The company in the house on the cliff was, however, very considerably
changed, though the visitors were not much lessened in number. It
became, perhaps, more _bourgeois_, certainly more village, than it had
been. Stella, a daring, audacious creature, with her beauty, which burst
upon the spectators at the first glance, and her absence of all reserve,
and her determination to be “in” everything that was amusing or
agreeable, had made her way among her social betters as her quieter and
more sensitive sister would never have done. Then the prestige which had
attached to them because of their wealth and that character of heiress
which attracts not only fortune-hunters who are less dangerous, but
benevolent match-makers and the mothers and sisters of impecunious but
charming young men, had been much dulled and sobered by the discovery
that the old father, despised of everybody, was not so easily to be
moved as was supposed. This was an astonishing and painful discovery,
which Lady Jane, in herself perfectly disinterested and wanting nothing
from old Tredgold, felt almost more than anyone. She had not entertained
the least doubt that he would give in. She did not believe, indeed, that
Stella and her husband would ever have been allowed to leave England at
all. She had felt sure that old Tredgold’s money would at once and for
ever settle all questions about the necessity of going to India with the
regiment for Charlie; that he would be able at once to rehabilitate his
old house, and to set up his establishment, and to settle into that
respectable country-gentleman life in which all a man’s youthful
peccadilloes are washed out and forgotten.
Mr. Tredgold’s obstinacy was thus as great a blow to Lady Jane as if she
herself had been impoverished by it. She felt the ground cut from under
her feet, and her confidence in human nature destroyed. If you cannot
make sure of a vulgar old father’s weakness for his favourite child whom
he has spoiled outrageously all her life, of what can you make sure?
Lady Jane was disappointed, wounded, mortified. She felt less sure of
her own good sense and intuitions, which is a very humbling thing--not
to speak of the depreciation in men’s minds of her judgment which was
likely to follow. Indeed, it did follow, and that at once, people in
general being very sorry for poor Charlie Somers, who had been taken in
so abominably, and who never would have risked the expenses of married
life, and a wife trained up to every extravagance, if he had not felt
sure of being indemnified; and, what was still worse, they all agreed he
never would have taken such a strong step--for he was a cautious man,
was Charlie, notwithstanding his past prodigalities--if he had not been
so pushed forward and kept up to the mark by Lady Jane.
The thing that Lady Jane really fell back on as a consolation in the
pressure of these painful circumstances was that she had not allowed
Algy to make himself ridiculous by any decisive step in respect to the
“little prim one,” as he called Katherine. This Lady Jane had sternly
put down her foot upon. She had said at once that Katherine was not the
favourite, that nothing could be known as to how the old man would leave
her, along with many other arguments which intimidated the young one. As
a patter of fact, Lady Jane, naturally a very courageous woman, was
afraid of Algy’s mother, and did not venture to commit herself in any
way that would have brought her into conflict with Lady Scott, which,
rather than any wisdom on her part, was the chief reason which had
prevented additional trouble on that score. Poor Charlie Somers had no
mother nor any female relation of importance to defend him. Lady Jane
herself ought to have been his defence, and it was she who had led him
astray. It was not brought against her open-mouthed, or to her face. But
she felt that it was in everybody’s mind, and that her reputation, or at
least her prestige, had suffered.
This it was that made her drop the Tredgolds “like a hot potato.” She
who had taken such an interest in the girls, and superintended Stella’s
_début_ as if she had been a girl of her own, retreated from Katherine
as if from the plague. After the way they had behaved to poor dear
Charlie Somers and his wife, she said, she could have no more to do with
them. Lady Jane had been their great patroness, their only effectual
connection with the county and its grandeurs, so that the higher society
of the island was cast off at once from Katherine. I do not think she
felt it very much, or was even conscious for a long time that she had
lost anything. But still it was painful and surprising to her to be
dismissed with a brief nod, and “How d’ye do?” in passing, from Lady
Jane. She was troubled to think what she could have done to alienate a
woman whom she had always liked, and who had professed, as Katherine
knew, to think the elder sister the superior of the younger. That,
however, was of course a mere _façon de parler_, for Stella had always
been, Katherine reminded herself, the attraction to the house. People
might even approve of herself more, but it was Stella who was the
attraction--Stella who shocked and disturbed, and amused and delighted
everybody about; who was always inventing new things, festive surprises
and novelties, and keeping a whirl of life in the place. The neighbours
gave their serious approval to Katherine, but she did not amuse them or
surprise. They never had to speculate what she would do next. They knew
(she said to herself) that she would always do just the conventional
proper thing, whereas Stella never could be calculated upon, and had a
perpetual charm of novelty. Katherine was not sufficiently enlightened
to be aware that Stella’s way in its wildness was much the more
conventional of the two.
But the effect was soon made very plain. The link between the Tredgolds
and the higher society of the island was broken. Perhaps it is
conventional, too, to call these good people the higher society, for
they were not high society in any sense of the word. There were a great
many stupid people among them. Those who were not stupid were little
elevated above the other classes except by having more beautiful
manners _when they chose_. Generally, they did not choose, and therefore
were worse than the humble people because they knew better. Their one
great quality was that they were the higher class. It is a great thing
to stand first, whatever nation or tribe, or tongue, or sect, or station
you may belong to. It is in itself an education: it saves even very
stupid people from many mistakes that even clever people make in other
spheres, and it gives a sort of habit of greatness--if I may use the
words--of feeling that there is nothing extraordinary in brushing
shoulders with the greatest at any moment; indeed, that it is certain
you will brush shoulders with them, to-day or to-morrow, in the natural
course of events. To know the people who move the world makes even the
smallest man a little bigger, makes him accustomed to the stature of the
gods.
I am not sure that this tells in respect to the poets and painters and
so forth, who are what the youthful imagination always fixes on as the
flower of noble society. One thinks in maturer life that perhaps one
prefers not to come to too close quarters with these, any more than with
dignified clergymen, lest some of the bloom of one’s veneration might be
rubbed off. But one does not venerate in the same way the governors of
the world, the men who are already historical; and it is perhaps they
and their contemporaries from beyond all the seas, who, naturally
revolving in that sphere, give a kind of bigness, not to be found in
other spheres, to the highest class of society everywhere. One must
account to oneself somehow for the universal pre-eminence of an
aristocracy which consists of an enormous number of the most completely
commonplace, and even vulgar, individuals. It is not high, but it cannot
help coming in contact with the highest. Figures pass familiarly before
its eyes, and brush its shoulders in passing, which are wonders and
prodigies to other men. One wants an explanation, and this is the one
that commends itself to me. Therefore, to be cut off from this higher
class is an evil, whatever anyone may say.
Katherine, in her wounded pride and in her youth, did not allow that
she thought so, I need not say. Her serious little head was tossed in
indignation as scornfully as Stella’s would have been. She recalled to
herself what dull people they were (which was quite true), and how
commonplace their talk, and asked heaven and earth why she should care.
Lottie Seton, for instance, with her retinue of silly young men: was she
a loss to anyone? It was different with Lady Jane, who was a person of
sense, and Katherine felt herself obliged to allow, different
someway--she could not tell how--from the village ladies. Yet Lady Jane,
though she disapproved highly of Mrs. Seton, for instance, never would
have shut her out, as she very calmly and without the least hesitation
shut out Katherine, of whom in her heart she did approve. It seemed to
the girl merely injustice, the tyranny of a preposterous convention, the
innate snobbishness (what other word is there?) of people in what is
called society. And though she said little, she felt herself dropped out
of that outer ledge of it, upon which Lady Jane’s patronage had posed
her and her sister, with an angry pang. Stella belonged to it now,
because she had married a pauper, a mercenary, fortune-hunting, and
disreputable man; but she, who had done no harm, who was exactly the
same Katherine as ever, was dropped.
There were other consequences of this which were more harmful still.
People who were connected in business with Mr. Tredgold, who had always
appeared occasionally in the house, but against whom Stella had set her
little impertinent face, now appeared in greater numbers, and with
greater assurance than ever; and Mr. Tredgold, no longer held under
subjection by Stella, liked to have them. With the hold she had on the
great people, Stella had been able to keep these others at a distance,
for Stella had that supreme distinction which belongs to aristocracy of
being perfectly indifferent whether she hurt other people’s feelings or
not; but Katherine possessed neither the one advantage nor the
other--neither the hold upon society nor the calm and indifference. And
the consequence naturally was that she was pushed to the wall. The city
people came more and more; and she had to be kind to them, to receive
them as if she liked it. When I say she had to do it, I do not mean that
Katherine was forced by her father, but that she was forced by herself.
There is an Eastern proverb that says “A man can act only according to
his nature.” It was no more possible for Katherine to be uncivil, to
make anyone feel that he or she was unwelcome, to “hurt their feelings,”
as she would have said, than to read Hebrew or Chinese.
So she was compelled to be agreeable to the dreadful old men who sat and
talked stocks and premiums, and made still more dreadful jokes with her
father, making him chuckle till he almost choked; and to the old women
who criticised her housekeeping, and told her that a little bit of onion
(or something else) would improve this dish, or just a taste of brandy
that, and who wondered that she did not control the table in the
servants’ hall, and give them out daily what was wanted. Still more
terrible were the sons and daughters who came, now one, now another; the
first making incipient love to her, the other asking about the officers,
and if there were many balls, and men enough, or always too many ladies,
as was so often the case. The worst part of her new life was these
visits upon which she now exercised no control. Stella had done so.
Stella had said, “Now, papa, I cannot have those old guys of yours here;
let the men come from Saturday to Monday and talk shop with you if you
like, but we can’t have the women, nor the young ones. There I set down
my foot,” and this she had emphasised with a stamp on the carpet, which
was saucy and pretty, and delighted the old man. But Mr. Tredgold was no
fool, and he knew very well the difference between his daughters. He
knew that Katherine would not put down her foot, and if she had
attempted to do so, he would have laughed in her face--not a delighted
laugh of acquiescence as with Stella, but a laugh of ridicule that she
could suppose he would be taken in so easily. Katherine tried quietly to
express to her father her hope that he would not inflict these guests
upon her. “You have brought us up so differently, papa,” she would say
with hesitation, while he replied, “Stuff and nonsense! they are just as
good as you are.”
“Perhaps,” said Katharine. “Mrs. Simmons, I am sure, is a much better
woman than I am; but we don’t ask her to come in to dinner.”
“Hold your impudence!” her father cried, who was never choice in his
expressions. “Do you put my friends on a level with your servants?” He
would not have called them her servants in any other conversation, but
in this it seemed to point the moral better.
“They are not so well bred, papa,” she said, which was a speech which
from Stella would have delighted the old man, but from Katherine it made
him angry.
“Don’t let me hear you set up such d---- d pretensions,” he cried. “Who
are you, I wonder, to turn up your nose at the Turnys of Lothbury? There
is not a better firm in London, and young Turny’s got his grandfather’s
money, and many a one of your grand ladies would jump at him. If you
don’t take your chance when you find it, you may never have another, my
fine lady. None of your beggars with titles for me. My old friends
before all.”
This was a fine sentiment indeed, calculated to penetrate the most
callous heart; but it made Katherine glow all over, and then grow chill
and pale. She divined what was intended--that there were designs to
unite her, now the representative of the Tredgolds, with the heir of the
house of Turny. There was no discrepancy of fortune there. Old Turny
could table thousand by thousand with Mr. Tredgold, and it was a match
that would delight both parties. Why should Katherine have felt so
violent a pang of offended pride? Mr. Turny was no better and no worse
in origin than she. The father of that family was her father’s oldest
friend; the young people had been brought up with “every
advantage”--even a year or two of the University for the eldest son,
who, however, when he was found to be spending his time in vanities with
other young men like himself--not with the sons of dukes and earls,
which might have made it bearable--was promptly withdrawn accordingly,
but still could call himself an Oxford man. The girls had been to school
in France and in Germany, and had learned their music in Berlin and
their drawing in Paris. They were far better educated than Katherine,
who had never had any instructor but a humble governess at home. How,
then, did it come about that the idea of young Turny having the
insolence to think of her should have made Katherine first red with
indignation, then pale with disgust? I cannot explain it, neither could
she to herself; but so it was. We used to hear a great deal about
nature’s noblemen in the days of sentimental fiction. But there
certainly is such a thing as a natural-born aristocrat, without any
foundation for his or her instinct, yet possessing it as potently as the
most highly descended princess that ever breathed. Katherine’s
grand-father, as has been said, had been a respectable linen-draper,
while the Turnys sprung from a house of business devoting itself to the
sale of crockery at an adjoining corner; yet Katherine felt herself as
much insulted by the suggestion of young Turny as a suitor as if she had
been a lady of high degree and he a low-born squire. There are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
Two or three of such suitors crossed her path within a short time.
Neither of the sisters might have deserved the attentions of these
gentlemen had they been likely to share their father’s wealth; but now
that the disgrace of one was generally known, and the promotion of the
other as sole heiress generally counted upon, this was what happened to
Katherine. She was exceedingly civil in a superior kind of way, with an
air noble that indeed sat very well upon her, and a dignity worthy of a
countess at least to these visitors: serious and stately with the
mothers, tolerant with the fathers, gracious with the daughters, but
altogether unbending with the sons. She would have none of them. Two
other famous young heroes of the city (both of whom afterwards married
ladies of distinguished families, and who has not heard of Lady Arabella
Turny?) followed the first, but with the same result. Mr. Tredgold was
very angry with his only remaining child. He asked her if she meant to
be an infernal fool too. If so, she might die in a ditch for anything
her father cared, and he would leave all his money to a hospital.
“A good thing too. Far better than heaping all your good money, that
you’ve worked and slaved for, on the head of a silly girl. Who are you,
I wonder,” he said, “to turn up your dashed little nose? Why, you’re not
even a beauty like the other; a little prim thing that would never get a
man to look twice at you but for your father’s money at your back. But
don’t you make too sure of your father’s money--to keep up your
grandeur,” he cried. Nevertheless, though he was so angry, Mr. Tredgold
was rather pleased all the same to see his girl turn up her nose at his
friends’ sons. She was not a bit better than they were--perhaps not so
good. And he was very angry, yet could not but feel flattered too at the
hang-dog looks with which the Turnys and others went away--“tail between
their legs,” he said to himself; and it tickled his fancy and pride,
though he was so much displeased.