GEORGIE.
If, twelve months before the production of Mr. Spofforth's play (which
necessarily forms a kind of Hegira in this story), you had told
Georgie Stanfield that she was destined to be the wife of a baronet,
the mistress of a house in one of the best parts of London, the
possessor of horses and carriages, and all the happiness which a very
large yearly income can command, your assertions would have been met,
not with ridicule--for Georgie was too gentle and too well-bred for
that--but with utter disbelief. Her whole life had been passed in the
little Devonshire village of which her father was vicar, and it seemed
to her impossible that she could ever live anywhere else. To potter
about in the garden during the summer in a large flapping straw hat
and a cotton gown, to tie up drooping flowers and snip off dead
leaves; to stand on the little terrace dreamily gazing over the
outspread sea, watching the red sails of the fishing-smacks skimming
away to the horizon, or the trim yachts lying off the little port--the
yachts whose fine-lady passengers, and gallant swells all blue
broad-cloth and club-button, seen at a distance,--were Georgie's sole
links with the fashionable world; to visit and read to the bed-ridden
old women and the snuffling, coughing old men; to superintend the
preparation of charitably-dispensed gruel and soup; to traverse
Mavor's Spelling-book up and down, up and down, over and over again,
in the company of the stupid girls of the village-school; to read the
_Cullompton Chronicle_ to her father on Thursdays, and to copy out his
sermon on the Saturday evenings,--these had been the occupations of
Georgie Stanfield's uneventful life.
She had not had even the excitement of flirtations, a few of which
fall to the lot of nearly every girl, be she pretty or plain, rich or
poor, town or country-bred. The military depots are now so numerous
that it is hard, indeed, if at least a couple of subalterns cannot be
found to come over any distance in the rumbling dog-cart hired from
the inn in the provincial town where they are quartered; and though in
Georgie's days there was no croquet,--that best of excuses for social
gathering and mild flirtation,--yet there were archery-meetings,
horticultural shows, and picnics. Failing the absence of the military,
even the most-out-of-the-way country village can produce a curate; and
an intending flirt has merely to tone-down certain notions and expand
others, to modify her scarlets and work-up her grays, and she will
have, if not a very exciting, at all events a very interesting, time
in playing her fish. But there were no barracks within miles of
Fishbourne, nor any temptations there to have attracted officers from
them, if there had been. There were no resident gentry in the place,
and the nearest house of any importance--Weston Tower, the seat of old
Lady Majoribanks--was twenty miles off, and old Lady Majoribanks kept
no company As for the curates, there was one, certainly; but Mr. Lucas
had "assisted" Georgie's father for the last eighteen years, was fifty
years old, and had a little wife as slow and as gray as the old pony
which he used to ride to outlying parts of the parish.
Besides, if there had been eligible men in scores, what had they to do
with Georgie Stanfield, or she with them? Was she not engaged to
Charles Mitford?--at least, had she not been so affianced until that
dreadful business about something wrong that brought poor Charley into
disgrace? and was that sufficient to permit her to break her plighted
word? Mr. Mitford, Charles's father, had been a banker and brewer at
Cullompton, and had had a country cottage at Fishbourne, a charming
little place for his family to come to in the summer; and Mr.
Stanfield had been Charley's tutor; and when the family were away at
Cullompton in the winter, Charley had remained at the vicarage; and
what so likely as that Charley should fall in love with Georgie, then
a tall slip of a girl in short petticoats and frilled trousers and
very thin legs, with her hair in a net; or that Georgie should have
reciprocated the attachment? Both the fathers were delighted at the
arrangement; and there was no mother on either side to talk of extreme
youth, the chance of change, or to interpose other womanly objections.
There came a time when Charley, then a tall handsome fellow, was to go
up to Oxford; and then Georgie, to whom the outward and visible frill
period was long past, and who was a lovely budding girl of sweet
seventeen, laid her head on his breast on the night before he went
away, and promised never to forget him, but to be his and his alone.
Ah, those promises never to forget--those whispered words of love
breathed by lips trembling under the thick cigar-scented moustache
into delicate little ears trellised by braids fresh from the fingers
of the lady's-maid! They are not much to the Corydons of St. James's
Street, or the Phyllises of Belgravia. By how many different lips, and
into how many different ears, are the words whispered and the vows
breathed in the course of one London season! I declare I never pass
through any of the great squares and streets, and see the men
enclosing the balconies with striped calico, that I do not wonder to
myself whether, amongst all the nonsense that has been talked beneath
that well-worn awning-stuff, there has been any that has laid the
foundation for, or given the crowning touch to, an honest simple
love-match, a marriage undertaken by two people out of sheer regard
for each other, and permitted by relatives and friends, without a
single thought of money or position to be gained on either side. If
there be any, they must be very few in number; and this, be it
observed, not on account of that supposed favourite pastime of
parents--the disposal of their daughters' hands and happiness to the
highest bidder, the outcry against which has been so general, and is
really, I believe, so undeserved. The circumstance is, I take it,
entirely ascribable to the lax morality of the age, under which a girl
engages herself to a man without the slightest forethought, often
without the least intention of holding to her word, not unfrequently
from the increased opportunities such a state of things affords her
for flirting with some other man, and under which she can break her
engagement and jilt her lover without compromising herself in the
least in the eyes of society. Besides, in the course of a London life
these vows and pledges are tendered so often as to be worn almost
threadbare from the number of times they have been pledged; and as
excess of familiarity always breeds contempt, the repetition of solemn
phrases gradually takes from us the due appreciation of their meaning,
and we repeat them parrot-wise, without the smallest care for what we
are saying.
But that promise of love and truth and remembrance uttered by Georgie
Stanfield on the sands at Fishbourne, under the yellow harvest-moon,
with her head pillowed on Charles Mitford's breast and her arms
clasped round his neck, came from a young heart which had known no
guile, and was kept as religiously as was Sir Galahad's vow of
chastity. Within a year after Charley's departure for Oxford, his
father's affairs, which, as it afterwards appeared, had long been in
hopeless confusion, became irretrievably involved. The bank stopped
payment, and the old man, unable to face the storm of ignominy by
which he imagined he should be assailed, committed suicide. The smash
was complete; Charles had to leave the University, and became entirely
dependent on his uncle, Sir Percy Mitford, who declined to see him,
but offered to purchase for him a commission in a marching regiment,
and to allow him fifty pounds a year. The young man accepted the
offer; and by the same post wrote to Georgie, telling her all, and
giving her the option of freeing herself from the engagement. It Was a
gentlemanly act; but a cheap bit of generosity, after all. He might
have staked the fifty pounds a year his uncle had promised him, on the
fidelity of such a girl as Georgie Stanfield, more especially in the
time of trouble. Her father, too, with his old disregard of the
future, entirely approved of his daughter's standing by her lover
under the circumstances of his altered fortune; and two letters--one
breathing a renewal of love and trust, the other full of encouragement
and hope--went away from Fishbourne parsonage, and brought tears into
the eyes of their recipient, as he sat on the edge of a truckle-bed in
a whitewashed room in Canterbury Barracks.
The vow of constancy and its renewal were two little epochs in
Georgie's quiet life. Then, not very long after the occurrence of the
last,--some six months,--there came a third, destined never to be
forgotten. There had been no letter from Charley for some days, and
Georgie had been in the habit of walking across the lawn to meet the
postman and question him over the garden-wall.
One heavy dun August morning, when the clouds were solemnly gathering
up together, the air dead and still, the trees hushed and motionless,
Georgie had seen the old man with a letter in his hand, and had
hastened, even more eagerly than usual, across the lawn, to be
proportionately disappointed when the postman shook his head, and
pointing to the letter, said, "For the master, miss." The next minute
she heard the sharp clang of the gate-bell, and saw her father take
the letter from the postman's hand at his little study-window. Some
inward prompting--she knew not what--kept Georgie's eyes on her
father. She saw him take out his spectacles, wipe then, and carefully
adjust them; then take the letter, and holding it at nearly arm's
length, examine its address; then comfortably settling himself in his
armchair at the window, prepare to read it. Then Georgie saw the old
man fall backward in his chair, his hand dropping powerless by his
side, and the letter fluttering from it to the ground. Without
uttering a cry, Georgie ran quickly to the house; but when she reached
the study, Mr. Stanfield was sitting upright in his chair, and had
picked the letter from the floor.
"Papa dearest," said Georgie, "you gave me such a fright. I was
watching you from the garden, and I thought I saw you faint. O papa,
you _are_ ill! How white and scared you look! What is it, papa
darling?--tell me."
But to all this Mr. Stanfield only murmured, gazing up into his
daughter's face, "My poor child! my poor darling child!"
"What is it, papa? Oh, I know--it's about Charley! He's not--" and
then she blanched dead-white, and said in a scarcely audible voice,
"He's not dead, papa?"
"No, Georgie, no. It might be better if he were,--be better if he
were."
"He's very ill, then?"
"No, darling,--at least--there; perhaps you'd better read it for
yourself; here, read it for yourself;" and the old man, after giving
her the letter, covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.
Then Georgie read in Sir Percy Mitford's roundest hand and stiffest
style, how his nephew Charles, utterly ungrateful for the kindness
which he, Sir Percy, had showered upon him, and regardless of the fact
that he had no resources of his own nor expectations of any, had
plunged into "every kind of vice and debauchery, notably
gambling"--(Sir Percy was chairman of Quarter-Sessions, and you might
trace the effect of act-of-parliament reading in his style)-how he had
lost large sums at cards; and how, with the double object of paying
his debts and retrieving his losses, lie had at length forged Sir
Percy's signature to a bill for £200; and when the document became due
had absconded, no one knew where. Sir Percy need scarcely say that all
communication between him and this unworthy member of--he grieved to
say--his family was at an end for ever; and he took that opportunity,
while informing Mr. Stanfield of the circumstance, of congratulating
him on having been lucky enough to escape any matrimonial connection
with such a rogue and a vagabond.
Mr. Stanfield watched her perusal of the letter; and when she had
finished it, and returned it to him calmly, he said:
"Well, my dear! it's a severe blow, is it not?"
"Yes, papa, it is indeed a severe blow. Poor Charley!"
"Poor Charley, my dear! You surely don't feel the least compassion for
Charles Mitford; a man who has--who has outraged the laws of his
country!"
"Not feel compassion for him, papa? Who could help it? Poor Charley,
what a bitter degradation for him!"
"For him! degradation for him! Bless my soul, I can't understand; for
us, Georgina,--degradation for us, you mean! However, there's an end
of it. We've washed our hands of him from this time forth, and
never--"
"Papa, do you know what you're saying? Washed our hands of Charles
Mitford! Do you recollect that I have promised to be his wife?"
"Promised to be his wife! Why, the girl's going mad! Promised to be
his wife! Do you know that the man has committed forgery?"
"Well, papa."
"Well, papa! Good God! I shall go mad myself! You know he's committed
forgery, and you still hold to your engagement to him?"
"Unquestionably. Is it for me, his betrothed wife, to desert him now
that he is in misery and disgrace? Is it for you, a Christian
clergyman, to turn your back on an old friend who has fallen, and who
needs your sympathy and counsel now really for the first time in his
life? Would you wish me to give up this engagement, which, perhaps,
may be the very means of bringing Charles back to the right?"
"Yes, my dear, yes; that's all very well," said the old
gentleman,--"all very--well from a woman's point of view. But you see,
for ourselves--"
"Well, papa, what then?"
"Well, my dear, of course we ought not to think so much for ourselves;
but still, as your father, I've a right to say that I should not wish
to see you married to a--a felon."
"And as a clergyman, papa?-what have you a right to say as a
clergyman?"
"I--I: decline to pursue the subject, Georgina; so I'll only say
this--that you're my daughter, and you're not of age yet; and I
command you to break off this engagement with this--this criminal!
That's all."
Georgie simply said, "You know my determination, papa." And there the
matter ended.
This was the first quarrel that there had ever been between father and
daughter, and both felt it very much indeed. Mr. Stanfield, who had
about as much acquaintance with human nature, and as much power of
reading character, as if he had been blind and deaf, thought Georgie
would certainly give way, and laid all sorts of palpable traps, and
gave all sorts of available opportunities for her to throw herself'
into his arms, confess how wrong she had been, and promise never to
think of Charles Mitford again. But Georgie fell in with none of these
ways; she kissed her father's forehead on coming down in the morning,
and repeated the process on retiring at night; but she never spoke to
him at meal-times, and kept away from home as much as possible during
the day, roaming over the country on her chestnut mare Polly, a
tremendous favourite, which had been bought and broken for her by
Charley in the old days.
During the whole of this time Mr. Stanfield was eminently
uncomfortable. He had acted upon the ridiculous principle vulgarly
rendered by the phrase, cutting off his nose to spite his face. He had
deprived himself of a great many personal comforts without doing one
bit of good. For a fortnight the _Cullompton Chronicle_ had remained
uncut and unread, though he knew there was an account of a bishop's
visitation to the neighbouring diocese which would have interested him
highly. For two consecutive Sundays the parishioners of Fishbourne had
been regaled with old sermons in consequence of there being no one to
transcribe the vicar's notes, which, save to Georgie, were
unintelligible to--the world in general and to their writer in
particular. He missed Georgie's form in the garden as he was
accustomed to see it when looking up from his books or his writing; he
missed her sweet voice carolling bird-like through the house, and
always reminding him of that dead wife whose memory he so tenderly
loved; and notwithstanding the constant horse-exercise, he thought,
from sly glances which he had stolen across the table at her during
dinner, that she was looking pale and careworn. Worst of all, he was
not at all sure that the position he had taken up was entirely
defensible on moral grounds. He was differently placed from that
celebrated character in the _Critic_, who "as a father softened, but
as a governor was fixed." As a father he might object to the
continuance of an engagement between his child and a man who had
proved himself a sinner not merely against religious ordinances, but
against the laws of his country; but he was very doubtful whether, as
a Christian and a clergyman, he was not bound to stretch out the hand
of forgiveness, and endeavour to reclaim the penitent. If Mr.
Stanfield had lived in these days, and been sufficiently before the
world, he would probably have had "ten thousand college councils" to
"thunder anathema" at him for daring to promulgate the doctrine that
"God is love;" but in the little retired parish where he lived, he
taught it because he believed it; and he felt that he had rather
fallen away from his standard in endeavouring to coerce his daughter
into giving up Charles Mitford.
So one morning, when Georgie came down to breakfast looking flushed
and worried, and very little refreshed by her night's sleep, instead
of calmly receiving the frontal kiss, as had been his wont during the
preceding fortnight, the old man's arms were wound round her, his lips
were pressed to hers, while he murmured, "Oh, Georgie! ah, my darling!
ah, my child!" and there was a display of _grandes eaux_ on both
sides, and the reconciliation was complete. At a later period of that
day Mr. Stanfield entered fully upon the subject of Charles Mitford,
told Georgie that if the scapegrace could be found, he should be
willingly received at the parsonage; and then the old gentleman
concocted a mysterious advertisement, to the effect that if C. M.,
formerly of Fishbourne, Devon, would call on Mr. Stevens of Furnival's
Inn, Holborn, London, he would hear something to his advantage, and be
received with hearty welcome by friends who had forgiven, but not
forgotten, him.
This advertisement, duly inserted through the medium of Mr. Stevens,
the lawyer therein named, in the mystic second column of the _Times_
Supplement, appeared regularly every other day during the space of a
month; and good old Mr. Stanfield wrote twice a week to Mr. Stevens.
inquiring whether "nothing had come of it;" and Mr. Stevens duly
replied (at three shillings and sixpence a letter) that nothing had.
It must have been two months after the concoction of the
advertisement, and one after its last appearance in the columns of
the _Times_, that there came a letter for Georgie, written in the
well-known hand, and signed with the well-known initials. It was very
short, merely saying that for the second time the writer felt it due
to her to leave her unfettered by any past engagement existing between
them; that he knew how he had disgraced and placed himself beyond the
pale of society; but that he would always cherish her memory, and
think of her as some pure and bright star which he might look up to,
but to the possession of which he could never aspire.
Poor little Georgie was dreadfully touched by this epistle, and so was
Mr. Stanfield, regarding it as a work of art; but as a practical man
he thought he saw a chance for again working the disruption of the
engagement-question--this time as suggested by Charles himself; and
there was little doubt that he would have enunciated these sentiments
at length, had he not been abruptly stopped by Georgie on his first
giving a hint about it. Despairing of this mode of attack, the old
gentleman became diplomatic and machiavelian; and I am inclined to
think that it was owing to some secret conspiracy on his part, that
young Frank Majoribanks, staying on a desperately-dreary three-weeks'
visit with his aunt and patroness, Lady Majoribanks, took occasion to
drive one of the old lady's old carriage-horses over to Fishbourne in
a ramshackle springless cart belonging to the gardener, and to accept
the vicar's offer of luncheon. He had not been five minutes in the
house before Georgie found he had been at Oxford with Charley Mitford;
and as he had nothing but laudatory remarks to make of his old chum
(he had heard nothing of him since he left college), Georgie was very
polite to him. But when, after his second or third visit, he
completely threw aside Charley as his stalking-horse, and began to
make running on his own account, Georgie saw through the whole thing
in an instant, and treated him with such marked coldness that, being a
man of the world, he took the hint readily, and never came near the
place again. And Mr. Stanfield saw with dismay that his diplomacy
succeeded no better than his threats, and that his daughter was as
much devoted to Charles Mitford as ever.
So the two dwellers in the parsonage fell back into their ordinary
course of life, and time went on, and Mr. Stanfield's hair grew
gradually more gray, and his shoulders gradually more rounded, and the
sweet girl of seventeen became the budding woman of twenty. Then one
Thursday evening, in the discharge of her weekly task of reading to
her father the _Cullompton Chronicle_, Georgie suddenly stopped, and
although not in the least given to fainting or "nerves," was obliged
to put her hand to her side and wait for breath. Then when a little
recovered she read out to the wondering old gentleman the paragraph
announcing the fatal accident to Sir Percy Mitford and his sons, and
the accession of Charles to the title and estates. Like Paolo and
Francesca,--though from a very different reason,--"that night they
read no more," the newspaper was laid by, and each sat immersed in
thought. The old man's simple faith led him to believe that at length
the long-wished-for result had arrived, and that all his daughter's
patience, long-suffering, and courage would be rewarded. But Georgie,
though she smiled at her father's babble, knew that throughout her
acquaintance with Charley he had gone through no such trial as that to
which the acquisition of wealth and position would now subject him;
and she prayed earnestly with all her soul and strength that in this
time of temptation her lover might not fall away.
A fortnight passed, and Mr. Stanfield, finding not merely that he had
not heard from the new baronet, but that no intelligence of him had
been received at Redmoor, at the town house, or by the family lawyers,
determined upon renewing his advertisement in the _Times_. By its side
presently appeared another far less reticent, boldly calling on
"Charles Mitford, formerly of Cullompton, Devon; then of Brasenose
College, Oxford; then of the 26th regiment of the line;" to
communicate with Messrs. Moss and Moss, Solicitors, Cursitor Street,
Chancery Lane, and hear something to his advantage. To this
advertisement a line was added, which sent a thrill through the little
household at the parsonage: "As the said Charles Mitford has not been
heard of for some months, any one capable of legally proving his death
should communicate with Messrs. M. and M. above named." Capable of
legally proving his death! Could that be the end of all poor Georgie's
life-dream? Could he have died without ever learning all her love for
him, her truth to him? No! it was not so bad as that; though, but for
the shrewdness of Edward Moss and the promptitude of Inspector
Stellfox, it might have been. A very few hours more would have done
it. As it was, little Dr. Prater, who happened to be dining with
Marshal Moss at the Hummums when Mitford was brought there by the
inspector, and who immediately undertook the case, scarcely thought he
should pull his patient through. When the fierce stage of the disorder
was past, there remained a horrible weakness and languor, which the
clever little physician attacked in vain. "Nature, my dear
sir,--nature and your native air, they must do the rest for you; the
virtues of the pharmacopoeia are exhausted."
So one autumn evening, as Mr. Stanfield sat poring over his book, and
Georgie, her hope day by day dying away within her, was looking out
over the darkening landscape, the noise of wheels was heard at the
gate; a grave man in black descended from the box of a postchaise, a
worn, thin, haggard face peered out of the window; and the next
instant, before Mr. Stanfield at all comprehended what had happened,
the carriage door was thrown open, and Georgie was hanging round the
neck of the carriage occupant; and kiss, kiss, and bless, bless! and
thank God! and safe once more! was all the explanation audible.
Dr. Prater was quite right; nature and the patient's native air
effected a complete cure. By the end of a month--such a happy month
for Georgie!--Sir Charles was able to drive to Redmoor to see the men
of business from London; by the end of two months he stood at the
altar of the little Fishbourne church, and received his darling from
the hands of her father; the ceremony being performed by the old
curate, who had learned to love Georgie as his own child, and who wept
plentifully as he bestowed on her his blessing.