LENORE.
When Mrs. Mortomley stated that the rich men's wives--the
carriage-and-pair and moderate-single-brougham ladies, who had duly
called at Homewood and made acquaintance with the colour-maker's
bride--hated her, her statement was probably too sweeping.
Hatred is a big word, and conveys the idea of an overwhelming amount of
detestation, and I do not think really there was a woman amongst the
whole number included in Dolly's mental and verbal condemnation who was
not far too much occupied with the grandeur of her own surroundings--the
wish to eclipse her neighbours--the perfections of her children and the
shortcomings of her servants, to have time to cultivate any feeling
stronger than very sufficient dislike for the new mistress of Homewood.
So far as dislike went, Mrs. Mortomley was right. The ladies who called
upon her, and who, in their own way--which was not her way--were wiser,
better, happier women than Dolly, disliked her as nation dislikes
nation, as class dislikes class, as sect dislikes sect, as diverging
politicians dislike each other.
There was no blame attaching to any one in the matter. It could not be
said that anything Dolly did repulsed these worthy matrons. What God and
circumstances had made her was the cause of their antipathy.
A cat is a nice domestic animal in the eyes of many people, and a dog
has many qualities which endear him to an appreciative master; but we do
not blame either because they cannot agree--we say they are better
separate than together. Mrs. Mortomley and the worthy, kindly, prim,
straight-laced female pharisees who had been disposed to look amiably
upon her, were better apart.
Mrs. Werner, with her stately manner, with her--by them--unapproachable
heart, with her high-bred courtesy and innate knowledge of the world,
delighted them. Though in her presence they felt much the same sort of
restraint as a subject, no matter how well-born and delicately nurtured,
if unaccustomed to courts, might feel during an audience with her
Majesty, still they went away praising her gifts of person, her graces
of bearing, her suitable conversation.
She was all the mind of woman could desire, while Dolly was all that the
imagination of woman held undesirable.
But the precious gift of charity was amongst these ladies. They were
glad to smooth their ruffled feathers with a flattering platitude, "Poor
dear Mrs. Mortomley! Yes; so untiring a hostess! so hospitable! so
unselfish! but," this in a stage whisper, "odd, no doubt a little
flighty and uncertain, like all clever people!"
For these people, with a quicker intuition than obtained among the
residents of Great Dassell, had discovered Dolly was clever. Though her
light, hidden under a bushel, could have never been discovered save by
the eye of faith,--by them.
With men the case was different. With all the veins of their hearts, the
men whose good-will it seemed most desirable she should conciliate,
hated Dolly.
They began with liking her--there was the misfortune--that which their
wives, daughters, and sisters were sharp enough to detect at a glance,
they only found out by a slow and painful and degrading process of
disillusion.
Intuitively women understood that the moment after Mrs. Mortomley had in
her best manner bid the last of them "good night," coming herself to the
outer door to speak the words, she flung her arms over her head, thanked
Heaven they were gone, and delightedly mocked them for the benefit of
any appreciative guest belonging to the clique she affected; but men
could not be lectured, scolded, or inducted into a comprehension of Mrs.
Mortomley's hypocrisy till their vanity had been raised to a point from
whence the fall proved hurtful.
Men accustomed to society would have taken Dolly's little careful
attentions, her conventional flatteries, her recollection of special
likings, her remembrance of physical delicacy, and mental peculiarities
for just the trifle they were worth, the laudable desire of a woman to
make all her guests feel Homewood for the nonce their home, and the
natural and essentially feminine wish to induce each male of the
company--even if he were deaf, bald, prosy--to carry away a special and
particular remembrance of their hostess Mrs. Mortomley.
But this is a game which if all very well for a short period, palls
after frequent playing. Dolly grew sick of the liking she herself had
striven to excite.
She might have managed to continue to associate with the wives and
produce no stronger feeling of antipathy than she managed to excite
during the course of a first interview, but with husbands the case was
different. Let her try as she would, and at the suggestion of various
well meaning if short-sighted friends she did occasionally try, with all
her heart, to retain the good opinion that many worthy and wealthy
gentlemen had been kind enough in the early days of acquaintanceship to
express concerning her--her efforts proved utterly futile.
Mortomley had made a mistake, and he was the only person who failed to
understand the fact. His wife was quick enough to know she ought never
to have responded to the offers of intimacy and hospitality "people most
desirable for a man to stand well with" had been so unhappily prompt to
offer.
That which Lamb wrote of himself might, merely altering the pronoun,
have been said about Dolly:
"Those who did not like him hated him, and some who once liked him
afterwards became his bitterest haters."
I have said before that this was scarcely Mr. Mortomley's fault; but
most assuredly it was Mr. Mortomley's misfortune. The very dislike his
wife inspired gave a factitious importance to him and his affairs which
they certainly never possessed before.
The modest home his progenitors had, in the good old days when that
which belonged to everybody could be appropriated by any-body, made for
themselves on the outskirts of Epping Forest, became a centre of
interest to an extent the owner never could have conceived possible. He
did not trouble himself about the affairs of his neighbours. That they
should concern themselves about his, never entered his mind.
It may be safe enough, if not altogether pleasant, for a great
millionaire or a great lady to be subject to the curious gaze of the
multitude; but for a business man doing a moderate trade, or for a wife
in the middle rank of society, it proves a trying and often dangerous
ordeal.
All unconsciously Mortomley pursued his way, with many a scrutinizing
eye marking his progress. Not quite so unconsciously Mrs. Mortomley
pursued her way, making fresh enemies as she moved along.
Even her child grew to be a source of offence. "It's not her fault poor
little thing!" the mothers of pert, snub-nosed, inquisitive, precocious
snoblings would complacently remark, "properly brought up she might be
something very different."
Which, indeed, to say truth, was not desirable. Let the mother's
deficiencies be what they might, it would have been difficult, I think,
to suggest improvement in the child.
She had all the Mortomley regularity of features, light brown hair,
flecked with gold, that came likewise from her father's family; but her
eyes were the eyes of Dolly--only darker, larger, more liquid; and her
vivacity, her peals of delighted laughter, her happy ability to amuse
herself for hours together, came from some forgotten Gerace. There are
families in which few traditions are preserved, who have left no memory
behind them, but still lived long enough to bequeath the great gift of
contentment to some who were to come after.
Why then was Lenore accounted an offence? A sentence from "Imperfect
Sympathies," may, perhaps, explain this better than I can.
Elia says, "I have been trying all my life to like--" For the present
purpose it is not needful to extract more closely,--"And am obliged to
desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me, and in truth
I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it."
In a foot note to the same essay, he puts his idea even more clearly:
"There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another
individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met
with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons
meeting (who never saw one another before), and instantly fighting."
Custom, association, family prejudices, the objects upon which the eye
has been in the habit of perpetually dwelling, these things go to make
the something, which in at once a wider and a narrower sense than that
artists and literati understand the word, is called taste.
I mean this: matters such as those indicated, educate for good or for
evil, the outward senses, and at the same time form an actual, if
unconscious, mental standard to which, as it may be high or low, the
estimate of those with whom we are thrown in contact is dwarfed or
raised.
If it were true, as is generally supposed, that maternity makes women
appreciative of, and tender-hearted to, the children of other women,
Lenore might have spanned the gulf which stretched between her mother
and the admirable matrons who contemned without understanding her; but
it is not true.
So long as infants are in arms, so long as their talk is unintelligible,
their limbs unavailable for active service, their idiosyncracies
undeveloped and their features unformed, they occupy a platform on which
mothers can meet on neutral ground and survey and discuss the beauties
of alien babies without a feeling of envy, or rivalry.
In that stage, even Lenore was viewed with kindly and appreciative eyes,
but not long subsequently to the period when she found the use of her
tongue which, of course, after the manner of her sex, she began to ply
in vague utterances before a boy would have thought of exercising it,
the little creature began to fall out of favour with those ladies who
looked upon Mrs. Mortomley as an error in creation.
And as Lenore passed as such as she do pass, rapidly from infancy to
childhood, she became more obnoxious to those who had a theory as to
what little girls and boys should be, founded it may be remarked on the
reality of what their own boys and girls had been, or were.
Dolly's child, though an only one, was no spoiled brat, always rubbing
up against its mother and asking for this, that and the other. Let Dolly
be as foolish in all else as she liked, she was wise as regarded Lenore.
When with lavish hand the father would have poured toys into her lap,
filled her little hands to overflowing, given her every pretty present
his eye lit upon, Dolly interfered. Her own childhood, bare of toys and
gifts, yet full of an exceeding happiness all self-made, was not, God
help her, hid so far away back in the mists of time, but she could
understand even in that land of plenty how to bring up the one child
given to her.
Lenore was a healthy little girl, healthily brought up. As a baby she
rolled on the grass or over the carpets, as a tiny little girl she could
make herself as happy stringing daisy chains and dandelion flowers, as
though each flower had been a pearl of price, and the threads with which
she linked them together spun out of gold; no lack of living companions
had she either; cats and dogs, kittens and puppies, composed part of the
retinue of that tiny queen.
But the queen and the retinue gave offence; as, being all natural, how
could they avoid doing?
Her name in the first instance stank in the nostrils of many worthy
women. "Named after some dreadful creature in Lord Byron's poems," they
remarked.
And if a person favourably inclined to Mrs. Mortomley explained he
believed the child was called after Mrs. Werner, and that secondly the
name was that of a heroine in one of Edgar Poe's poems, they answered,
"The name is suitable enough when given to a Lord's daughter, but Mr.
Mortomley is not a Lord, and I hope, Mr.----" this severely, "you do
not advocate having the heroines of French and German poets introduced
into English homes."
At which crass ignorance Mr.----bowed his head and confessed himself
conquered.
Whilst Lenore, unconscious of disapprobation and offence, grew and was
happy, a very impersonation of childish beauty and grace, and all the
time trouble was coming. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand hovered in
the horizon during the first happy years of her life, betokening a
hurricane which ultimately broke over Homewood, and swept it away from
her father's possession.