"Oh, the little more, and how much it is!
And the little less, and what worlds away!"
R. BROWNING.
Miss Fane, John's aunt, was one of those large, soft, fleecy persons who
act as tea-cosies to the domestic affections, and whom the perspicacity
of the nobler sex rarely allows to remain unmarried. That by some
inexplicable mischance she had so remained was, of course, a blessing to
her orphaned nephew which it would be hard to overrate. John was
supposed to be fortunate indeed to have such an aunt. He had been told
so from a child. She had certainly been kind to him in her way, and
perhaps he owed her more than he was fully aware of; for it is difficult
to feel an exalted degree of gratitude and affection towards a person
who journeys through life with a snort and a plush reticule, who is ever
seeking to eat some new thing, and who sleeps heavily in the morning
over a lapful of magenta crochet-work.
On religious topics also little real sympathy existed between the aunt
and nephew. Miss Fane was one of those fortunate individuals who can
derive spiritual benefit and consolation from the conviction that they
belong to a lost tribe, and that John Bull was originally the Bull of
Bashan.
Very wonderful are the dispensations of Providence respecting the
various forms in which religion appeals to different intellects. Miss
Fane derived the same peace of mind and support from her bull, and what
she called "its promises," as Madeleine did from the monster altar
candles which she had just introduced into the church at her new home,
candles which were really gas-burners--a pious fraud which it was to be
hoped a Deity so partial to wax candles, especially in the daytime,
would not detect.
Miss Fane had an uneasy feeling, as years went by, that, in spite of the
floods of literature on the subject with which she kept him supplied,
John appeared to make little real progress towards Anglo-Israelitism.
Even the pamphlet which she had read aloud to him when he was ill, which
proved beyond a doubt that the unicorn of Ezekiel was the prototype of
the individual of that genus which now supports the royal arms,--even
that pamphlet, all-conclusive as it was, appeared to have made no
lasting impression on his mind.
But if the desire to proselytize was her weak point, good nature was
her strong one. She was always ready, as on this occasion, to go to
Overleigh or to John's house in London, if her presence was required. If
she slept heavily amid his guests, it was only because "it was her
nature to."
She slept more heavily than usual on this particular evening, for it was
chilly; and the ladies had congregated in the music-room after dinner,
where there was a fire, and a fire always reduced Miss Fane to a state
of coma.
Mrs. Courtenay was bored almost to extinction--had been bored all day,
and all yesterday--but nevertheless her fine countenance expressed a
courteous interest in the rheumatic pains and Jaeger underclothing of one
of the elder ladies. She asked appropriate questions from time to time,
bringing Miss Goodwin, who with her brother was dining at the Castle,
into the conversation whenever she could.
Miss Goodwin, a gentle, placid woman of nine and twenty, clad in the
violent colours betokening small means and the want of taste of richer
relations, took but little part in the great Jaeger question. Her pale
eyes under their white eyelashes followed Di rather wistfully as the
latter rose and left the room to fetch Mrs. Courtenay some wool. Between
women of the same class, and even of the same age, there is sometimes an
inequality as great as that between royalty and pauperism.
Soon afterwards the men came in. Miss Fane regained a precarious
consciousness. The painter dropped into a low chair by Mrs. Courtenay,
some one else into a seat by Mary Goodwin; Mr. Goodwin addressed himself
indiscriminately to Miss Fane and the lady of the clandestine Jaegers.
John, after a glance round the room, and a short sojourn on the
hearthrug, which proved too hot for him, seated himself on a strictly
neutral settee away from the fire, and took up _Punch_. Immediately
afterwards Di came back.
She gave Mrs. Courtenay her wool, and then, instead of returning to her
former seat by the fire, gathered up her work, crossed the room, and sat
down on the settee by John.
The blood rushed to his face. Her quiet unconcerned manner stung him to
the quick. She spoke to him, but he did not answer. Indeed, he did not
hear what she said. A moment before he had been wondering what excuse he
could make for getting up and going to her. He had been about to draw
her attention to the cartoon in a two-days-old _Punch_, for persons in
John's state of mind lose sight of the realities of life; and in the
presence of half a dozen people, she could calmly make her way to him,
and seat herself beside him, exactly as she might have done if he had
been her brother. He felt himself becoming paler and paler. An entirely
new idea was forcing itself upon him like a growing physical pain. But
there was not time to think of it now. He wondered whether there was any
noticeable difference in his face, and whether his voice would betray
him to Di if he spoke. He need not have been afraid. Di did not know the
meaning of a certain stolid look which John's countenance could
occasionally take. She was perfectly unconscious of what was going on a
couple of feet away from her, and picked up her stitches in a cheerful
silence. Mary Goodwin saw that he was vexed, and, not being versed in
the intricacies of love in its early stages, or, indeed, in any stages,
wondered why his face fell when his beautiful cousin came to sit by him.
"Don't you sing?" she said, turning to Di.
"I whisper a little sometimes with the soft pedal down," said Di. "But
not in public. There is a painful discrepancy between me and my voice.
It is several sizes too small for me."
"Do whisper a little all the same," said the painter.
"John," said Di, "I am afraid you do not observe that I am being pressed
to sing by two of your guests. Why don't you, in the language of the
_Quiver_, conduct me to the instrument?"
The unreasoning, delighted pride with which John had until now listened
to the smallest of Di's remarks, whether addressed to himself or others,
had entirely left him.
"Do sing," he said, without looking at her; and he rose to light the
candles on the piano.
And Di sang. John sat down by Mary, and actually allowed the painter to
turn over.
It was a very small voice, low and clear, which, while it disarmed
criticism, made one feel tenderly towards the singer. John, with his
hand over his eyes, watched Di intently. She seemed to have suddenly
receded from him to a great and impassable distance, at the very moment
when he had thought they were drawing nearer to each other. He took new
note of every line of form and feature. There was a growing tumult in
his mind, a glimpse of breakers ahead. The atmosphere of peace and
quietude of the familiar room, and the low voice singing in the
listening silence, seemed to his newly awakened consciousness to veil
some stern underlying reality, the features of which he could not see.
Mary Goodwin, who had the music in her which those who possess a lesser
degree of it are often able more fluently to express, left John, and,
going to the piano, began to turn over Di's music.
Presently she set up an old leather manuscript book before Di, who,
after a moment's hesitation, began to sing--
"Oh, broken heart of mine,
Death lays his lips to thine;
His draught of deadly wine
He proffereth to thee!
But listen! low and near,
In thy close-shrouded ear,
I whisper. Dost thou hear?
'Arise and work with me.'
"The death-weights on thine eyes
Shut out God's patient skies.
Cast off thy shroud and rise!
What dost thou mid the dead?
Thine idle hands and cold
Once more the plough must hold,
Must labour as of old.
Come forth, and earn thy bread."
The voice ceased. The accompaniment echoed the stern sadness of the
last words, and then was suddenly silent.
What is it in a voice that so mightily stirs the fibre of emotion in us?
It seemed to John that Di had taken his heart into the hollow of her
slender hands.
"Thank you," said Mary Goodwin, after a pause; and one of the elder
ladies felt it was an opportune moment to express her preference for
cheerful songs.
Di had risen from the piano, and was gathering up her music.
Involuntarily John crossed the room, and came and stood beside her. He
did not know he had done so till he found himself at her side. Mary
Goodwin turned to Miss Fane to say "Good night."
Di slowly put one piece of music on another, absently turning them right
side upwards. He saw what was passing through her mind as clearly as if
it had been reflected in a glass. He stood by her watching her bend
over the piano. He was unable to speak to her or help her. Presently she
looked slowly up at him. He had no conception until he tried how
difficult it was to meet without flinching the quiet friendship of her
eyes.
"John," she said, "my mother wrote that song. Do you remember what a
happy, innocent kind of look the miniature had? She was seventeen then,
and she was only four and twenty when she died. I don't know how to
express it, but somehow the miniature seems a very long way off from the
song. I am afraid there must have been a good deal of travelling
between-whiles, and not over easy country."
John would have answered something, but the Goodwins were saying "Good
night;" and shortly afterwards the others dispersed for the night. But
John sat up late over the smoking-room fire, turning things over in his
mind, and vainly endeavouring to nail shadows to the wall. It seemed to
him as if, while straining towards a goal, he had suddenly discovered,
by the merest accident, that he was walking in a circle.