"When the days begin to lengthen,
Then the cold begins to strengthen."
This ancient distich proves true in the year I am speaking of. Not
later than Christmas does the moist mild weather last. With January the
frost comes hurrying back; hanging great icicles on the house-eaves,
throwing men out of work, and pressing with its iron finger the thin
faint life out of half-a-dozen old almsmen and almswomen. The foxes
have a little breathing-time--a little space in which to steal and eat
three or four more fat capons and stubble-fed geese--before that evil
day when their dappled foes shall tear their poor little red bodies
limb from limb. Hunting is stopped, and men are hurrying up from
the shires to London. St. James's Street and its hundred clubs are
crowded. At Blessington everybody is pirouetting on the ice. St. John,
passionately fond of all out-of-door sports, spends the whole day on
the mere. One afternoon a large party comes over from Lord Linley's
place, five miles away. Not in all Lord Linley's grounds is there such
a stretch of smooth ice as the Blessington pool affords; and so they
are all come to show their prowess on its hard flat face.
Esther keeps well out of their way. From her post of observation--the
deep window-seat in the China gallery--she has watched their arrival,
heard their gay voices in the hall, and then, unnoticed, unmissed, she
has stolen out upon one of her long, dawdling, cold-giving strolls in
the park: over the frost-crisped grass, under the branchy trees, whose
staglike crowns cut the pale sky--up little knolls and down into dips
where, in summer time, the fern stands neck high. At last she comes
in sight of the mere; and, impelled by curiosity, trusting in her own
insignificance to escape notice, sits down on a bank that slopes gently
down towards the sheet of water, and looks upon the unwonted brilliance
of the scene. Girls in velvet short costumes; bright petticoats, furs,
hats with humming birds on them, curls, fair chignons, glancing in the
cheerful winter sun. Fashion in all its folly and extravagance, but
picturesque withal; it is as if a company of Dresden shepherdesses
had stepped off the mantelshelf, and come tripping, dainty-footed,
over the frozen water. Her eyes follow the shepherdess figures with
eager interest--so seldom in her simple country-bred life has she been
brought into contact with any of Fashion's bright daughters. The men
have less attraction for her. Under no most prosperous conjunction
of circumstances could she ever have been a man; but under happier
auspices she might have been one of these fluttering butterflies--a
prettier butterfly than any there, her heart tells her. Shylock's
words recur to her: "Am not I 'fed with the same food, hurt with
the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same
means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer?' Why, then,
are they frisking about in purple and fine linen upon the ice, with
half-a-dozen young patricians (in trousers of surprising tightness and
coats of unequalled brevity) in their train, while I am perched here
upon the all-alone stone, among these stiff cold sedges, with only the
Canada geese, with their long necks craned out, screeching above my
head?"
Meanwhile, Miss Craven is the subject of more remark than she is at all
aware of.
"I say, Gerard," says Lord Linley's heir--a goodnatured ugly little
prodigal, who is one of the shining lights of Her Majesty's Household,
and goes among men by the _sobriquet_ of "Gaolbird," for which he has
to thank the unexampled brevity of his locks--"I say, Gerard, you ought
to know all the remarkable objects about here: tell us, who is the
_mourner_ in the distance?"
St. John's eyes follow the direction indicated by his friend, and
a shade of annoyance crosses his face. "Her name is Miss Craven, I
believe," he answers, shortly.
"Uncommon good-looking girl, whoever she is!" says a second man, who
has just stopped to adjust his skates; "I have been perilling my life
among those d----d rushes by the edge, to get a good look at her!"
"Deuced good legs!" subjoins a third, remarkable for his laconism;
taking his pipe out of his mouth to make room for his criticism, and
fixing upon that part of a woman's charms which is always the first to
enchain the masculine attention.
"She is vewy like a girl I used to know at the Cape," says a "Heavy,"
who has been vanquished in single combat by the letter R. "The _Fly_ we
used to call her, because when she settled on a f'la, it was mowally
impossible to dwive her off."
St. John, who has been listening with ill-concealed anger and disgust
to these comments--free as if they had been upon the points of a
horse--on the charms of the woman for whom he has been trying to
persuade himself that he feels inveterate aversion, turns to move away;
but Linley's voice recalls him.
"I say, Gerard!--Gerard!"
"Well?"
"Do you know her?"
"Slightly."
"Introduce me, then--there's a good fellow!"
"And me!"
"And me!"
"My acquaintance with Miss Craven is not such as to justify my
introducing any one to her," answers Gerard, stiffly, and so walks
resolutely off.
"Sly dog!" cries Linley, laughing; "means to keep her all to himself--a
nice quiet little game of his own."
"Means to drive a pair then--eh?" asks the laconic youth.
"Vewy seldom pays," says the "Heavy," sagely; "one or other invawiably
jibs."
But Mr. Linley, being more in earnest than he usually is about most
things, is not so easily balked. After many fruitless inquiries among
the company, he at length appeals to Miss Blessington.
"Do you know, Miss Blessington," he says, peering up at her with his
quick terrier-face (for her stately height exceeds his), "I have
actually been putting the same question to twenty people running, and
never yet succeeded in getting an answer? You are my last hope: who
_is_ that lady in black?"
"The lady in black!" repeats Constance, amiably--following, as her
lover had done, the direction of his gaze. "Oh!" (with a little,
slighting laugh), "nobody very particular; only poor Miss Craven, my
aunt's companion!"
"Poor girl!" he says--his eyes still riveted upon the pensive oval
face, and his interest in her not the least lessened by the information
as to her social status, that Constance had thought so damning. He does
not want to _marry_ her; and for any other purpose a pretty woman is
a pretty woman, be she duchess or fishwife. "It must be very slow for
her, mustn't it? I always hate looking on--don't you? I always like to
have a hand in everything, whatever it may be; it would really be a
charity to go and speak to her, only I'm afraid she would take it as an
insult if I went up and introduced myself."
"I assure you she is quite happy watching us," replies Constance,
sweetly; being, for the most part, not fond of going shares with a
sister fair one in any of the proper men and tall that are wont to
gather about her.
But he is persevering. "Don't you think that a little improving
conversation with me would tend to make her happier still?" he asks,
banteringly, yet in earnest. "I tried to get Gerard to introduce me,
but I could not make out exactly what was up; he seemed to take it as a
personal insult. You won't mind doing me that good turn, I'm sure?"
"I shall be most happy, of course," she answers, hiding her displeasure
under the calm smile which covers all her emotions, or approximations
to emotion. And with apparent readiness she leads the way to the spot
where, couched in her rushy lair, the subject of their talk sits
unconscious, with her eyes riveted on the darting forms beneath her.
"Miss Craven, Mr. Linley wishes to be introduced to you."
"To _me!_" she says, starting; her eyes opening wide, and cheeks
flushing with surprise.
Then two bows are executed, and the thing is done. Esther is not longer
upon the all-alone stone; she has other occupation for her ears than
to listen to the screeching of the Canada geese; she, too, like the
other butterflies, has got a tight-trousered, short-coated patrician in
tow.
"Linley has succeeded, do you see?" says the man to whom Esther's legs
have had the happiness to appear "very good."
"Mostly does; it is a little way he has!"
"Who did they say she was?"
"Somebody's companion; old Blessington's, I think."
"Cunning old beggar! He knows what he is about, though he does pretend
to be stone-blind."
"Old Blessington's companion, eh? I'm sure I wish she were mine."
"A sort of 'Abishag the Shunammite,' I suppose?"
These are some of the comments that the unknown beauty draws forth.
Five minutes later, Miss Craven's scruples--such as never having skated
before, having no skates, &c.--being overruled by her new acquaintance,
she is sitting on the bank; and he, kneeling before her, is fastening
some one else's unused skates on her little feet. A great desire for
pleasure has come over her--a great longing for warmth and colour in
her grey life, that looks all the greyer now in the contrast to the
brilliant reds and purples of these strange lives with which it is
brought into sudden contact. A great delight in the wintry brightness
fills her--in the shifting, varying hues--in the bubbling laughter;
a great impulse to laugh too, the spirit of youth rising up in arms
against the tyranny of grief.
The low sun shoots down dazzling crimson rays on the mere's dirty white
face. The swans and Solan geese are exiled to a little corner, where
the ice has been broken for them, and where they have to keep swimming
round and round to prevent the invasion of their little territory
by the grasping frost. Girls that cannot skate being pushed about
in chairs; "Whirr! whirr!" they rush along the smooth surface at a
headlong pace. Men, with their arms stretched out like the sails of a
windmill, advancing cautiously--first one foot, then the other--just
managing to keep on their feet, and thinking themselves extremely
clever for so managing. Other men and women flying hand-in-hand, from
one end of the pool to the other, in long, smooth slides--as safe and
secure as if running upon their own feet on the grass. Others, cutting
eights, and all manner of figures, whirling round upon one leg, and
making themselves altogether remarkable. One poor gentleman with his
skates in the air, and head starring the ice; brother men laughing
and jeering; pretty girls pitying--light laughter mixed with their
condolences also. Eight people dancing a quadrille, _chaîne des dames:_
in and out, in and out--right, left--go the moving figures, the cerise
petticoats, the glancing feet. It is all so pretty and gay. When one
has spent the best part of three months in weeping, when one has the
quick blood of seventeen in one's veins, one longs to get up and run,
and dance, and jump about too.
"There's no wind to-day," says Linley, turning his face to the
north-east, whence a bitter breath comes most faintly; "when there is,
it is the best fun in the world to get a very light cane chair and a
big umbrella--to sit on the one and hold the other up; you can have no
conception of the terrific rate that one gets along at."
"I should think it sometimes happened that the cane chair and the big
umbrella went on by themselves and left you behind?" says Esther archly.
"Frequently, but that makes it all the more exciting."
"Does it?"
"Keep hold of the chair, push it gently before you, and try to balance
yourself as well as you can," continues he, giving grave instructions
to his new pupil.
"How _can_ one balance oneself on things no bigger than knife-blades?"
she asks, grasping desperately the chair-back.
"Rome was not built in a day," he answers, with a cheery laugh; "try!"
She obeys, and moves forward two or three timid inches; then stops
again.
"I have that poor gentleman's fate before my mind's eye," she says,
nervously. "I feel as if, by some natural attraction, one's feet must
go up sky-wards, and one's head make acquaintance with the ice."
"No necessity at all," replies the young man, encouragingly. "That
fellow is a duffer at everything; he is the very worst rider I ever set
eyes on--holds his whip like a fishing-rod."
"Does he?"
"Look at that girl, now, with the purple feather! She skims along like
a bird; she is as much at her ease as if she were in her arm-chair at
home. By Jove! no, she ain't though!" For, as he speaks, "Thud!" comes
the girl with the purple feather down in a sitting posture on the ice:
men crowd round, inquire into casualties, pick her up again: off she
goes!
"You must be more careful next time in your selection of examples,"
Esther says, smiling mischievously; "_that_ one was not encouraging,
you must allow."
Constitutionally timid, she stands hesitating, in half-shyness,
half-fear, and whole dread of being ridiculous; laughing, reddening,
dimpling in the happy sunlight--as pretty a picture as ever little
terrier-faced member of the Household has seen.
"Perhaps you'd get on better if you tried walking between two people,"
he says, suggestively; "it is easier than with a chair. That is the
way my sister began--I on one side, don't you know, and another fellow
on the other. Here, Gerard, come and make yourself useful; give Miss
Craven your arm!"
Gerard looks--has been looking all the while; sees the face, that had
met him so pale and dejected three hours ago, transformed by the keen
January air, and the excitement of the moment, into more than its old
loveliness; sees the soft splendour of languishing almond eyes, the
guileless baby-smile. It is the transient happiness of a moment that
has wrought the change, and he, in his rough anger, attributes it to
the insatiate rabid desire for admiration.
"She would flirt in her coffin," he says to himself, bitterly; and so
answers, coldly, "I cannot--I have taken my skates off!"
"All right," says Mr. Linley, gaily, and then, in an aside to Esther,
"On duty, evidently!"
"Evidently!" She assents with a faint smile, but her lips quiver with
a dumb pain. "He need not have slighted me so openly," she thinks, in
cruel mortification. "Perhaps if you gave me your hand I might manage
to steady myself gradually," she says naïvely.
Mr. Linley has no objection whatever to having his hand convulsively
clutched by a very pretty woman, even though it is so clutched, not
in affection to himself, but in the spasmodic effort to maintain the
perpendicular--in the desperate endeavour to hinder her feet from
outrunning body and head. And so she totters along--amused, flattered,
frightened; and far too much absorbed in considerations of her own
safety, to be at all aware of the condescending notice that several
of the more worthy gender are good enough to bestow upon her, though
the conceit inborn in the male mind would have made them completely
sceptical of that fact, had they been told it.
Meanwhile Miss Blessington, a little out of breath with her exertions,
is resting on a chair, in bright blue velvet and a more delicate
pink-and-white porcelain face than any of the other shepherdesses.
Over her Gerard is leaning--frowning, sad, and heavy-hearted. Over and
over again he has tried to turn his eyes to other groups, but again
and again, contrary to his will, they return and fix themselves upon
that slender staggering figure in black. Once he sees her on the point
of falling--saved only by being caught with quick adroitness in her
companion's arms. He draws his breath involuntarily hard. How dare any
man but he touch her--lay a finger upon her fair person? One of the
old simple instincts, stronger--oh, how far stronger!--than any of the
restrictions with which our civilisation has sought to bind them--a
great lust of raging jealousy--is upon him.
"I _hate_ her!" he says to himself, fiercely; "she is a vile
unprincipled coquette. Thank God, I found her out in time! Thank God, I
washed my hands of her before it was too late! And yet--and yet--if I
could but pick a quarrel with that fellow!"
What right has Gerard to object if every man upon the ground catch her
in big arms, and hold her there under his very eyes? He has washed his
hands of her, thank God! All his rights of proprietorship in womankind
centre in the calm blue statue, smiling with even placidness on
himself, on his poodle, on all the world--his Constance, whom no one is
thinking of taking from him; his own--oh, blissful thought!--in life,
in death, and in eternity!
In the meantime the remarks upon Esther vary from the wildly laudatory
to the discriminatingly censuring.
"She is extwemely dark," says the _dwagoon_, as he would have called
himself; "a thowough bwunette; must have a touch of the tar-bwush, I
fancy!"
The stable-clock strikes four. Esther starts, as much as scullion
Cinderella started at the chiming midnight. "I must go" she says,
hastily; "I shall be wanted."
"Wanted?" he repeats, inquiringly. "And are not you wanted here? You
cannot be in two places at once, like a bird."
"Mrs. Blessington will want me--I am her companion," she answers,
colouring slightly. "I daresay you did not know it." ("He would
not have been so civil to me if he had, I daresay," is her mental
reflection.)
"Yes, I did."
"Who told you?--or have all 'companions' such a family likeness that
you detected me at a glance?"
"Miss Blessington told me; and for the first time in my life I wished
myself an old woman," he replies, sentimentally.
She laughs, a little embarrassed. She knows as well as he does that he
does _not_ wish to be an old woman, even for the pleasure of having her
to carry his air-cushion and spectacle-case. But civil speeches are
always more or less untrue, and none the less pleasant for that.
"If the frost holds," says the young man, suggestively--taking the
small black hand which she has timidly proffered, not being by any
means sure that it is etiquette for a "companion" to shake hands with
lords' eldest sons--"If the frost holds, will you be inclined for
another lesson or two? There is nothing like making hay when the sun
shines--say _to-morrow?_"
Her face brightens for a moment; it is so pleasant to talk gaily, and
be admired, and made much of, and reminded that there are other things
besides death and poverty and servitude; then her countenance falls.
"To-day has been very pleasant," she says, naïvely, "but I cannot
answer for to-morrow."
"Are you so changeable," he asks, with a laudable though unsuccessful
endeavour to fashion his jolly little dog-face into an expression of
reproachful sentiment, "as not to know to-day what you will like or
not like to-morrow?"
"I know what _I_ shall like," she answers, gently, "but I don't know
what other people will. Would not you think it very odd if your
valet were to make engagements without consulting you? _I_ am Mrs.
Blessington's valet."
She evidently thinks this argument so conclusive, and that it so
decidedly closes the question, that he has no choice but to loose her
hand; and she, having no other farewells to make, turns and passes
homewards through the crisply rustling sedges.
"_Very_ clean about the fetlock!" ejaculates the laconic youth, unable
to raise his mind from her legs; following them with his eyes, as she
climbs the grassy slope.
"Yes, but what howible boots! Whoever could have had the atwocity to
fwame such beetle-cwushers?"