UNDER LORD THURSTON'S OAK.
While Mr. Lansdell remembered Isabel Gilbert as a pretty automaton, who
had simpered and blushed when he spoke to her, and stammered shyly when
she was called upon to answer him, the Doctor's Wife walked up and down
the flat commonplace garden at Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, and thought
of her birthday afternoon, whose simple pleasures had been embellished
by the presence of a demigod. Yes, she walked up and down between two
rows of straggling gooseberry-bushes, in a rapturous day-dream; a
dangerous day-dream, in which Roland Lansdell's dark face shone dazzling
and beautiful. Was it wrong to think of him? She never asked herself
that question. She had read sentimental books all her life, and had been
passionately in love with heroes in three volumes, ever since she could
remember. What did it matter whether she was in love with Sir Reginald
Glanville or Mr. Roland Lansdell? One passion was as hopeless as the
other, and as harmless therefore. She was never likely to see the lord
of Mordred Priory again. Had she not heard him tell Mr. Raymond that he
should spend the winter in Paris? Mrs. Gilbert counted the months upon
her fingers. Was November the winter? If so, Mr. Lansdell would be gone
in four months' time. And in all those four months what likelihood was
there that she should see him,--she, who was such a low degraded wretch
as compared with this splendid being and those with whom it was his
right to associate? Never, no, never until now had she understood the
utter hideousness and horror of her life. The square miserable parlour,
with little stunted cupboards on each side of the fireplace, and shells
and peacocks' feathers, and penny-bottles of ink, and dingy unpaid
bills, upon the mantel-piece. She sat there with the July sun glaring in
upon her through the yellow-white blind; she sat there and thought of
her life and its squalid ugliness, and then thought of Lady Gwendoline
at Lowlands, and rebelled against the unkindness of a Providence that
had not made her an earl's daughter. And then she clasped her hands upon
her face, and shut out the vulgar misery of that odious parlour--a
_parlour_!--the very word was unknown in those bright regions of which
she was always dreaming--and thought of Roland Lansdell.
She thought of him, and she thought what her life might have
been--if----
If what? If any one out of a hundred different visions, all equally
childish and impossible, could have been realized. If she had been an
earl's daughter, like Lady Gwendoline! If she had been a great actress,
and Roland Lansdell had seen her and fallen in love with her from a
stage-box! If he had met her in the Walworth Road two or three years
ago; she fancied the meeting,--he in a cab, with the reins lightly held
between the tips of his gloved fingers, and a tiny tiger swinging
behind; and she standing on the kerbstone waiting to cross the road, and
not out to fetch anything vulgar, only going to pay a water-rate, or to
negotiate some mysterious "backing" of the spoons, or some such
young-ladylike errand. And then she got up and went to the looking-glass
to see if she really was pretty; or if her face, as she saw it in her
day-dreams, was only an invention of her own, like the scenery and the
dresses of those foolish dreams. She rested her elbows on the
mantel-piece, and looked at herself, and pushed her hair about, and
experimented with her mouth and eyes, and tried to look like Edith
Dombey in the grand Carker scene, and acted the scene in a whisper.
No, she wasn't a bit like Edith Dombey; she was more like Juliet, or
Desdemona. She lowered her eyelids, and then lifted them slowly,
revealing a tender penetrating glance in the golden black eyes.
"I'm _very_ sorry that you are not well!"
she whispered. Yes, she would do for Desdemona. Oh, if instead of
marrying George Gilbert, she had only run away to London, and gone
straight to that enterprising manager, who would have been so sure to
engage her! If she had done this, she might have played Desdemona, and
Mr. Lansdell might have happened to go to the theatre, and might have
fallen desperately in love with her on the spot.
She took a dingy volume of the immortal William's from a dusty row of
books on one of the cupboards, and went up to her room and locked the
door, and pleaded for Cassio, and wept and protested opposite the
looking-glass, before which three matter-of-fact generations of Gilberts
had shaved themselves.
She was only nineteen, and she was a child, with all a child's eagerness
for something bright and happy. It seemed only a very short time since
she had longed for a gaily-dressed doll that adorned one of the Walworth
Road shop-windows. Her married life had not as yet invested her with any
matronly dignity. She had no domestic cares or duties; for the simple
household was kept in order by Mrs. Jeffson, who would have resented any
interference from the young mistress. Isabel went into the kitchen
sometimes, when she was very much at a loss as to what she should do
with herself, and sat in an old rocking-chair swinging languidly
backwards and forwards, and watching kind-hearted Tilly making a pie.
There are some young women who take kindly to a simple domestic life,
and have a natural genius for pies and puddings, and cutting and
contriving, in a cheery, pleasant way, that invests poverty with a grace
of its own; and when a gentleman wishes to marry on three hundred a
year, he should look out for one of those bright household fairies.
Isabel had no liking for these things; to her the making of pastry was a
wearisome business. It was all very well for Ruth Pinch to do it for
once in a way, and to be admired by John Westlock, and marry a rich and
handsome young husband offhand. No doubt Miss Pinch knew instinctively
that Mr. Westlock would come that morning while the beef-steak pudding
was in progress. But to go on making puddings for Tom Pinch for ever and
ever, with no John Westlock! Isabel left the house affairs to Mrs.
Jeffson, and acted Shakespearian heroines and Edith Dombey before her
looking-glass, and read her novels, and dreamed her dreams, and wrote
little scraps of poetry, and drew pen-and-ink profile portraits of Mr.
Lansdell--always looking from right to left. She gave him very black
eyes with white blanks in the centre, and streaky hair; she drew Lady
Gwendoline and the chip bonnet also very often, if not quite as often as
the gentleman; so there was no harm in it. Mrs. Gilbert was strictly
punctilious with herself, even in the matter of her thoughts. She only
thought of what _might_ have happened if Mr. Lansdell had met her long
ago before her marriage.
It is not to be supposed that she forgot Roland's talk of some picnic or
entertainment at Mordred. She thought of it a great deal, sometimes
fancying that it was too bright a thing to come to pass: at other times
thinking that Mr. Lansdell was likely to call at any moment with a
formal invitation for herself and her husband. The weather was very warm
just now, and the roads very dusty; so Mrs. Gilbert stayed at home a
good deal. He might come,--he might come at any unexpected moment. She
trembled and turned hot at the sound of a double knock, and ran to the
glass to smooth her disordered hair: but only the most commonplace
visitors came to Mr. Gilbert's mansion; and Isabel began to think that
she would never see Roland Lansdell again.
And then she plunged once more into the hot-pressed pages of the
"Alien," and read Mr. Lansdell's plaints, on toned paper, with long
_s_'s that looked like _f_'s. And she copied his verses, and translated
them into bad French. They were very difficult: how was she to render
even such a simple sentence as "My own Clotilde?" She tried such
locutions as, "_Ma propre Clotilde_," "_Ma Clotilde particulière_;" but
she doubted if they were quite academically correct. And she set the
Alien to tunes that he didn't match, and sang him in a low voice to the
cracked notes of an old harpsichord which George's mother had imported
from Yorkshire.
One day when she was walking with George,--one dreary afternoon, when
George had less to do than usual, and was able to take his wife for a
nice dusty walk on the high-road,--Mrs. Gilbert saw the man of whom she
had thought so much. She saw a brown horse and a well-dressed rider
sweep past her in a cloud of dust; and she knew, when he had gone by,
that he was Roland Lansdell. He had not seen her any more than if there
was no such creature upon this earth. He had not seen her. For the last
five weeks she had been thinking of him perpetually, and he rode by and
never saw that she was there. No doubt Lord Byron would have passed her
by in much the same manner if he had lived: and would have ridden on to
make a morning call upon that thrice-blessed Italian woman, whose
splendid shame it was to be associated with him. Was it not always so?
The moon is a cold divinity, and the brooks look up for ever and win no
special radiance in recompense for their faithful worship: the sunflower
is always turning to the sun, and the planet takes very little notice of
the flower. Did not Napoleon snub Madame de Staël? And if Isabel could
have lived thirty years earlier, and worked her passage out to St.
Helena as ship's needle-woman, or something of that kind, and expressed
her intention of sitting at the exile's feet for the rest of her natural
life, the hero would have doubtless sent her back by the first
homeward-bound vessel with an imperially proportioned flea in her ear.
No, she must be content to worship after the manner of the brooks. No
subtle power of sympathy was engendered out of her worship. She drew
rather fewer profile views of Mr. Lansdell after that wretched dusty
afternoon, and she left off hoping that he would call and invite her to
Mordred.
She resumed her old habits, and went out again with Shelley and the
"Alien," and the big green parasol.
One day--one never-to-be-forgotten day, which made a kind of chasm in
her life, dividing all the past from the present and the future--she sat
on her old seat under the great oak-tree, beside the creaking mill-wheel
and the plashing water; she sat in her favourite spot, with Shelley on
her lap and the green parasol over her head. She had been sitting there
for a long time in the drowsy midday atmosphere, when a great dog came
up to her, and stared at her, and snuffed at her hands, and made
friendly advances to her; and then another dog, bigger, if anything,
than the first, came bouncing over a stile and bounding towards her; and
then a voice, whose sudden sound made her drop her book all confused and
frightened, cried, "Hi, Frollo! this way, Frollo." And in the next
minute a gentleman, followed by a third dog, came along the narrow
bridge that led straight to the bench on which she was sitting.
Her parasol had fallen back as she stooped to pick up her book, and
Roland Lansdell could not avoid seeing her face. He thought her very
pretty, as we know, but he thought her also very stupid; and he had
quite forgotten his talk about her coming to Mordred.
"Let me pick up the book, Mrs. Gilbert," he said. "What a pretty place
you have chosen for your morning's rest! This is a favourite spot of
mine." He looked at the open pages of the book as he handed it to her,
and saw the title; and glancing at another book on the seat near her, he
recognized the familiar green cover and beveled edges of the "Alien." A
man always knows the cover of his own book, especially when the work has
hung rather heavily on the publisher's hands.
"You are fond of Shelley," he said. (He was considerably surprised to
find that this pretty nonentity beguiled her morning walks with the
perusal of the "Revolt of Islam.")
"Oh yes, I am very, very fond of him. Wasn't it a pity that he was
drowned?"
She spoke of that calamity as if it had been an event of the last week
or two. These things were nearer to her than all that common business of
breakfast and dinner and supper which made up her daily life. Mr.
Lansdell shot a searching glance at her from under cover of his long
lashes. Was this feminine affectation, provincial Rosa-Matilda-ism?
"Yes, it was a pity," he said; "but I fancy we're beginning to get over
the misfortune. And so you like all that dreamy, misty stuff?" he added,
pointing to the open book which Isabel held in her hands. She was
turning the leaves about, with her eyes cast down upon the pages. So
would she have sat, shy and trembling, if Sir Reginald Glanville, or
Eugene Aram, or the Giaour, or Napoleon the Great, or any other grand
melancholy creature, could have been conjured into life and planted by
her side. But she could not tolerate the substantive "stuff" as applied
to the works of the lamented Percy Bysshe Shelley.
"I think it is the most beautiful _poetry_ that was ever written," she
said.
"Better than Byron's?" asked Mr. Lansdell; "I thought most young ladies
made Byron their favourite."
"Oh yes, I love Byron. But then he makes one so unhappy, because one
feels that he was so unhappy when he wrote. Fancy his writing the
'Giaour' late at night, after being out at parties where everybody
adored him; and if he hadn't written it, he would have gone mad," said
Mrs. Gilbert, opening her eyes very wide. "Reading Shelley's poetry
seems like being amongst birds and flowers and blue rippling water and
summer. It always seems summer in his poetry. Oh, I don't know which I
like best."
Was all this affectation, or was it only simple childish reality? Mr.
Lansdell was so much given to that dreadful disease, disbelief, that he
was slow to accept even the evidence of those eloquent blushes, the
earnestness in those wonderful eyes, which could scarcely be assumed at
will, however skilled in the light comedy of every-day life Mrs. Gilbert
might be. The dogs, who had no misanthropical tendencies, had made
friends with Izzie already, and had grouped themselves about her, and
laid their big paws and cold wet noses on her knee.
"Shall I take them away?" asked Mr. Lansdell. "I am afraid they will
annoy you."
"Oh no, indeed; I am so fond of dogs."
She bent over them and caressed them with her ungloved hands, and
dropped Shelley again, and was ashamed of her awkwardness. Would Edith
Dombey have been perpetually dropping things? She bent over a big black
retriever till her lips touched his forehead, and he was emboldened to
flap his great slimy tongue over her face in token of his affection.
_His_ dog! Yes, it had come to that already. Mr. Lansdell was that awful
being, the mysterious "Lui" of a thousand romances. Roland had been
standing upon the bridge all this time; but the bridge was very narrow,
and as a labouring man came across at this moment with a reaping-hook
across his shoulder, Mr. Lansdell had no choice except to go away, or
else sit down on the bench under the tree. So he sat down at a
respectful distance from Mrs. Gilbert, and picked up Shelley again; and
I think if it had not been for the diversion afforded by the dogs,
Isabel would have been likely to drop over into the brawling mill-stream
in the intensity of her confusion.
He was there by her side, a real living hero and poet, and her weak
sentimental little heart swelled with romantic rapture; and yet she felt
that she ought to go away and leave him. Another woman might have looked
at her watch, and exclaimed at the lateness of the hour, and gathered up
her books and parasol, and departed with a sweeping curtsey and a
dignified adieu to Mr. Lansdell. But Isabel was planted to the spot,
held by some fearful but delicious charm,--a magic and a mystic
spell,--with which the plashing of the water, and the slow creaking of
the mill-wheel, and a faint fluttering of leaves and flowers, the drowzy
buzz of multitudinous insects, the thrilling song of Shelley's own
skylark in the blue heavens high above her head, blended in one sweet
confusion.
I acknowledge that all this was very hard upon the honest-hearted parish
doctor, who was at this moment sitting in the faint atmosphere of a
cottage chamber, applying fresh layers of cotton wool to the poor
tortured arm of a Sunday-school pupil, who had been all but burnt to
death in the previous week. But then, if a man chooses to marry a girl
because her eyes are black and large and beautiful, he must be contented
with the supreme advantage he derives from the special attribute for
which he has chosen her: and so long as she does not become a victim to
cataract, or aggravated inflammation of the eyelids, or chronic
ophthalmia, he has no right to complain of his bargain. If he selects
his wife from amongst other women because she is true-hearted and
high-minded and trustworthy, he has ample right to be angry with her
whenever she ceases to be any one of these things.
Mr. Lansdell and his dogs lingered for some considerable time under the
shadow of the big oak. The dogs were rather impatient, and gave
expression to their feelings by sundry yawns that were like half-stifled
howls, and by eager pantings, and sudden and purposeless leaps, and
short broken-off yelps or snaps; but Roland Lansdell was in no hurry to
leave the region of Thurston's Crag. Mrs. Gilbert was not stupid, after
all; she was something better than a pretty waxen image, animated by
limited machinery. That pretty head was tilled with a quaint confusion
of ideas, half-formed childish fancies, which charmed and amused this
elegant loiterer, who had lived in a world where all the women were
clever and accomplished, and able to express all they thought, and a
good deal more than they thought, with the clear precision and
self-possession of creatures who were thoroughly convinced of the
infallibility of their own judgment. Yes, Mr. Lansdell was amused by
Isabel's talk; and he led her on very gently, till her shyness vanished,
and she dared to look up at his face as she spoke to him; and he attuned
his own talk to the key of hers, and wandered with her in the Valhalla
of her heroes, from Eugene Aram to Napoleon Buonaparte. But in the midst
of all this she looked all in a hurry at the little silver watch that
George had given her, and found that it was past three.
"Oh, I must go, if you please," she said; "I have been out ever since
eleven o'clock, and we dine at half-past four."
"Let me carry your books a little way for you, then," said Mr. Lansdell.
"But are you going that way?"
"Yes, that is the very way I am going."
The dogs were all excitement at the prospect of a move; they barked and
careered about Isabel, and rushed off as if they were going to run ten
miles at a stretch, and then wheeled round with alarming suddenness and
flew back to Mrs. Gilbert and their master.
The nearest way to Graybridge lay across all that swelling sea of lovely
meadow-land, and there were a good many stiles to be crossed and gates
to be opened and shut, so the walk occupied some time; and Mr. Lansdell
must have had business to transact in the immediate neighbourhood of
Graybridge, for he walked all the way through those delicious meadows,
and only parted with Isabel at a gate that opened into the high-road
near the entrance of the town.
"I suppose you often stroll as far as Thurston's Crag?" Mr. Lansdell
said.
"Oh yes, very often. It isn't too long a walk, and it is so pretty."
"It is pretty. Mordred is quite as near to you, though, and I think that
you would like the garden at Mordred; there are ruins, you know, and
it's altogether very romantic. I will give you and Mr. Gilbert a key, if
you would like to come there sometimes. Oh, by the bye, I hope you
haven't forgotten your promise to come to luncheon and see the pictures,
and all that sort of thing."
No, Isabel had not forgotten; her face flushed suddenly at the thought
of this rapturous vista opening before her. She was to see _him_ again,
once more, in his own house, and then--and then it would be November,
and he would go away, and she would never see him again. No, Isabel had
not forgotten; but until this moment all recollection of that invitation
to the Priory had been blotted out of Mr. Lansdell's mind. It flashed
back upon him quite suddenly now, and he felt that he had been unduly
neglectful of these nice simple-hearted Gilberts, in whom his dear good
Raymond was so much interested.
"I dare say you are fond of pictures?" he said, interrogatively.
"Oh yes, I am very, very fond of them."
This was quite true. She was fond of everything that was
beautiful,--ready to admire everything with ignorant childish
enthusiasm,--pictures, and flowers, and fountains, and moonlit
landscapes, and wonderful foreign cities, and everything upon this earth
that was romantic, and different from her own life.
"Then will you ask Mr. Gilbert to accept an unceremonious invitation,
and to bring you to the Priory to luncheon,--say next Tuesday, as that
will give me time to invite my cousin Gwendoline, and your old friend
Mr. Raymond, and the two little girls who are so fond of you?"
Isabel murmured something to the effect that she would be very happy,
and she was sure her husband would be very happy. She thought that no
creature in the world could be otherwise than enraptured by such an
invitation: and then she began to think of what she would wear, and to
remember that there were greasy streaks and patches upon her brown silk
wedding-dress, which was the best and richest garment her wardrobe
contained. Oh, if George would only give her a pale pearly-coloured silk
that she had seen in a shop-window at Murlington, and a black silk
mantle, and white bonnet, and pearly gloves and boots and parasol to
match the dress! There were people in the world rich enough to have all
these things, she thought,--thrice-blessed creatures, who always walked
in silk attire.
Mr. Lansdell begged her to write him a line to say if Tuesday would suit
Mr. Gilbert. They were at the last gate by this time, and he lifted his
hat with one hand while he held out the other to Isabel. She touched it
very lightly, with fingers that trembled a little at the thrilling
contact. Her gloves were rolled up in a little ball in her pocket. She
was at an age when gloves are rather a nuisance than otherwise; it is
only when women come to years of discretion that they are learned as to
the conflicting merits of Houbigant and Piver.
"Good-bye. I shall see Gwendoline this afternoon; and I shall rely upon
you for Tuesday. Hi, Frollo, Quasimodo, Caspar!"
He was gone, with his dogs and a cloud of dust about his heels. Even the
dust imparted a kind of grandeur to him. He seemed a being who appeared
and disappeared in a cloud, after the manner of some African genii.
Graybridge church clock chimed the half-hour after four, and Mrs.
Gilbert hurried home, and went into the common parlour, where dinner was
laid, with her face a little flushed, and her dress dusty. George was
there already, whistling very loudly, and whittling a stick with a big
knobby-handled clasp-knife.
"Why, Izzie," he said, "what _have_ you been doing with yourself?"
"_Oh_, George!" exclaimed Mrs. Gilbert, in a tone of mingled triumph and
rapture, "I have met Mr. Lansdell, and he was so polite, and he stopped
and talked to me _ever_ so long; and we're to go there on Tuesday, and
Lady Gwendoline Pomphrey is to be there to meet us,--only think of
that!"
"Where?" cried George.
"Why, at Mordred Priory, of course. We're to go to luncheon: and, oh,
George, remember you must _never_ call it 'lunch.' And I'm to write and
say if you'll go; but of _course_ you will go, George."
"Humph!" muttered Mr. Gilbert, reflectively; "Tuesday's an awkward day,
rather. But still, as you say, Izzie, it's a splendid connection, and a
man oughtn't to throw away such a chance of extending his practice. Yes,
I think I'll manage it, my dear. You may write to say we'll go."
And this was all; no rapture, no spark of enthusiasm. To tell the truth,
the surgeon was hungry, and wanted his dinner. It came in presently,
smelling very savoury,--but, oh, so vulgar! It was Irish stew,--a
horrible, plebeian dinner, such as Hibernian labourers might devour
after a day's bricklaying. Isabel ate very little, and picked out all
the bits of onion and put them aside on her plate. Come what might, she
would never, never eat onions again. _That_ degradation, at least, it
was in her own power to avoid.
After dinner, while George was busy in the surgery, Mrs. Gilbert set to
work to compose her letter to Mr. Lansdell. She was to write to him--to
him! It was to be only a ceremonious letter, very brief and commonplace:
"Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert present their compliments to Mr. Lansdell, and
will be happy to," &c, &c. But even such a letter as this was a critical
composition. In that sublime region in which Mr. Lansdell lived, there
might be certain words and phrases that were indispensable,--there might
be some arbitrary mode of expression, not to know which would argue
yourself unknown. Isabel looked into "Dombey," but there was no help for
her there. She would have been very glad if she could have found "Mrs.
Grainger presents her compliments to Mr. Dombey," or "Miss F. Dombey has
the pleasure to inform Mr. Gay--" or something of that kind, anywhere
amongst those familiar pages. However, she was obliged to write her
letter as best she might, on a sheet of paper that was very thick and
slippery, and strongly impregnated with patchouli; and she sealed the
envelope with a profile of Lord Byron imprinted upon white wax, the only
stick that was to be had in Graybridge, and to find which good-natured
Mr. Jeffson scoured the town, while Isabel was writing her letter.
_Roland Lansdell, Esqre.,_
_Mordred Priory._
To write such an address was in itself a pleasure. It was dark by the
time Mrs. Gilbert had finished her letter, and then she began to think
of her dress,--her dress for Tuesday,--the Tuesday which was henceforth
to stand out from amongst all the other days in her life.
Would George give her a new silk dress? No; that was impossible. He
would give her a sovereign, and she might "do up" the old one. She was
fain to be content and thankful for so much; and she went up-stairs with
a candle, and came down presently with two or three dresses on her arm.
Among them there was a white muslin, a good deal the worse for wear, but
prettier than the silk; a soft transparent fabric, and with lace about
it. Mrs. Gilbert determined upon wearing this dress; and early the next
morning she went out and consulted with a little dressmaker, and brought
the young woman home with her, and sat down with her in the sunny
parlour to unpick and refashion and improve this white muslin robe. She
told the dressmaker that she was going on a visit to Mordred Priory, and
by nightfall almost everybody in Graybridge knew that Mr. and Mrs.
Gilbert had received an invitation from Mr. Lansdell.