Death and the sun are very much alike in one respect, and that is,
their utter impartiality and stupid want of discernment. They make no
difference between those who love them and those who hate. They pay
their visits equally to those who are longing for and lifting up eager
hands towards them, and those who would much prefer to be without them.
I will drop the parallel, which cannot be carried much farther, and
talk of the sun only. He certainly shows very little judgment, and less
taste, in these matters. He gives his great, warm light just as readily
to a scullery as a boudoir, to an ill-smelling dunghill as to a bed of
mignonette; kisses with just as much relish the raddled cheeks of an
old fish-wife as the fresh scarlet lips of a young countess.
This present August morning he is blazing full and hot on that very
grievous daub of Mrs. Brandon in a no-waisted black satin, out of which
she appears to be bursting, like a chrysalis from its sheath, in the
Plas Berwyn dining-room, and not a whit more fully or more hotly on the
exquisite "Monna Lisa" of Da Vinci, which is the chief jewel of the
Gerard collection.
The same sunbeam that brings out with such clearness Monna Lisa's
faint, weird smile, takes in also within its compass Esther's small,
swart head, round the back of which coils a great, loose, careless
twist of burnished hair, like a black snake. She is standing outside
the dining-room door, with her lithe, _svelte_ figure stooped forward a
little. The family are at prayers, as she ascertained by applying her
ear to the key-hole, and hearing a harsh, elderly voice going at a good
round trot through a variety of petitions, for himself, his children
(he has only one, and hates him), his friends, his enemies, his queen,
his bishops and curates, his black brethren, &c., all without the
vestige of a comma between them.
"What! eavesdropping?" asks St. John, coming down the handsome, shallow
stairs in knickerbockers and heather-mixture stockings that his old
mother made him.
"Hush!" holding up her forefinger; "they are at prayers."
St. John listens too, and a sneer comes and settles on his mouth.
"Isn't he a worthy rival for the man who said he would give any one as
far as Pontius Pilate in the Creed, and then beat him?"
"You ought not to abuse your own father" (in a whisper).
"I know I ought not" (in another whisper).
"Why do you, then?" casting down her eyes, that he may see how large a
portion of downy cheeks her long curly lashes shade.
"I only do for him what I know he would do for me if he had the chance."
"Hush! they are nearly over."
"... be with us all evermore. Amen. Morris!"
"Yes, Sir Thomas."
"What the deuce do you mean sticking the legs of that chair against the
wall knocking all the paint off the wainscot?"
"Oh! blessings on his kindly voice,
And on his silver hair!"
says St. John, in ironical quotation; and then the door opens, and a
long string of servants issue out, and the two culprits again, as on
the previous evening, together enter.
Lady Gerard never appears at breakfast. About twenty years ago she had
an illness, and, on the strength of it, has kept up a character for
invalidhood ever since. Miss Blessington takes her place at the head
of the table; she is sitting there now. Her shapely hands are busy
among the teacups; her white lids drooped over her calm eyes. There
is a great gold cross on her breast, that rises and falls in soft,
even undulations. Eve, as she was when first she grew into separate
entity and embodiment out of Adam's side; Eve, of creamiest flesh,
and richest, reddest blood, before a soul--a tormenting, puzzling,
intangible, incomprehensible soul--was breathed into her.
When Constance marries, her husband will gaze at her as a man might
gaze at Gibson's "Venus," supposing that he had bought for a great
price that marvel of modern sculpture, and had set it up in the place
of honour in his gallery. He would half-shut his eyes, the better
to appreciate the exquisite turn of the cold, stately throat, the
modelling of the little rounded wrist; would put his head on one side,
and look at it this way and that, to determine whether he liked the
tinting.
"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,"
as the pithy line that everybody knows, and that next to nobody could
have written, hath it. At forty Constance will be a much handsomer
woman than Esther. At forty those clean-cut, immovable, expressionless
features will be hardly the worse for wear; that colourless marble skin
will be hardly less smoothly polished than it is now. At forty Esther
(if she live so long) will have cried and laughed, and fretted and
teased herself into a mere shadow of her present self.
Every one's letters at Felton are put on their plate for them. As
Esther takes her seat, she perceives that there is one for her--one
directed in a scrawling, schoolboy hand. The blood rushes to her face,
as it does to a turkeycock's wattles when he is excited or angry, and
she thrusts it hastily into her pocket. To her guilty imagination it
seems that written all over it, in big red letters, legible to every
eye, is, "From Bob Brandon, Esther Craven's lover." As her eyes lift
themselves shyly, to see whether St. John is observing her, they meet
his, looking at her curiously, interestedly, puzzledly.
"We allow people to read their letters at breakfast here," he says,
with a friendly smile; "we are not particular as to manners, as I dare
say you have found out by this time."
"Oh! thanks, I'm in no hurry; it's of no consequence--it will keep,"
answers Esther, disjointedly, with would-be indifference, and the
turkeycock hue spreading to the edge of her white gown.
The morning hours at Felton are not exciting. Sir Thomas is building
a new orchid house, and spends much of his time standing over the
bricklayers, like an Egyptian overseer, telling them with his usual
courteous candour how much more he knows about their trade than they
themselves do, who have been at it all their lives. St. John disappears
too, and Constance and Esther are left _tête-à-tête_.
Esther has plenty of time to read Bob's letter, and to understand it,
which latter requires some ingenuity, as, from the greater rapidity of
his thoughts than of his pen, he omits most of the little words--_tos_
and _ands_ and _whichs_ and _whos_ and _hes_ and _shes_. There is a
good deal about his mother in it: several messages from her; a great
many questions as to what Mr. Gerard was like, with solemn adjurations
to answer them; a sheet devoted to the exposition of the luxury in
which it is possible to live on £300 a year; and, lastly, a sentence
or two as to his great loneliness, and his eager longing to have his
darling Esther back again--not much on that head, as if he were afraid
of marring her enjoyment by intruding upon her the picture of his own
disconsolateness. It was not an eloquent letter; in fact, it was rather
a stupid one, and had evidently been written with a very nasty scratchy
pen; but for all that it was a nice one, and so Esther felt, and wished
that it had been less so.
Bob is a dear fellow; and, no doubt, when she goes back to
Glan-yr-Afon, she will be very glad to see him, and be very fond of
him; but, for the present, she would like to forget him altogether--to
have a holiday from him: he seems to come in incongruously now somehow.
"Where's St. John?" grunts miladi, who makes her appearance towards
luncheon time, from the arm-chair which is witness to so many gentle
dozes on her part.
Miladi likes St. John; he is very good to her, and often stands in the
breach between her and Sir Thomas.
"Vanished," answers Miss Blessington, in her slow, sweet drawl. "I
think Miss Craven must have frightened him away."
It is very pleasant, is not it? when you think you have been making a
highly favourable impression on a person, to hear that they have fled
before you in abject fear.
"I had no idea that he was such a timid fawn," answers Essie, nettled.
"He is very peculiar," says Constance, her white fingers flying
swiftly in and out among the coloured silks of the smoking cap she is
embroidering; "and has a most unfortunate shrinking from strangers."
"The greatest friends must have been strangers once," objects Essie,
feeling rather small.
"Quite true, so they must; but he is so very _difficile_, we never can
get him to admire any one--can we, aunt?"
But "aunt" has fallen sweetly asleep.
"With the exception of two or three fortunate blondes--I prefer dark
people myself infinitely, don't you?"
"Infinitely," replies Esther, with emphasis.
It is not true--she does nothing of the kind; but, after all, what is
truth in comparison of the discomfiture of an adversary?