lay all day and all night in that luxurious study, or in a still
more luxurious drawing-room, or in a kennel very little behind the two
rooms in comfort and beauty. On the contrary, he saw plenty of sun and
wind. He had been trained, like his master, to count as the best part
of his time those hours which were spent in the open air, and in active
exercise. Coursing was exactly to Carlo what stalking deer, riding to
hounds, and rowing a boat were to his master. When the dog’s blood and
breeding were up, he could make a good fight in his doggish sport.
What I do intend to convey is, that in Carlo, and, for that matter, in
his master also, the instincts of self-preservation, self-resource, and
independence were sensibly and unconsciously weakened. The two could
not have earned a dinner for themselves to save their lives, and if
they had earned it they would not have known what to do with it, unless
some foreign aid had happily come to them. Even after they had been
initiated into the necessary process, they would have been so revolted
by all the plain details inevitable to preparing a dinner, that they
would have left it to be devoured by hardier applicants, till hunger
urged them on to the stifling of their over-trained and stimulated
susceptibilities.
Carlo first saw the light in a perfectly appointed kennel, built in
the shape of a pagoda, one of the show-places in a noble ancestral
park. His birth was attended with all the _éclat_ of the coming into
the world of a great and important personage, and his pedigree was as
proudly and hotly upheld as that of many a prince whose inheritance
depends on his family tree. The young heir up at the castle had
scarcely been welcomed with greater exultation, or had more unremitting
care and attention bestowed on him than was lavished by the kennel
staff on the puppy, the finest of the litter, the progeny of a valuable
and favourite dog. Neither were the kennel men and boys the only or
the principal persons who waited on the levees of Carlo. My lord and
my lady visited him almost daily; the most cherished visitors at the
castle were taken to inspect his points, and admire his promise; indeed
it was regarded as a mark of favour, on the part of the earl and the
countess, when some comparatively humble visitor—parson, lawyer, or
doctor, with his wife or daughters—was invited to go to the kennel and
have a look at the special puppy. The kennel was the first place the
young lord ran to when he was home from Eton.
Carlo was led through all the trying stages of puppyhood with the most
tender anxiety for his welfare. His weaning and teething were carefully
seen to. I am almost sure that he was inoculated for distemper,
either in the ear or under a front leg, at a spot which could not be
reached by tooth or claw; and that the operation was performed by a
distinguished veterinary surgeon, who came from the next large town for
the purpose.
If I am right, by this means the dog was enabled to escape altogether
the common scourge of the young of the dog race. And I believe the
most distant suspicion of mange, imported by some extraordinary means
to Carlo, would have been enough to have driven the head kennel-man
into a fit, would have covered with gloom the countenance of the young
lord, and would even have brought a cloud over the brow of his father
the earl, who was a famous statesman, and was understood to have the
destinies of nations at his beck.
That was a great day to more than the dog—on which he was emancipated
from kennel thraldom, and was brought to the castle, where he was
destined to be the companion and friend of the future earl when he
was at home, though by this decision a sacrifice was made, of what
would probably have been Carlo’s laurels as a regular coursing dog.
Carlo might course occasionally, stirred by his master’s presence and
encouragement, but no study or drawing-room dog, whatever his pedigree,
could go in with a hope of winning the great matches equal to that of
the dog who was kept up to the mark, by being maintained solely for
that end.
It was an evidence of the degree to which social claims are permitted
to prevail in every circle. “De Vaux wishes to have the dog constantly
with him,” said De Vaux’s mother, as if the desire of the heir settled
the question; “and Carlo is such a nice gentlemanly dog. I have been
so frightened for De Vaux’s taking a fancy to a hideous turnspit, or
a rough German boar-hound, or a fighting bull-terrier, with a beauty
spot over one eye, or even to some wretched cur. Young men are so odd
now-a-days,” she finished with a sigh of relief.
Not a footman or a housemaid was not respectful to Carlo, well-nigh as
to my lord and my lady—tolerant of the trouble he gave the servants,
flattered if he took any notice of them. Like all aristocratic dogs,
he was inclined to keep his distance from the domestics, even from his
old friends of the kennel, so soon as he saw that they were not his
masters—that his master, who was also his familiar friend, proved to
be their master, and stopped short with being so. Carlo was disposed
to keep up an almost unbroken reserve towards the worthy persons,
in their own way, who used the back stairs. He would no more have
thought of visiting the kitchen, or even the housekeeper’s room or
the butler’s pantry, on terms of equality, than I daresay you and I,
my reader, would dream of doing, if we were, like Carlo, not so much
the servant as the privileged member of an earl’s family. But Carlo
was such a gentlemanly dog, as my lady had said, that he was incapable
of arrogance, far less insolence. His manner was, like that of Queen
Charlotte when she curtseyed to her humblest maid-servant, or of King
George when he took off his hat to the gentlemen of his band, always
gracious and affable.
My lord and my lady had a great partiality for Carlo. My lord would
take him for a walk when the dog’s master was not at home. My lady
would encourage him to sit with her in her morning-room, where
she conducted her correspondence, and to glide after her in her
conservatory and flower-garden, where she gathered flowers, and played
at being a gardener in a big apron and gauntlet gloves, wielding shears
for the destruction of dead leaves and twigs.
Carlo was introduced into the family picture which a great artist from
London came down to the castle to paint. The dog had been painted
several times before, and photographed on occasions without number—with
De Vaux on his pony, with my lady standing on the terrace, or entering
the family’s almshouses; but it was the first time that Carlo had been
put on the same canvas with the head of the house, and in a picture
which was destined to be one of the great works of the generation,
secured for the castle. My lord, who himself dabbled in art, likened
the introduction of Carlo into the piece to the use made of the white
greyhound by Rubens in the “Arundel Family,” and to the similar
employment of a dog, with the best effect, in Van Dyck’s “Wilton
Family.” One cannot wonder that Carlo felt perfectly justified in
regarding himself as a member of the earl’s family.
But Carlo was De Vaux’s special property, and the relation between them
continued unbroken, in spite of the young man’s frequent absences on
his travels, during the first period of the connection. These absences
were trying to Carlo, who had little else to do save to miss his
friend, and pine for his return; and the more he pined, the more he was
praised and petted for his fidelity and devotion, till—as the dog had
naturally no dislike, but, on the contrary, a great yearning for praise
and petting, provided they were administered with the delicacy which
he demanded in all the dealings with him—he ran a great risk either of
falling into a normal condition of pining, or of becoming guilty of
the most abominable affectation, passing by insensible degrees into
hardened hypocrisy.
Carlo was saved from these pitfalls by De Vaux’s return from his
travels, which had of course extended from Europe to Asia, including
Palestine and Damascus; Africa, as far as has been made out of the
course of the Nile; and America, across the continent to the Rocky
Mountains.
After the celebration of De Vaux coming of age—which, to tell the
truth, was in its exuberant rejoicings a considerable infliction both
on him and Carlo—the heir settled down as far as he was likely to do in
his ancestral home, and took Carlo into his constant society, until the
dog had nothing more left to wish for.
Ah! there was the rub; it was the having nothing more left to wish for
that threatened to be Carlo’s bane—to weigh him down with satiety, and
oppress him with a sense of life accomplished. De Vaux laboured under
a touch of the same complaint, only it took a higher form in the man
than in the dog, and De Vaux and all his friends gave it another name.
They made out that De Vaux, with his gifts and prospects, was rendered
so difficult to satisfy, while he had such a craving after perfection,
that the whole machinery of history and society disheartened and
distressed him, until he could not make up his mind—and it did not
really seem worth while to make it up—to join any political party,
conservative or reforming, or take up any calling or work in life,
beyond dreaming over what might have been, and deploring what was.
De Vaux was not unlike Carlo in body and mind, if you make allowance
for the fact that the man was royally endowed compared to the dog.
The young lord was a fine handsome young fellow, more elegant than
muscular, in spite of the muscular education he had received both at
his public school and his university, yet quite manly enough to despise
sybarite indulgences and face hardships when they came in the way of
his sport or travels. What was enervated in him had to do with his
excessive fastidiousness and his want of hopefulness, his mental and
moral languor. He was sufficiently thoughtful always, and courteously
considerate when one came across him personally—so kindly that he would
not have harmed a fly—always unless in the way of sport.
De Vaux was grieved to disappoint his noble parents, who would have
liked him, with his rank and talents, to enter the world and do his
devoir, and win his spurs gallantly. But to him the game was not worth
the candle; and when he regarded his fellow-players and the weapons
he must use, he shrank unconquerably from the contest. Altogether, he
was of as little use in the toiling, struggling world—except it might
be in affording an example of refraining from the indulgence of gross
appetites which he did not possess, and of pursuing cultivation for its
own sake—as one can well imagine in the case of a highly responsible
man.
Perhaps, as a consequence, De Vaux suffered greatly, like Carlo, from
that sickening of a vague disease, that inexplicable, unbearable
depression, that weight of sympathy thrown back on itself, which
will always beset such men. I do not know how he could have stood
it, without breaking out into some abnormal eccentricity, or seeking
a miserable refuge from himself and his weakness in excess or vice,
if it had not been for the intellectual and muscular sides of him,
both of which had been carefully developed. They afforded him the
relief of a variety of interests in study, art, science, in long walks
and rides—wherein not only his nerves and muscle were braced, but a
wholesome love of natural history was farther fostered, in fishing,
shooting, deer-stalking, hunting, each in its proper season. Neither
was he, in his father’s house, at liberty to neglect intercourse
with his neighbours, though they afforded him much less solace, and
frequently grated painfully on his fine perceptions, so that they drove
him to give tokens of sinking, with all his advantages, into the life
of a confirmed recluse before he was thirty years of age.
Withal, it was rather a melancholy spectacle to see De Vaux and Carlo
sitting listlessly together on a glad spring morning, or a serene
summer evening, by the bank of a trout stream, or at the man’s study
window—De Vaux’s long legs crossed, his long hand supporting his
drooping head, his eyes gazing wistfully and moodily into the distance;
while the dog, reflecting closely his master’s expression, if not
his attitude, sat with his head declined also, and his nose sniffing
the air in a kind of tender despondency—both so weary and sad, with
wonderfully treacherous fascination for them in the energy-sapping
sadness—and yet both so goodly in their respective fashions; De Vaux
not yet twenty-three, Carlo not turned ten years.
There was only one element of light to be thankful for in this,
among the many mysteries of existence. When you thought of the low
life of Prince and his friend Jack, with all their shortcomings and
deprivations, and, in the middle of it, how courageously—though it
might be with a stolid courage—the dog and the lad endured misfortunes
unmerited as well as merited, and what an absolute hearty relish
remained to them wherewith to seize and enjoy every scrap of pleasure
that came in their way in the course of the day’s difficulties; how
they were not weary of life, in spite of the troubles they had known,
but were always looking forward, in the teeth of their experience,
to happier to-morrows—even when Prince was dragging out his dreary
days in Mr. Jerry Noakes’ yard—then you could not help seeing there
was compensation in life both for men and dogs. At least, where men’s
blundering arrangements are concerned, it is the tendency of riches to
produce surfeit, and of polish to sharpen the blade to an impracticable
fineness, till it not only wears out the scabbard, but bends and breaks
in the hand of him who uses it.
But, for my part, I think the man and dog here were far too much alike
for their good. If they could have been parted, and De Vaux fitted with
a rollicking, though gruff young mastiff or Newfoundland, and Carlo
with a light-hearted, if empty-headed young squire, it would have been
better for both of them.
In course of time the earl became superannuated, and more
responsibilities were heaped on De Vaux’s shoulders, bending,
notwithstanding their developed muscularity, under their present load,
which the bearer was growing more and more fain to shirk.
My lady, plied with representations by friends and relatives of the
family, became alarmed at the supineness of her son, with the waste
of all his youthful promise, and his increasing inclination to let
the active current of life sweep by him, while he buried himself in a
remote retreat, taking with him his unemployed talent to rust there.
One winter evening at the castle the curtains were drawn, and tea had
been brought in and carried out. Mother and son were alone together
in their several corners, behind their respective screens, and having
their private little tables, laden with books, drawing materials,
ladies’ work, and flowers, between them and the blazing fire. Carlo
was stretched decorously on the white bear skin which served as a
hearthrug. Then the countess spoke out, and urged on De Vaux all the
arguments which could stir his principles or rouse his ambition. But he
had always the same answer.
Was it his father’s wishes that were pled? Ah! it was too late, so far
as affording his father gratification went; besides, De Vaux had been
persuaded from the first that, since he must have followed his own
convictions, he would have run counter to his father’s opinions, and
only contrived to vex and disappoint him in a public career.
Was it the good of his country he was bidden mind? De Vaux laughed
softly, but with more pensive sadness than cynical bitterness in the
laugh, at the idea of his being of any service to speak of to the
nation. There were better qualified men than he to do the country’s
work—men who could stick to a party, and have all the consistency
and combined strength which such resolute adhesion gave; men not too
scrupulous—not cumbered with a double sight, which saw both sides of
a question, or with a vague, hazy farsightedness—he did not count it
a gain, he was not meaning to praise himself in reckoning the defects
which prevented him from observing clearly and concisely—which was
always anticipating dim consequences, magnified to giants in their
dimness. At the same time, he really felt he could not work—he could
not do himself or any other body justice in union with fellows who
were tools of a faction, or slaves to a theory; and he was not such
a Don Quixote as to propose to fight the battles of the country and
Parliament single-handed.
Was it a suggestion of authorship? He had been a prize-man at Oxford;
he had been fond of making researches in various fields of intellect;
his style, as shown in his letters when he had been on his travels,
had been commended by distinguished literary men and diners out as the
_juste milieu_ between simplicity and brilliance. The family papers
alone might supply him with delightful subjects for essays.
De Vaux laughed again, and protested that the world was too full of
books; that the making of books in his generation, much more than
in that of Solomon, was “vanity,” and he was not fool enough to add
without any distinct calling to those toppling monster heaps, which,
however evanescent, threatened to crush for the present, by the mere
force of numbers, the half-dozen books capable of surviving the
catastrophe. As for the records of the house, he was not disposed to
turn them out for daws to peck at, neither had he any desire to wash
his dirty linen in public, if she would forgive him the coarseness of
the simile.
Was it a proposal of giving more personal attention to the management
of the estate, now that his father was no longer able to take any part
in it, or even to consult with the agent, in near prospect of the time
when De Vaux should be sole master?
Here the poor lady began to cry, half at being forced to allude to the
approaching death of her old husband, half at the recollection that he
had always told her that to be an earl and a great landed proprietor
were not the sinecures that ignorant people imagined they were. Yet
De Vaux, who might have known better from what he had seen of his
father’s cares and worries, and with his own cleverness, was taking his
future position with unbecoming indifference, and declining to serve
any apprenticeship to it since the time when he had been a bright boy,
proud to accompany his father to the offices and the home farm.
De Vaux’s affectionate heart was touched. He assured his mother that he
hoped his father would still be spared, and trusted he might rally and
resume some of his former habits. “In such a case, my dear mother,” he
said, “do you think he would like to find me prematurely interfering
with his plans, and overturning his arrangements, particularly when
Anwell is the briskest, most trustworthy old fellow out. He has a
greater knowledge of the capabilities of the estate, and of country
interests, than even my father had—don’t be angry; I have often heard
him say so—or, I need not add, than I am likely to acquire, though I
live to the age of Methuselah, which God forbid. It must have been a
heavy task for the oldest of the antediluvians to get along without
the comfort of so much as a contemporary to share his penalties. No,
no; ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’ We have Scripture
authority for that, and I shall recommend the vicar to take the text
for his homily next Sunday if you will fret about my future troubles.
I shall think I am in your way if you are so anxious to get rid of me
and my spare time. In order to bring about that, there ought to be a
new crusade—quite enough in the unaccountable laziness of your son to
justify that. Eh, mum?” He ended with a flash of youthful fun, which
was some consolation to his mother for her failure.
But she was more puzzled than ever. It was all De Vaux’s superior
cultivation, ability, and good feeling which stood in the way, of
course. There was a great deal of good taste, good sense, and good
feeling in what he had said, especially in his reluctance to grasp the
sceptre falling from his poor father’s hands. It was so different with
Lady Netherby’s son, who was little better than an amateur coachman—in
those days, too, when coaches had almost ceased to exist; or Lord
Dorchester, who was a learned prig as well as a marquis; or young
Ascham of Ryelands, who, as everybody knew, had sold himself to the
Jews, and was eagerly anticipating his father’s death for his release.
She recognised the difference thankfully. On the other hand, though
she and her lord had been fairly polished, intelligent, well-disposed
persons, she had not been, so to speak,
“Too wise and good
For human nature’s daily food;”
and it was a little hard to have a son whose genius and virtue took
this turn. But De Vaux was the product of the age.
The countess hit on a new device. She would have young people about
the house. It might be that De Vaux, though he was too kind and
long-suffering to own it, even to himself, found his home a little
slow, shut up, as he was, with a couple of elderly people, one of
the two growing more and more infirm every day. No doubt the unequal
association told on the boy’s spirits—even his dog Carlo looked dull. A
disadvantage like that was enough to confirm De Vaux in those mooning,
moping habits—his one fault, and which somebody had frightened her by
foreboding might end in valetudinarianism; citing Lord Paulet, who had
not been beyond his own park for years, though he was not over forty,
and Sir Charles Ridley, who could not face a stranger to save his life.
She would begin by having girls, since it would be rather a delicate
matter, and have the air of an act of interference on her part, if
she were to bring young men about the place who were not even of De
Vaux’s old quad or college, and were certainly not of his selection and
invitation.
It showed the extent of the countess’s secret alarm on her son’s
account, and of her unselfish devotion to his welfare, when she fixed
upon getting girls to the castle to entertain him. Good woman as she
was, she had not loved to contemplate her successor, and she had been
tempted to keep her boy to herself as long as she could. But she would
encounter the danger, and even bring herself to make the sacrifice
cheerfully, because of the true mother’s love which she bore him.
De Vaux had an utter aversion to loud, fast girls, and two or three
even nice girls, with their incessant claims on his attention, might be
too much for him and Carlo—might serve to bore rather than enliven him.
But there was one quiet little girl, the daughter of a favourite cousin
of her ladyship and of a brother peer, held in especial esteem by her
husband, and who my lady thought would be the very material for a first
experiment. Accordingly, Lady Margaret was invited to spend a little
time at the castle, and the invitation was accepted.
De Vaux had made no objection when he heard of the probable guest. He
thought a young woman’s company for a few weeks might be a boon to his
mother, and though he was becoming every day more of a hermit, and
more averse to the slightest exertion out of the ordinary routine, he
would not interfere with his mother’s pleasure, and he too would bear a
little on his mother’s account.
When Lady Margaret arrived she did not look like a person who would
be in anybody’s way, and even Carlo did not insist on sitting at
attention, and refusing in a melancholy manner to be at home in her
company. She was a very quiet, very shy, very young girl—on first
acquaintance almost too quiet, shy, and young for the countess’s
purpose, she feared. Lady Margaret required to be drawn out herself
in place of drawing out De Vaux; and she was hardly even pretty, for
her fair hair had been cut out on account of an illness, and was
only half-grown and thin; while she was as thin as her hair, and so
pale, that she resembled a wan, washed-out little ghost. My lady felt
disappointed.
If the countess and De Vaux had known it, poor Lady Margaret was
undergoing a severe ordeal, and was suffering, without any sign,
agonies of _mauvais honte_ and of incipient home sickness. It was the
first time that she had been away among strangers without either her
mother or her governess. She was naturally timid, and she had only
recently recovered from a bad illness which had shaken her nerves.
Everything was strange and overwhelming to her; even the sound of her
own titled name startled her, seeing that she was accustomed to be
called Peggy at home.
The countess was very kind, and De Vaux looked a _preux chevalier_; but
Lady Margaret did not know them, and they did not know her. She could
not tell in the least how they should ever become acquainted, or how
she should get over the weeks she must spend at the castle. But mamma
had wished her to come. Berry had said the change would be good for
her, and she knew she was a silly, spoilt girl. No doubt the trial was
beneficial, and she ought to make the best of it.
The best was within the reach of a creature so humble, so full of
good-will and generous enthusiasm, in spite of her bashfulness
and nervousness. In a marvellously short time Lady Margaret began
to be reconciled to her situation, and to get the better of its
disadvantages. Every day she was a fresh surprise to my lady and De
Vaux—she opened up into such brightness and bonniness, as well as
sweetness, before their admiring eyes.
The girl’s health was profiting by the change, combined with the
friendliness of her entertainers. She was coming out in her natural
colours of innocent trustfulness and happiness. My lady was getting as
fond of her as if Lady Margaret had been the countess’s daughter.
Lady Margaret was a perpetual wonder to De Vaux, after she was at ease
with him, and he could remark how constantly she was occupied, and how
fresh and unflagging was her interest in whatever she was engaged with,
whether it was reading a new book, or drawing an original design for
the countess’s work, or borrowing a hint from the castle schools for
her own schools, or learning from Mrs. Woods the hen-wife, or Forbes
the gardener, the last plans for prairie chickens and orchises. She
was as ardent as a child, and her ardour knew no decrease. She carried
about with her a perennial spring of gladness, which was not impaired
by her earnestness and seriousness; for she could be very earnest and
serious on grave topics, and she was not an ignorant girl—I mean, not
ignorant of the sorrowful, terrible verities of life. She had been
brought up in a family that took a deep interest in humanity at large,
and were early accustomed to see the world as it is, and not to fear
to soil their raiment by coming in contact with the draggled garments
of others. These people were possessed with a passion of humanity,
the fervent conviction that to the pure all things are pure, while to
the strong and the good is appointed, under God’s grace, the task of
supporting and bringing back the weak and the bad.
De Vaux believed that Lady Margaret’s mind had been too great for
her body—not that she was exceptionally clever, only unboundedly
sympathetic, unweariedly helpful. But all the drain of the sympathy and
help she afforded, in addition to the delicate health she had suffered,
did not suffice to take the girlish lightheartedness and mirth out of
her, after it was no longer checked by her first reserve.
He was amused watching her in the park one day, when she thought she
was alone with Carlo. She had a bit of stick in her hand, which she
was throwing away from her with a great show of _empressement_, to
encourage the dog to follow and pick it up. He could guess she was
saying, “I should like to see you run for a bit of fun. Good dog. Oh
dear! is there no fun in you?—I know there is very little left in your
master. I wonder if you can run, except after a hare. If you only
would, I think it might shake you up, and put a little spirit in you.
Of course I should not expect you to run like my Buzfuz or Berry’s
Reiver; but if you would just try a little bit to please me.”
All that she got Carlo to do was to wag his tail as if he were shaking
his head. “I believe the brute thinks it would lower his dignity and
mine if he were to run,” said De Vaux to himself, impatiently. He could
have found it in his heart to rise up from under the tree where he lay,
and go and run for her delectation, and to show her that he could run,
though he had not exerted his long legs, save at cricket, since they
were short legs, and had done their best at football.
“Do you never whistle, Lord De Vaux?” she asked curiously one day. “My
brother Berry is a great whistler, and I miss the music. I know it is
very homely music, but none seems to me so blythe or so straight from
the heart. I wish girls might whistle if they could. I will confess to
you I have tried and failed. Berry said it was the feeblest attempt at
the magnificent—like a mouse squeaking.”
He did not answer her that he had no heart-hilarity from which to
whistle, and that he had sometimes been moved to envy a ploughboy who
went whistling joyously past him, only pausing to take off his cap to
the young lord on his walk or ride.
The next time De Vaux was in his room, with the door ajar, and was
aware that Lady Margaret was going along the corridor, he whistled
with all his might, though it took away his breath, so unwonted was
the performance; and involuntarily he fell into a solemn and stately
measure, like the “Dead March in Saul.” Still, he responded to her
suggestion better than Carlo had done, and he made her laugh—though he
was happily unconscious of it—at his doleful strain. She called him to
herself “the melancholy Jaques,” and said, though he was a product of
the age, a specimen of the kind existed in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
But I don’t know that Lady Margaret thought the worse of him, or
liked him the less, because of her private wit at his expense;
though he—being, like other young men, stupid where young girls are
concerned—might have been at that date hurt and offended, and even
imagined that she despised him because she made game of him.
One morning, as an excuse for his elegant idleness—of which he began to
feel slightly ashamed, when he was forced to see how busy this delicate
little girl was, and generally on the behalf of others—he repeated to
her the speech he had addressed to his mother, of his wanting a modern
crusade to induce him to put on his armor.
“But there is a crusade going on all around us, for every one of us,
always,” she said, opening her eyes wide. “We have never been without
one since”—she stopped, but he knew what she meant.
“I quite envy those fellows who have their own way to make in the
world,” he observed on another occasion, still with an underlying
motive of self-defence, and speaking in allusion to her younger
brothers’ work in their military and naval schools.
“Oh! but Berry does most of all,” she explained promptly; “and he is
an eldest son—like you, I had almost said, but you are an only son and
child. I pity you, if you will forgive me for pitying you.”
“Not forgive, but thank you, and I pity myself,” he answered quickly,
for it had at that moment struck him that, if he had possessed an
admiring sister to quote him as she quoted “Berry,” or to look up to
and depend upon him as she described her schoolboy brothers looking up
to and depending on their elder brother, he might have had more faith
in himself, and more inducement for exertion.
“Lord Beresford is going into Parliament,”—she continued the
conversation, always delighted to speak about Berry,—“and, do you know,
Berry will never make a great speaker?” she confided to him, as if it
were a matter of extreme surprise, no less than regret, to more than
herself. “Berry acts, he does not speak. He has few words, except on
rare occasions. He says he could not be eloquent to save his life. But
that is nonsense; at least I have heard him what I call eloquent—to
save other people’s lives, when he had to argue against the bad water
and worse drainage in Friarton, the town next us. He hopes to be a
useful member; and he says though he hates to be in town, and it makes
him shiver to think there is the most distant chance of his having
to speak within earshot of the reporters and the strangers’ gallery,
and ironical cheers from the opposition benches, yet he ought to make
himself acquainted with the working of the House of Commons, and to put
himself in training, since, if he live, he must sit in the other House
one day.”
“He is very good,” said De Vaux, abstractedly.
“Oh yes,” said Lady Margaret warmly, without any affectation of
contradicting him. “I must not tell you what I think, because Berry
says, if I go about praising him or any of the others, we shall be
set down as the Mutual Admiration Society; only I may be permitted to
mention that he does not need to go into Parliament for occupation.
Our vicar—with whom, by-the-bye, Berry has some differences—always
maintains that my eldest brother, what with his clubs, societies, and
night-schools, his allotment schemes and co-operative experiments, is
the hardest-worked man in the parish.”
“For a member of the bloated aristocracy,” commented De Vaux, with
somewhat grim humour.
“Yes; is it not an odd order for Berry, as well as yourself, to belong
to?” she asked, laughing merrily; and then she added seriously—“But
it is no laughing matter. Berry says he does not wonder at that, or
indeed at any term of opprobrium, after the awful gulf which has been
permitted to yawn and deepen between the ranks.”
“Lord Beresford will never fill it,” said Lord De Vaux dogmatically,
and with a suspicion of irritation. “Not above a tithe of the people
for whom he is spending himself will even understand him—far less be a
bit the better for his waste of life and energy.”
“Berry says a man’s life would be well spent in helping a handful of
his fellow-creatures, especially his countrymen—not to say our own
people down at Southfolds,” said Lady Margaret serenely.
“Did I say a tithe? Probably not more than one will follow your
brother’s lead.”
“Berry says he would not grudge his work if one man, woman, or child
were the gainer by it,” said Lady Margaret proudly.
“What manner of man, woman, or child ought he or she to be who is to
cost so much,” protested De Vaux ironically. “A beer-drinking clown,
a long-tongued slattern, a dirty-faced imp of mischief—one and all of
them dropping their r’s and revelling in their h’s.”
“Lord De Vaux!” said Lady Margaret, taken in by his tone, and getting
red and indignant. “Berry says he has heard as good sense and as
poetic thoughts from men and women who abused their r’s and h’s, as he
ever listened to from their neighbours who respected these important
letters. He is tempted to hold that it is a prejudice to be so
particular about their disposal. More than that, he protests that, if
the use of a tooth-brush would cause him to have a profound aversion to
and contempt for the multitude who do not employ such an aid to their
toilet, he would rather renounce tooth-brushes for ever, and continue
to care for his brother.”
Lady Margaret had recovered her good-humour by this time, and saw he
was trying her; so she added waggishly, “I must tell you, Lord De Vaux,
that I have the greatest respect for an honest old woman who commits
the enormity of taking snuff, as papa remembers your great-grandmother
and mine doing freely, and that Berry’s model boy has red hair and a
face covered with freckles.”
“What will you do without Berry?” he questioned her insidiously.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her face falling, and herself dropping
forthwith into the new trap laid for her. “We’ll miss him dreadfully,
and we are only to go to town after Easter for a few weeks, just that
I may be presented, as mamma does not think that I am strong enough to
stand the season. Berry will have nobody from home with him for the
rest of the time, except Reiver, to make him feel less lonely, poor
dear fellow.”
“You might take Carlo and me in exchange for Reiver and Berry. I think
you could make something of us—get us to run unprofessionally, and do a
little work in time.”
She looked up quickly to see how much he was in jest, and how much in
earnest. She looked down again, and said hastily, “Carlo and you do not
need me or any one to make you run and work, when it is in you both to
run faster and work better than the rest of the world, if you choose.”
She did not intend to flatter him by any means, but he was not
displeased with her answer—not though she put aside his petition.
The conviction had been growing upon De Vaux, till it was like an
inspiration, that Lady Margaret and her brother held the right standard
which he had missed—the one bracing and ennobling view of life—in which
a man can live and die, serve God and man, and cast behind him self
with all its weakness and waywardness.
He could do it as he was a Christian man, Heaven helping him. He had
known what she had meant by a crusade all around us, for every man
and woman, always. He had remembered who had first bidden man take up
the cross, and condemned the servant who had hidden his talent in the
earth. It made De Vaux thoughtful and sorrowful; but in spite of his
sorrow, and the humility which was at its root, he was more hopeful
than he had been since boyhood in taking these reflections to heart,
and in seeing in the light of Lady Margaret’s conception of duty what
an egotist he had been, and how near he had got to making shipwreck of
his life, by yielding to scruples and whims, and forgetting the great
call which is on him and every man.
My lady never had reason to regret having summoned Lady Margaret to
stimulate De Vaux. Lady Margaret did finally take both man and brute
in hand; but De Vaux had learned to work to purpose long before then,
having, as she had said, the power to work in him, while it was his
own fault if it lay dormant and shrivelled away. She never could or
would accept the credit of his working, but she was ready to allow that
she had helped to make Carlo a more cheerful dog than she had found
him. She had not done everything, for Carlo had always reflected his
master’s mood, and when De Vaux looked alive, and stepped out briskly
to keep some engagement which went against the grain with him, but the
obligation of which he had come to recognise, Carlo looked alive also,
and accommodated himself to his master’s quickened pace, and even to
the spring which had entered into the young man’s tread with the light
in his eye. But Carlo could not go everywhere with his master—could not
even be so much with him as formerly, after De Vaux grew a busy man
with ever-increasing engagements; so that it was all the better for the
dog that he had a brave little lady by whose side he could trot on her
numberless errands, until he had no time left to fall back into his old
painful consideration of the stumbles, the blunders, the coarseness and
vulgarity of his neighbours, or to indulge in morbid moping and pining.
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