OUT IN THE COLD.
Paul Brion, meanwhile, plodded on in his old groove, which no longer
fitted him as it used to do, and vexed the soul of his benevolent
landlady with the unprecedented shortness of his temper. She didn't
know how to take him, she said, he was that cantankerous and
"contrairy:" but she triumphantly recognised the result that she had
all along expected would follow a long course of turning night into
day, and therefore was not surprised at the change in him. "Your brain
is over-wrought," she said, soothingly, when one day a compunctious
spirit moved him to apologise for his moroseness; "your nervous system
is unstrung. You've been going on too long, and you want a spell. You
just take a holiday straight off, and go right away, and don't look
at an ink-bottle for a month. It will save you a brain fever, mark
my words." But Paul was consistent in his perversity, and refused to
take good advice. He did think, for a moment, that he might as well
have a little run and see how his father was getting on; and for
several days he entertained the more serious project of "cutting" the
colony altogether and going to seek his fortune in London. All the
same, he stayed on with Mrs. M'Intyre, producing his weekly tale of
political articles and promiscuous essays, and sitting up all night,
and sleeping all the morning, with his habitual irregular regularity.
But the flavour had gone out of work and recreation alike, and not
all Mrs. Aarons's blandishments, which were now exercised upon him for
an hour or two every Friday evening, were of any avail to coax it back
again. Those three Miss Kings, whom his father had sent to him, and
whom Mrs. Duff-Scott had taken away from him, had spoiled the taste
of life. That was the fact, though he would not own it. "What care I?
They are nothing to me," he used to say to himself when fighting an
occasional spasm of rage or jealousy. He really persuaded himself very
often that they were nothing to him, and that his bitter feeling was
caused solely by the spectacle of their deterioration. To see them
exchanging all their great plans and high aspirations for these vulgar
social triumphs--giving up their studies at the Library to attend
dancing classes, and to dawdle about the Block, and gossip in the
Exhibition--laying aside their high-bred independence to accept the
patronage of a fine lady who might drop them as suddenly as she took
them up--was it not enough to make a man's heart bleed?
As for Patty, he made up his mind that he could never forgive _her_.
Now and then he would steal out upon his balcony to listen to a
Schubert serenade or a Beethoven sonata in the tender stillness of a
summer night, and then he would have that sensation of bleeding at the
heart which melted, and unnerved, and unmanned him; but, for the most
part, every sight and sound and reminiscence of her were so many fiery
styptics applied to his wound, scorching up all tender emotions in one
great angry pain. Outwardly he shunned her, cut her--withered her up,
indeed--with his ostentatiously expressed indifference; but secretly
he spent hours of the day and night dogging her from place to place,
when he ought to have been at work or in his bed, merely that he might
get a glimpse of her in a crowd, and some notion of what she was doing.
He haunted the Exhibition with the same disregard for the legitimate
attractions of that social head-centre as prevailed with the majority
of its visitors, to whom it was a daily trysting-place; and there
he had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing her every now and then.
Once she was in the Indian Court, so fragrant with sandalwood, and
she was looking with ardent eyes at gossamer muslins and embroidered
cashmeres, while young Westmoreland leaned on the glass case beside
her in an attitude of insufferable familiarity. It was an indication,
to the jealous lover, that the woman who had elevated her sex from
the rather low place that it had held in his estimation before he
knew her, and made it sacred to him for her sake, was, after all,
"no better than the rest of them." He had dreamed of her as a man's
true helpmate and companion, able to walk hand in hand with him on
the high roads of human progress, and finding her vocation and her
happiness in that spiritual and intellectual fellowship; and here she
was lost in the greedy contemplation of a bit of fine embroidery that
had cost some poor creature his eyesight already, and was presently
to cost again what would perhaps provision a starving family for a
twelvemonth--just like any other ignorant and frivolous female who
had sold her soul to the demon of fashion. He marched home to Myrtle
Street with the zeal of the reformer (which draws its inspiration from
such unsuspected sources) red-hot in his busy brain. He lit his pipe,
spread out his paper, dipped his pen in the ink-bottle, and began to
deal with the question of "Woman's Clothes in Relation to her Moral
and Intellectual Development" in what he conceived to be a thoroughly
impersonal and benevolent temper. His words should be brief, he said
to himself, but they should be pregnant with suggestive truth. He
would lay a light touch upon this great sore that had eaten so deeply
into one member of the body politic, causing all the members to suffer
with it; but he would diagnose it faithfully, without fear or favour,
and show wherein it had hindered the natural advancement of the race,
and to what fatal issues its unchecked development tended. It was a
serious matter, that had too long been left unnoticed by the leaders
of the thought of the day. "It is a _problem_," he wrote, with a
splutter of his pen, charging his grievance full tilt with his most
effective term; "it is, we conscientiously believe, one of the great
problems of this problem-haunted and problem-fighting age--one of the
wrongs that it is the mission of the reforming Modern Spirit to set
right--though the subject is so inextricably entangled and wrapped up
in its amusing associations that at present its naked gravity is only
recognised by the philosophic few. It is all very well to make fun of
it; and, indeed, it is a very good thing to make fun of it--for every
reform must have a beginning, and there is no better weapon than just
and judicious ridicule wherewith Reason can open her attack upon the
solid and solemn front of time-honoured Prejudice. The heavy artillery
of argument has no effect until the enemy has contracted an internal
weakness by being made to imbibe the idea that he is absurd. A little
wit, in the early stage of the campaign, is worth a deal of logic. But
still there it stands--this great, relentless, crushing, cruel CUSTOM
(which requires capital letters to emphasise it suitably)--and there
are moments when we _can't_ be witty about it--when our hearts burn
within us at the spectacle of our human counterpart still, with a few
bright exceptions, in the stage of intellectual childhood, while we
fight the battle of the world's progress alone--"
Here the typical strong-minded female, against whom he had fulminated
in frequent wrath, suddenly appeared before him, side by side with a
vision of Patty in her shell-pink Cup dress; and his sword arm failed
him. He paused, and laid down his pen, and leaned his head on his hand;
and he was thereupon seized with a raging desire to be rich, in order
that he might buy Indian embroideries for his beloved, and clothe her
like a king's daughter in glorious apparel. Somehow that remarkable
paper which was to inaugurate so vast a revolution in the social system
never got written. At least, it did not for two or three years, and
then it came forth in so mild a form that its original design was
unrecognisable. (N.B.--In this latest contribution to the Dress Reform
Question, women, to the peril of their immortal intellects, were
invited to make themselves as pretty as they could, no hard condition
being laid upon them, save that they should try to dress to please the
eyes of men instead of to rival and outshine each other--that they
should cultivate such sense of art and reason as might happily have
survived in them--and, above all, from the high principles of religion
and philanthropy, that they should abstain from bringing in new
fashions violently--or, indeed, at all--leaving the spirit of beauty
and the spirit of usefulness to produce their healthy offspring by the
natural processes. In the composition of this paper he had the great
advantage of being able to study both his own and the woman's point of
view.)
The next day he went to the Exhibition again, and again he saw Patty,
with no happier result than before. She was standing amongst the
carriages with Mr. Smith--popularly believed to have been for years on
the look-out for a pretty young second wife--who was pointing out to
her the charms of a seductive little lady's phaeton, painted lake and
lined with claret, with a little "dickey" for a groom behind; no doubt
tempting her with the idea of driving such a one of her own some day.
This was even more bitter to Paul than the former encounter. He could
bear with Mr. Westmoreland, whose youth entitled him to place himself
somewhat on an equality with her, and whom, moreover, his rival (as
he thought himself) secretly regarded as beneath contempt; but this
grey-bearded widower, whose defunct wife might almost have been her
grandmother, Paul felt he could _not_ bear, in any sort of conjunction
with his maiden queen, who, though in such dire disgrace, was his queen
always. He went hastily away that he might not see them together, and
get bad thoughts into his head--such as, for instance, that Patty might
be contemplating the incredible degradation of matrimony with the
widower, in order to be able to drive the prettiest pony carriage in
town.
He went away, but he came back again in a day or two. And then he saw
her standing in the nave, with Mr. Smith again, looking at Kate Kelly,
newly robed in black, and prancing up and down, in flowing hair and
three-inch veil, and high heels and furbelows, putting on all sorts
of airs and graces because, a few hours before, Ned had crowned his
exploits and added a new distinction to the family by being hung in
gaol; and she (Patty) could not only bear that shabby and shameless
spectacle, but was even listening while Mr. Smith cut jokes about
it--this pitiful demolishment of our imagined Kate Kelly, our Grizell
Hume of the bush--and smiling at his misplaced humour. The fact being
that poor Patty was aware of her lover's proximity, and was moved to
unnatural and hysteric mirth in order that he might not carry away the
mistaken notion that she was fretting for him. But Paul, who could see
no further through a stone wall than other men, was profoundly shocked
and disgusted.
And yet once more he saw his beloved, whom he tried so hard to hate.
On the night of the 17th--a Wednesday night--he had yawned through
an uninteresting, and to him unprofitable, session of the Assembly,
dealing with such mere practical matters as the passing in committee
of clauses of railway bills and rabbit bills, which neither enlivened
the spirits and speeches of honourable members nor left a press critic
anything in particular to criticise; and at a few minutes after
midnight he was sauntering through the streets to his office, and
chanced to pass the Town Hall, where the great ball of the Exhibition
year was going on. It was not chance, perhaps, that led him that
way--along by the chief entrance, round which carriages and cabs were
standing in a dense black mass, and where even the pavements were too
much crowded by loiterers to be comfortable to the pedestrian abroad
on business. But it was chance that gave him a glimpse of Patty at
the only moment of the night when he could have seen her. As he
went by he looked up at the lighted vestibule with a sneer. He was
not himself of the class which went to balls of that description--he
honestly believed he had no desire to be, and that, as a worker for
his bread, endowed with brains instead of money, he was at an infinite
advantage over those who did; but he knew that the three Miss Kings
would be numbered with the elect. He pictured Patty in gorgeous array,
bare-necked and bare-armed, displaying her dancing-class acquirements
for the edification of the gilded youth of the Melbourne Club, whirling
round and round, with flushed cheeks and flying draperies, in the
arms of young Westmoreland and his brother hosts, intoxicated with
flattery and unwholesome excitement, and he made up his mind that
she was only beginning the orgy of the night, and might be expected
to trail home, dishevelled, when the stars grew pale in the summer
dawn. However, as this surmise occurred to him it was dispelled by the
vision of Mrs. Duff-Scott coming out of the light and descending the
flight of steps in front of him. He recognised her majestic figure in
spite of its wraps, and the sound of her voice directing the major
to call the carriage up. She had a regal--or, I should rather say,
vice-regal--habit of leaving a ball-room early (generally after having
been amongst the first to be taken to supper), as he might have known
had he known a little more about her. It was one of the trivial little
customs that indicated her rank. Paul looked up at her for a moment, to
make sure that she had all her party with her; and then he drew into
the shadow of a group of bystanders to watch them drive off.
First came the chaperon herself, with Eleanor leaning lightly on her
arm, and a couple of hosts in attendance. Eleanor was not bare-armed
and necked, nor was she dishevelled; she had just refreshed herself
with chicken and champagne, and was looking as composed and fair
and refined as possible in her delicate white gown and unruffled
yellow hair--like a tall lily, I feel I ought (and for a moment was
tempted) to add, only that I know no girl ever did look like a lily
since the world was made, nor ever will, no matter what the processes
of evolution may come to. This pair, or quartette, were followed by
Elizabeth, escorted on one side by the little major and on the other by
big Mr. Yelverton. She, too, had neither tumbled draperies nor towsled
head, but looked serene and dignified as usual, holding a bouquet to
her breast with the one hand, and with the other thriftily guarding her
skirts from contact with the pavement. But Mr. Brion took no notice of
her. His attention was concentrated on his Patty, who appeared last of
all, under the charge of that ubiquitous widower (whom he was beginning
to hate with a deadly hatred), Mr. Smith. She was as beautiful
as--whatever classical or horticultural object the reader likes to
imagine--in the uncertain light and in her jealous lover's estimation,
when she chanced, after stepping down to his level, to stand within a
couple of yards of him to wait for the carriage. No bronze, or dead
leaf, or half-ripe chestnut (to which I inadvertently likened it) was
fit to be named in the same breath with that wavy hair that he could
almost touch, and not all the jewellers' shops in Melbourne could have
furnished a comparison worthy of her lovely eyes. She, too, was dressed
in snowy, foamy, feathery white (I use these adjectives in deference to
immemorial custom, and not because they accurately describe the finer
qualities of Indian muslin and Mechlin lace), ruffled round her white
throat and elbows in the most delicately modest fashion; and not a
scrap of precious stone or metal was to be seen anywhere to vulgarise
the maidenly simplicity of her attire. He had never seen her look so
charming--he had never given himself so entirely to the influence of
her beauty. And she stood there, so close that he could see the rise
and fall of the laces on her breast with her gentle breathing, silent
and patient, paying no attention to the blandishments of her cavalier,
looking tired and pre-occupied, and as far as possible from the
condition in which he had pictured her. Yet, when presently he emerged
from his obscurity, and strode away, he felt that he had never been in
such a rage of wrath against her. And why, may it be asked? What had
poor Patty done this time? _She had not known that he was there beside
her._ It was the greatest offence of all that she had committed, and
the culmination of his wrongs.