It was natural that with other people in the house Sainty should see
less of Cissy; he told himself so several times a day, yet the thought
was not altogether a pleasant one that she only welcomed his society as
a refuge from solitude or Lady Eccleston. The frost had put a stop to
the works in front of the house, and a bad chill and sharp attack of
neuralgia warned Sainty to discontinue his drives until milder weather.
Skating on the big pond became the amusement of the moment, a pastime in
which his lameness prevented his joining. Gerald Newby, in a straw hat,
spent hours upon the ice, and fell down with Spartan perseverance in his
determination to accomplish figures of eight.
‘Why is it a necessary part of the make-up of the good young man to wear
a straw hat in the winter?’ Claude asked; ‘I notice that serious youths
always do, curates and schoolmasters. Is it a mark of asceticism, as
being obviously not the comfortable thing to do, or to give the
impression that their brains are overheated with excess of thought?’
Claude, who skated, as he did everything else that he attempted, with
elegance and precision, had undertaken to instruct Cissy in the art, and
Sainty had to watch them gliding about together, both her hands tightly
clasped in his, and even a sustaining arm occasionally flung out when
the maiden was more than usually wobbly. It was all perfectly natural;
there was not the smallest ground for objecting. Lady Susan Trafford and
her sons, Claude’s mother, Newby, and Cissy’s three brothers were all on
the ice the whole time; the pond, though a good-sized sheet of water,
was visible from end to end; there were no corners or islands behind
which the flirtatiously-inclined could disappear; yet the sight of
those perpetually clasped hands became a constant irritation to
Belchamber, and it was quite vain for him to reiterate that with her
mother and brothers in the house, it was less than no business of his
how Miss Eccleston amused herself. ‘Had it been any one else but
Claude,’ he thought, ‘he should not have minded.’
It soon became evident to him that he was not alone in the apprehension
with which he watched the growing intimacy between Cissy and his cousin.
Lady Eccleston, it was plain, viewed it with quite as little favour as
he did. Swathed in furs, and with a blue nose, the poor lady fluttered
on the bank, in a manner strongly suggestive of a hen whose ducklings
have taken to the water. One day, having invited him to take her for a
walk, while the hoar frost crackled under their feet in the winding
mazes of the shrubbery, she quite unexpectedly unburthened herself to
him on the subject.
‘I can talk to you, dear Lord Belchamber,’ she said, ‘as I would to an
older man; you are so good, so pure, so unlike the others, and I am so
sorely in need of advice.’
‘Good gracious! Lady Eccleston,’ said Sainty, with hypocritical
surprise, ‘what’s the matter? How can I help you?’
‘I’m so afraid you’ll think it strange of me to talk to you on such a
subject, but, as I say, you are not like an ordinary young man; you have
always been so serious for your age, and then, you know your cousin
better than any one; you have been boys together.’
‘Claude?’
‘Yes, Mr. Morland. How kind of you to understand and help me out; but
you _are_ so sympathetic, more like a woman in some ways, I always say.’
Sainty was only partially pleased by this equivocal compliment. ‘What
about Claude?’ he asked.
‘I will be quite frank with you; you won’t misunderstand me, I know. A
mother’s solicitude; and, after all, what can be more natural? Left so
early a widow, and with these young ones to guide and bring up. If my
dear husband had lived it would all have been so different; but I have
no one to turn to. Tom is a mere boy, really no more help than the young
ones. Ah! Lord Belchamber, children are a sad responsibility.’
‘Yours seem to be very good ones,’ said Sainty.
‘You _do_ think so? I _am_ so glad. Yes, I think they are, but of course
I feel a mother is not a judge--her great love blinds her; but they
_are_ good children, I must say they give me very little trouble. Only
the high spirits of youth are always a pitfall. And Cissy--she’s a dear,
good girl, and we haven’t a secret from one another; we are more like
sisters. Yet it is for her that I sometimes feel the greatest anxiety.’
‘Yes?’
‘Some people think her pretty; again, of course, my partiality prevents
my judging; but lots of people have told me she was pretty. _Do_ you
think her pretty?’
‘I should think no one could help admiring Miss Eccleston,’ said Sainty.
‘Ah! that’s it. There’s no denying it. I can’t help seeing it; why
should I pretend I don’t? The girl does have a lot of admiration; I _do_
hope it won’t turn her head. She’s as good as gold, but London’s an
awful place. I’ve done all I can to keep her from all knowledge of evil,
and so far, thank God! the child is a thoroughly healthy-minded, pure
girl. Doesn’t she strike you so?’
‘Oh, certainly; but what----’
‘You were going to say “What has all this to do with Mr. Morland?” You
won’t mind my talking to you quite frankly? it _is_ such a comfort.
Well--any one can see your cousin admires Cissy immensely. And of course
she’s pleased by his attentions. I must admit he is charming; but _is_
he the kind of young man a mother would like to give her daughter to?’
‘Have you any reason to suppose your daughter cares at all for Claude?’
‘Oh no, no, no! don’t misunderstand me; I’m quite _sure_ she doesn’t.
But girls are so thoughtless; the more innocent they are, the more
imprudent. If I so much as try to venture a hint to her to be a little
more circumspect, she says, “I don’t know what you _mean_, mother,” and
she looks at me in such a way I’m quite ashamed, I really am.’
‘Of course Miss Eccleston is all that is delicate and refined, but if
you are certain she does not at all return my cousin’s partiality----’
‘Oh, of that I’m _sure_; she’s such a mirror of candour--if she had the
very smallest feeling she would have told me--but your cousin is most
fascinating, that I must admit, and she _might_ get to think she cared.
Now, I ask you, who know him so well, _is_ he just the sort of man in
whose hands a very pure-minded girl with high ideals would be happy? I
know my child so well; if she were ever to find out that the man she
married had been at all fast, it would simply kill her. And the young
men of the day _are_ so wicked, or so they tell me. One can’t help
hearing things _de temps en temps_ in London, no matter how much one
hates gossip, and _no_ one hates it as I do.’
Sainty thought he knew some one who hated it at least as much as her
ladyship. He was wondering what Claude really felt for Cissy. In the
light of their conversation about Miss Winston, he found it difficult to
believe that his cousin was courting a portionless girl with a view to
marriage; but he could not catechise him as to his intentions towards
every young woman with whom he ever saw him, especially after the scanty
encouragement he had met with on that occasion. Were he to answer Lady
Eccleston truthfully, there could be little doubt of what he must say;
but the thought of acting secret police in this fashion was not
agreeable to him.
‘You must see----’ he began.
‘Oh! I do, I do,’ cried the lady; ‘I see _just_ how unpleasant it would
be for you to have to say a word against your cousin, and, dear Lord
Belchamber, do let me say how much it makes me like you, though, to be
sure, that wasn’t necessary, for I’ve always said you were my ideal
young man. Cissy and I have so often agreed in talking over some of the
young men we know, Tom’s friends, and the men we see at balls, and
others, that there is _no_ one quite like you.’
‘No, I’m well aware that I am not like other young men----’
‘Ah! be thankful you’re not, dear Lord Belchamber; the young men of the
day, I’m _sorry_ to say, are not nice. And thank you so much for
listening to me so patiently, and telling me _just_ what I wanted to
know. I can’t tell you the comfort this little talk has been to me. You
see, I have no one to turn to, and I do think it so sweet of you not to
want to say a word against Mr. Morland.’
Sainty wondered a little afterwards just what the information was for
which Lady Eccleston was so grateful, for though the interview was
nominally sought with a view to consulting him, while he had received a
number of interesting confidences, he could not recollect having
expressed any opinion at all. Lady Eccleston, however, had apparently
found him a satisfactory counsellor, for the next day she returned to
the subject.
‘You remember what I said to you yesterday about Cissy and Mr. Morland,’
she whispered, dropping down beside him on one of the seats in the
winter-garden after lunch. ‘I’m more than ever convinced she doesn’t
care for him; it is foolish of me to take fright as I do, but there is
just one point I _do_ want to put myself right with you about. I was so
afraid afterwards you might think--and yet--no, come to think of it, I’m
sure you wouldn’t; but I should like just to say that I hope you
_didn’t_ think what I said had _any_thing to do with Mr. Morland being
poor, or what the world would call not a good match. As long as he was a
good man, and a man of principle, and some one in her own _monde_, I’ve
always said I didn’t care who my girl married. No one can say I’m
mercenary. My poor dear husband and I married on next to nothing, and
there never was a happier marriage. I wish you had known Sir Thomas,
you would have loved him,’
Sainty expressed a suitable regret at having missed the pleasure of Sir
Thomas’s acquaintance. ‘Some people,’ Lady Eccleston continued
pensively, ‘some people think I’m wrong. Only last week a dear friend of
mine said to me that it was all very well to despise money, but that
other things being equal, it was a great power, and that in this age of
the world it was impossible to get on without it. I said “You may be
right, dear, and I don’t deny that for my children’s sake I’ve sometimes
wished I had a little more of it, but money isn’t everything. It can’t
give happiness.”’ And her ladyship raised her eyes to a statuette of
Venus in a cluster of palms, with the expression of a dying martyr
regarding a crucifix.
‘No, Lord Belchamber, if a man’s a gentleman and a good man, for me, he
may be as poor as--as he pleases--_that_ isn’t what I fear; but though
Cissy seems such a child, she has a very strongly marked character, and
intensely deep feelings, and were she to marry a man she could not
respect, she would never know a moment’s happiness. What she needs above
all is a man of strict principles, of high ideals, and with a pure mind
and life, and where is such a man to be found? But forgive me for boring
you with all this; it can’t interest you. George, dear,’ to her second
son, who passed at the moment, ‘are you going skating? Do you know where
Cissy is? Is she going with you? I want to speak to her’; and with a
little nod of good understanding to her host, Lady Eccleston skipped
with her usual amazing agility off the ottoman, and departed with her
arm twined about the boy’s waist.
Belchamber pondered much on these conversations. ‘The ordinary clever
man,’ he thought, ‘who prides himself on knowledge of human nature,
would be sure that Lady Eccleston was trying to “hook him” for her
daughter, and would, as usual, be wrong. If the lady is not, a monument
of wisdom, at least I give her credit for not being so obvious as
_that_. No; she is treating me, as women always do, as a creature
removed from all thoughts and hopes of love, a sexless being set apart
like the priest in Catholic countries to be the safe recipient of tender
confidences in which he can have no personal concern.’ Still he
sometimes dreamed (as who may not at twenty-three?) of what life might
come to mean if Love should breathe on its dry bones and bid them live;
if it were possible that some maid more discerning than her fellows
should see with the eye of the soul, beneath his dreary, unattractive
exterior, the wealth of love that was waiting like the sleeping princess
for the awakening kiss! ‘Perhaps I might even have the luck of the
unhappy monster in _L’Homme qui rit_, and meet with a blind girl!’
Hideousness, even deformity, was no bar to the love of woman, that he
knew. He thought of Wilkes, of Mirabeau, of many others who had been
more passionately loved than your pretty fellows. Deep in his heart he
knew his real disability; it was not his lack of personal beauty, nor
even his lameness that was the bar, but his miserable inherent
effeminacy. A man might be never so uncouth, so that the manhood in him
cried imperiously to the other sex and commanded surrender. ‘More like a
woman in some ways.’ Had not Lady Eccleston said it? There lay the
sting. And yet--who could tell? Might not a miracle be worked? Might he
not some day find himself face to face with this stupendous, unhoped-for
happiness?
He wrote many poems at this time, poems not addressed to any concrete
personality, but to that ‘not impossible she,’ the divine abstraction
who should recognise and respond to what lay hidden in his heart. He
felt very sure that Cissy Eccleston, with her frank pagan enjoyment of
life and the moment, was not the lady of his dreams. Those little curved
lips of hers might seek the red mouth of a lover, but would never bestow
the heroic salute that should cleanse the leper, or restore his true
form to the enchanted beast. Yet, forasmuch as he had seen so few girls,
his Beatrice sometimes came to him clad in something of the outward
semblance, the virginal candour and freshness of this sojourner within
his gates. He found himself wondering if Lady Eccleston’s account of her
daughter’s ermine-like recoil from all contact with moral impurity had
any foundation in fact, or whether this fancy portrait of the girl dying
of a stain on the premarital robe of her husband were not as purely
fallacious as some of his mother’s theories about Arthur. It had been
borne in on him that mothers were not always infallible in what
concerned their children’s characters; he was farther rendered a little
sceptical as to the young lady’s excessive innocence by some of her own
conversation, and notably a certain curiosity displayed with what seemed
to him a lack of delicacy on more than one occasion as to his
unfortunate sister-in-law.
‘Of course one knew all those girls by sight,’ she remarked, with
engaging candour, ‘but I’m not sure just _which_ was Cynthia de Vere; it
_was_ the tall one with the beautiful legs and the rather big mouth,
wasn’t it? I told Tom so, and he said it wasn’t; but I’m sure I’m right,
ain’t I?’
On another occasion she startled him by the plainest possible reference
to the relations of Charley Hunter and Miss Baynes.
‘I didn’t know young ladies knew anything about such things,’ Sainty
said rather severely.
‘They do now,’ said Cissy, ‘whatever they used to; but I suspect they
always knew more than they let on. There was a friend of mine who
married Teddie Hersham last season; I was one of her bridesmaids; she
was awfully proud of taking him away from Totty Seymour; she used to
boast of it to all her friends.’
‘I can’t bear to hear you talk like that,’ Sainty answered. ‘It would
give people who didn’t know you such a wrong idea of you.’
‘I’ll try not to, if you don’t like it; but it isn’t easy for me to
pretend to be different to what I am.’
‘I don’t want you to. I only ask you to be true to yourself, and not say
things that I am sure are quite foreign to you for the sake of startling
people.’
‘Well, I must own I do enjoy shocking _you_. You are so awfully proper,
you know; but why should you care what I do or say?’ she added, with a
little arch glance.
‘I don’t know, I’m sure, but I do. I suppose I--I like you too well not
to mind your behaving in a way I don’t think worthy of you.’
What wonder if Miss Eccleston found Claude Morland a more amusing
companion than his cousin? Sainty was the first to admit the likelihood.
He was well aware that Claude would not have offended her by championing
her innocence against herself, or have made any difficulties about
gratifying her girlish curiosity as to that other world of which she
knew so little. The thought of Morland’s long, deft fingers delicately
removing the bloom from this young creature irritated him unaccountably.
Oh no! it was not jealousy; that, again, was what the stupid, knowing
people would think; he could never care for this empty-headed little
thing in that way, and knew only too well how much more impossible it
was that _she_ should care for _him_. Only, he did not want her to
suffer, nor to coarsen and deteriorate.
He was revolving some such thoughts as these as he walked by himself one
day, perhaps a week after his conversation with Lady Eccleston, when he
was startled by loud cries from the neighbourhood of the pond, and made
all the haste he was able in that direction. The air was certainly
milder; there had been unmistakable premonitions of a thaw. He
remembered the discussion at breakfast as to whether the ice would still
bear, and the eager affirmations of the young Traffords and Ecclestons
that it was as sound as ever. Bertie Trafford and Randolph Eccleston had
been sliding all over it, and had even stamped in places to see if it
would give way; but Mr. Danford, the agent, had come in in the course of
the morning to say that it had a damp look about the edges he did not
like, and to advise them to keep off it. Sainty had not been greatly
interested; the pond, though large, was mostly artificial, and nowhere
more than three or four feet deep, and if the boys liked to risk a
wetting, it did not seem to him to matter much. Now his thoughts flew
to Cissy; he wondered he had not thought of her before, and the next
moment he turned a corner, and found himself one of an excited group,
the centre of which was Claude, hatless, dishevelled, and very wet,
bearing in his arms the inanimate form of Miss Eccleston. Her eyes were
closed, and every trace of colour was gone from her face; her lips were
blue, and the water ran in streams from her clothing. The boys crowded
round, all talking at once, and making a number of foolish suggestions.
‘Is she drowned? Is she dead?’ wailed little Randolph, and was sternly
bidden by George not to be an ass unless he wanted to get kicked.
‘What is the matter? What has happened?’ asked Sainty, and was conscious
of saying the silly thing even before Claude answered with studied
politeness, ‘Don’t you see? Miss Eccleston has caught fire, but we have
luckily extinguished the flames.’
Claude was seldom cross, but he hated scenes and emotions and spoilt
clothes. ‘If some one would help me to get her up to the house it would
be some use,’ he added; ‘and can’t any one lend a dry coat to wrap round
her? Mine’s no good, it’s as wet as a sponge. Oh! not _you_, Sainty,
_you_’ll catch cold.’
A little way from the house they encountered Lady Eccleston, who had got
wind of the catastrophe, and was hurrying to meet them; and Sainty was
struck by the change in her manner in face of emergency. Her foolish
flightiness seemed to have dropped from her like a garment that an
athlete throws off. She had all her wits about her, and gave the most
sensible directions. She had her daughter upstairs and in bed between
warm blankets in less time than it takes to write it down, and by the
afternoon she was able to report to them that Cissy was quite
comfortable, only a little feverish and upset by the shock; but she did
not think she would be much the worse for her wetting.
Cissy, however, was a most unaccountable time in getting over that
shock. Lady Eccleston expressed herself as amazed that her daughter
should take so long to recover from so small a thing.
‘Really, Lord Belchamber, I’m ashamed; you’ll think you are never going
to get rid of us; but the doctor says positively that the child mustn’t
come down yet. I can’t understand it at all, for the chill she has
_quite_ got over. Of course she had a dreadful feverish cold, and at
first we thought it would settle on her lungs, but, thank God! all
danger of that seems at an end. Then I ask _what_ is the matter? and Dr.
Lane says, “It’s the shock to the nervous system.” But I’m mortified. I
really am. Do you know how long we’ve been here?’
‘I don’t want to know, Lady Eccleston. I only know we are too glad to
keep you as long as you can stay, and I am sure my mother feels as I do
about it.’
‘Oh! you are too kind about it, both of you! But one has _some_
compunctions, you know. And after all your goodness about the boys and
all!’
George and Randolph had returned to Harrow, and Tom to his hated office
in Throgmorton Avenue, Claude’s presence had been once more required by
his respected chief, and the rest of the party had melted like the snow
that had followed the long frost; but still Cissy lay in a most becoming
pink dressing-gown in a small boudoir that had been arranged for her
next her bedroom. It took Lady Eccleston days of modest trepidation to
bring herself to admit Sainty to these sacred precincts. ‘Was she very
unconventional? Well, she supposed she was--people always said so--but
she was weak where her children were concerned, and Cissy had said, “Why
_shouldn’t_ Lord Belchamber come to see me, mamma?” Not for worlds would
she have introduced the ordinary young man’; and then Sainty was once
more assured of his ‘difference,’ his purity, the perfect confidence an
anxious mother could repose in him.
‘Her brothers are gone, you see, and she misses them so, poor child. And
though we are _such_ friends, an old woman is dull company _pour tout
potage_; and then my wretched throat gives out; I am no good for reading
aloud. Now it would be _angelic_ of you, if you would read to her a
little; _would_ you? Oh! _how_ kind! She is a perfect baby about being
read to; and you are so clever; you will know just what to read; you
have such literary taste; everybody says so.’
Thus Sainty found himself installed as reader to the invalid, and spent
many hours a day by her sofa. At first Lady Eccleston was always there;
then, when they were deep in their book, she would sometimes slip away
to her voluminous correspondence or long consultations with her maid
over the endless transmutations of her wardrobe. Sometimes Lady
Charmington would look in, with a few words of grim tenderness, and lay
a large cool hand on Cissy’s hair. Gradually the young people came to be
left alone for longer and longer intervals. Belchamber rather wondered,
himself, at the relaxation of all watchfulness on the part of their
chaperons. ‘It is the old story,’ he told himself gloomily; ‘I am
certainly not considered dangerous.’
One day Lady Eccleston was much perturbed at breakfast over her letters.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she cried, ‘it is most unfortunate; do advise
me, dear Lady Charmington. There are a dozen things I ought to be in
London for. I have a committee on Tuesday; they say they can’t do
without me; and things seem to be all at sixes and sevens at home: poor
Tommy writes that he is most uncomfortable; he says the maids are always
out, and he believes the cook gives parties; that there are--what is it?
Oh! yes, here--“sounds of revelry by night”; he is always so absurd,
poor dear; but it _is_ hard on him. I really feel we ought to go, and
Cissy is just beginning at last to be a little better.’
‘Why don’t you run up for a day or two, and do what you have to, attend
to your committee, and give an eye to things in Chester Square?’ said
Lady Charmington. ‘Leave Cissy to us, if you will trust us; we will take
every care of her.’
‘O dear Lady Charmington, I _couldn’t_; that _would_ be an imposition.
Of course she would be ever so much better here, and she is so happy,
poor child; Chester Square is so noisy, and of course directly she gets
back to London, people will begin to want her to do things, and I shall
never keep her quiet. But I simply couldn’t; it would be monstrous to
put on you to such an extent.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Charmington. ‘It is a thousand pities to take her
back to town just when she is getting on so well; a few weeks more of
good air and rest will do everything for her; she must come downstairs
first, go out for a few drives, before she thinks of a journey. Don’t
you agree with me, Sainty?’
‘Of course we shall be only too glad, if you think Miss Eccleston would
not be dull----’ Sainty began.
‘Ah! dear Lord Belchamber! dear Lady Charmington! how good you both
are!’ cried the tender mother. ‘I am ashamed, positively ashamed, but
what can I say? She will be overjoyed. She had to gulp down a big lump
in her throat when I told her we must go home; she was so good, she
wouldn’t say anything, but _I_ could see; love sharpens our wits when it
is a question of our children’s happiness, doesn’t it, dear?’
‘It is generally not difficult to see through young people,’ said Lady
Charmington. Sainty was wondering if the necessity for Lady Eccleston’s
presence in London had arisen out of the letters she had received since
she came downstairs, when she could have had the conversation on the
subject which had brought the lump into her daughter’s throat, but he
was too polite to inquire.
The conclusion of the whole matter, as might have been foreseen, was
that Lady Eccleston departed to London, leaving Cissy at Belchamber, and
the readings were continued with even less supervision than before.
Cissy’s literary taste was decidedly undeveloped, and it may be doubted
if some of her host’s finest reading was not merely an accompaniment to
the thinking out of new hats; but Sainty enjoyed immensely introducing
a novice to his best beloved authors, and the new sensation of being
able to minister to a sufferer, and lighten the long hours of some of
their dullness and depression. He wasted an immense amount of care and
thought on the selection of suitable gems, passages that should be
characteristic and of the highest beauty, and yet milk to the
intellectual babe. Sometimes he almost forgot his listener in the
pleasure of voicing things long dear to himself, especially poetry, and
he read a good deal of poetry. Cissy displayed but little enthusiasm;
she always thanked him very prettily when he finished, if she was not
asleep, and ‘hoped it didn’t bore him awfully,’ but she made few
comments, and listened for the most part in silence and often with her
eyes closed. Sainty put down her apparent indifference to the languor of
convalescence. Once, indeed, she startled him by the energy of her
appreciation. He was reading _Maud_ to her, and she had several times
disappointed him with a calm ‘very pretty’ when he had paused after some
exquisite lyric that left him vibrating like a harpstring. When,
however, he came to--
‘Oh that ‘twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!’
her quickened respiration showed her interest; and at the stanza
beginning ‘When I was wont to meet her,’ she half raised herself, saying
eagerly, ‘I like that; read that bit again, please; do you mind?’ and on
Sainty’s complying, she repeated dreamily to herself, as though the
words called up some image that gave her pleasure,
‘We stood tranced in long embraces,
Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter
Than anything on earth.’
‘Who did you say wrote that?’ she asked. ‘Oh! of course, yes, Tennyson,’
and with a great sigh she sank back on her cushions. Then she looked
suddenly at him, as though she feared she had betrayed something, and
flushed crimson. ‘Go on,’ she murmured; ‘beg pardon,’ and relapsed into
her habitual expression of polite endurance. Next day she asked him to
lend her the book, as she wanted to copy some of it out.
Sainty was delighted, but surprised.