Thomas Meres and his two daughters occupied a house in Chelsea, a small
house in a little square, between which and the river is a portion of
Cheyne Walk. Three minutes’ walk brings you to the Albert Bridge, which
leads over to Battersea Park. In that part of Cheyne Walk which is
close at hand stands the house where for many years Rossetti painted and
wrote; not many doors away is that in which George Eliot died; and that
which was Carlyle’s home for half a century is scarcely more distant, in
the shadow of old Chelsea Church. It is pleasant to breathe the air of
this corner of London.
Literally the air is pleasant; the flowing breadth of stream and the
green extent of the opposite Park, the spacious Embankment with its
patches of tree-planted garden, make a perceptible freshness. On a sunny
morning the river dances and gleams with wind-stirred wavelets, and
the free expanse of sky gives the spirit soaring-room. Standing on the
Suspension Bridge, one lets the eye rest on a scene far from unlovely;
the old houses of Cheyne Walk are abundantly picturesque, so is
Battersea Bridge, the last remaining (perhaps already gone) of the
wooden bridges over the Thames. The great Queen Anne dwellings on the
Embankment have their charm, and just beyond them one sees the gardens
of Chelsea Hospital, adjoining those which were once called Ranelagh.
Heavy-laden barges go up or down stream, as the tide may be, sometimes
hoisting a ruddy sail; men toil at the long barge oars. Steamers
fret their way from pier to pier, rather suggestive of pleasure than
business. Very little traffic is within sight or hearing; when the
church clock strikes it is not drowned by the uproar of streets, but
comes clearly on the wind with old-world melody. There is peace to be
found here in morning hours, with pleasant haunting thought of great
names and days gone by.
Ada Warren, when at Knightswell, always thought with pleasure of
Chelsea, often was drawn towards it with a great yearning. There are,
for all of us, places which appeal to our sympathy with an air of home,
even though they have for us no personal associations; many perforce
dwell away from home all their lives. Ada had the ambition to live in
Chelsea. She promised herself that, when the day of her freedom came,
she would take one of the houses in Cheyne Walk. The desire was akin to
another ambition, of which there will shortly be mention. At present
she had to be content with a couple of rooms in Mr. Meres’ house. These
rooms were always held at her disposal. Mrs. Clarendon had from the
first insisted upon a clear understanding that the rooms should be
paid for, and that Ada should live at her own expense. Thomas Meres had
written to her: “My poverty, but not my will consents.” The house being
so small, Rhoda and Hilda had to occupy one bedroom when Ada came.
Living here, the girl was at all times another being than at
Knightswell. She allowed her animal spirits, which were not inexpansive,
to have free play. In the company of Rhoda and Hilda she was a girl with
girls; Isabel would have been astonished to see and hear her when the
atmosphere of Chelsea had had time to exert its full influence. She
could never quite give credence to Mr. Meres’ reports. Her present
visit, however, began under less favourable auspices than usual. She
came in a very still and reticent mood, and she found illness in the
house. Rhoda Meres was just recovering from an alarming attack of fever.
Ada feared she would be burdensome, wished to go back to Knightswell for
a little, but Mr. Meres would not allow it.
“I wish you to stay for a particular reason,” he said gravely. “Pray do
me this favour, Ada.” It was his habit, from of old, to call her by her
Christian name and to treat her as a daughter.
We must look for a moment at Thomas Meres. A man of good stature, but
bent in the shoulders, and only not slovenly in appearance because of
the perfect personal cleanliness which accompanied utter disregard of
the quality and sitting of his clothes. He had the fine features which
generally go with delicate instincts and intellectual tendencies. His
face was all of one colour, yellowish, and much lined. Beneath his eyes
the skin hung loose, giving him a sad look; his full beard was grizzled,
but his hair still unaffected by time and very thick at the back of
his head. To pass to details of his attire, he invariably wore coloured
shirts, blue by preference, with a blue necktie miserably knotted;
this tie being the despair of his daughter Hilda, who often insisted
on arranging it skilfully with her own delicate little fingers. In the
house he wore an old gray jacket, on which he wiped his pen. At leisure,
he always had his hands in the side pockets, so that they had come to
bulge exorbitantly. On going out, he changed this for a black frock
coat. His trousers, unhappily, he did not change when business led him
forth. These garments disgraced him in the eyes of Christendom. Possibly
they had been of due length when new, whenever that was; but, by dint of
constant sitting, the knees had grown abnormally, with the result that
the bottoms of the trousers just touched the tops of their wearers
boots. To a literary man of small means there is probably no graver
question than this of his trouser knees. I have known unhappy geniuses
whose ardour in composition was grievously impaired by the consciousness
that, when writing their best, their legs would tuck up under them, with
results most disastrous to their nether garments. Thomas Meres cared
not for these things, and alas! it is so difficult for young girls
to approach their father on the subject of his trousers. Hilda once
procured a tailor’s advertisement sheet, and, folding it so that the
particulars concerning trousers were uppermost, placed it conspicuously
on his study table. Mr. Meres saw it, and, with an impatient, “What’s
this? What’s this?” crumpled it into his waste-paper basket. Poor
fellow! the days had gone by when he might have considered the effect he
produced on observers; it would never matter now.
Thomas Meres was a literary man, and of the romance of authorship knew
as little--as do most authors. He got a living by his pen, and that was
all; for any pleasure which his daily task brought him he might as well
have lived by tailoring. Once he had hoped to shine by means of his
talents. In those days authorship meant glory. Now it meant unremitting
toil, often of the dullest and dreariest kind, scarcely ever on subjects
for which he cared. He had published books, and had the satisfaction
of seeing them mildly praised by the reviewers, then forgotten; now he
wrote books no longer, but--_eheu!_--himself criticised those of others,
or penned the interminable “article.” At times he felt that he must
stop, that his hand would work no longer; but its exercise had in truth
become almost automatic, and it was well for himself and his children
that it had. When he received the editorship of _Ropers Miscellany_
he was at first delighted, not only on account of the most acceptable
salary, but also because he felt that it was an accession of dignity.
Formerly he had dreamed with trembling of the possibility that he might
one day be an editor. But this, too, took on its true proportions when
he had grown used to the chair. The toil of reading manuscript was all
but as bad as that of producing it. One pleasure which had been wont to
come from his literary work had in the course of time failed him. It had
been his habit to send the best things of his writing to Mrs. Clarendon;
and at first she had seemed glad to have and to read them. But he had
discovered that her interest was failing, that she did not always even
glance at what he sent. Then he sent no more. Yet, by keeping up that
interest, Isabel could have put joy into a life which sadly needed it,
could have smoothed a road which was very rough to travel.
The difficulties of a man in Mr. Meres’ position, with two girls to
bring up, were naturally considerable. Mrs. Clarendon had constantly
advised him to marry again; at which he always shook his head and
maintained silence. The woman who may with safety be taken in marriage
by a poor man given to intellectual pursuits is so extremely difficult
of discovery that Thomas Meres might well shrink from beginning the
search, if only on the plea of lack of leisure; and there were other
reasons withholding him. When the children were young, he had the
assistance of the wife of a friend, whose house he shared; only when
Rhoda was sixteen, her sister being two years younger, did he take the
house in Chelsea, having found a decent woman to act as housekeeper. In
a year or two Rhoda had felt able to spare him this latter expense.
Rhoda’s talents were not exactly of a domestic order, but she was a very
good-hearted and intelligent girl, and was beginning then to understand
something of the hardships of her fathers life. This present illness of
hers had brought serious disturbance into the home; a professional nurse
had been summoned, and Hilda--now a girl of sixteen--had to intermit her
school to look after the house; the one servant they kept was of course
an irresponsible creature.
On the evening of her arrival, Mr. Meres asked Ada to come and sit with
him in his study--a very small room, book-thronged, with one or two
busts of poets, and, over the fireplace, a fine photograph of the
Sistine Madonna. The choice of the picture had a pathetic significance;
no supersensual mystery did it embody in Meres’ eyes, but it stood there
as an ideal of womanhood and of maternity, the everpresent suggestion
of an earthly paradise whereof the gates were closed against him--wifely
love, that which he had never known, the conception of which had for
long years been besmirched in his mind with foul associations for the
loss of this his children’s affection could not compensate him. Nay, the
children had till quite late years been to him a fear and a perpetual
cause of anxious observation. Would they not grow up with their mother’s
character? Was there not impurity in their blood? By a kind fate it was
the father that predominated in them. Yet even now his dread would often
be excited, and especially had that been the case in Rhoda’s illness. It
was to speak of his elder girl that he took Ada apart this evening.
When he spoke on any subject which puzzled or embarrassed him, it was
Mr. Meres’ habit to stroke the length of his nose with the thumb and
forefinger of his left hand, perhaps because this relieved him of the
necessity of looking at the person to whom he addressed himself. He
began by doing so now.
“You find Rhoda sadly pulled down?” he said.
“Yes, she must have suffered very much.”’
Ada always spoke in a very direct way, with few words. Strangers
attributed this partly to shyness, partly to a character lacking
amenity. It was due to neither in fact, but was one of the results of
her ambiguous position which made her at once reticent and heedless of
conventional mannerisms.
“She has, I fear. The truth is, she hasn’t been herself ever since
she came back from Knightswell last summer. She has always been either
depressed or unnaturally excited. It makes me very uneasy.”
Ada made no comment.
“Do you find her--communicative?” he proceeded to ask.
“The opposite. She would scarcely speak to me.”
“You don’t say so? Now I wonder whether I may ask you to be of--of
assistance to me; whether you will not accuse me of indelicacy if I tell
you freely what it is that troubles me? You know that I always think of
you as vastly older and maturer than my own girls--pass the words, you
understand them--and that I have several times been led to speak to you
of things I should not yet touch upon with them. Well, the fact is this.
From the child’s talk while she was delirious, I am obliged to conclude
that she--in fact, that she has been so unfortunate as to fall in love
with some one who has behaved rather badly to her. Who this can be,
I have not a notion; she kept repeating the name Vincent, and I am
acquainted with no one so called. I could only gather the vaguest
impressions, but she was perpetually deploring her poverty, and speaking
of marriages made for money, and so on. Now, you will see that this is
very alarming; I cannot conceive what it means, or how such things can
have come about. Can you--this is my blunt question--can you, out of
your knowledge of Rhoda, help me to an understanding of it?”
Ada’s eyes had fallen, and her face had taken its hardest expression.
Her hands were on her lap, the one clutching over the back of the other.
When she answered it was in a distant tone.
“I can offer no explanation. I know nothing of Rhoda’s affairs.”
“Now--I have offended you,” said Mr. Meres, with vexation. “Surely, Ada,
you see that it was very natural in me to speak to you of this. Rhoda
herself will, I am convinced, refuse to give me her confidence, even if
I can bring myself to ask it. The difficulty is most serious; how can I
tell----? Never mind, we’ll speak no more of it. Tell me what you have
been reading.”
“You are far too hasty, and unjust to me,” said Ada, looking up quietly.
“I am not at all offended. It is only that I have nothing to say which
can help you. On such a subject Rhoda is as little likely to speak with
me as with you. She is a reserved girl.”
“Yes, she is, though strangely frank at times; that is my view of her
character. Well, I can only ask you to put the matter out of your head.
Really, you troubled me; I felt so sure of you, and to see you all at
once put on the unintelligent coldness of an ordinary young lady----”
“Am I not an ordinary young lady?” asked Ada, smiling.
“If you were, I should not feel the kind of interest in you that I do,
and I should not advise you to read this novel of Tourguéneff, which I
hereby do with great fervour. If you don’t rejoice in it, your taste is
not what it ought to be.”
The talk went into other channels, for Thomas Meres could at all times
overcome his private troubles when there was question of literature.
Having her own sitting-room, Ada was not obliged to mix with the
family more than she saw good. Whilst Rhoda was recovering, Ada kept to
herself, seeing her friends seldom save at meals; but when the order of
the house was restored, Hilda, having once more her hours of leisure,
was bold in demands for companionship. It seemed, indeed, as though in
future the younger of the two sisters would be Ada’s intimate. Rhoda,
who had formerly occupied that position, was much changed; she seldom
talked with Ada privately, nor much at all with any one, shutting
herself in her bedroom whenever her absence was not likely to be
noticed. She always seemed weary, and had lost the pleasant spontaneity
of manner which was generally her principal charm. There was no sulking
in her diminished sociableness; she simply drooped. When she went to her
room, it was to lie on the bed and cry, sometimes for an hour together.
A weak and perhaps rather morbid nature, she apparently had not the
vital energy to surmount this first disappointment. Her life was not
favourable to a recovery of healthy tone, for she had no friends
with whom to seek distractions. That was the inevitable result of the
family’s circumstances; no position is harder than that of educated
girls brought up in London in a poor household. A bachelor is not
necessarily shut out of society on account of his poverty; but a family
must give and take on equal terms, or be content to hold aloof.
Mr. Meres saw very few people excepting half-a-dozen professional
acquaintances; he had always shunned miscellaneous companies. When Mrs.
Clarendon was in London, he had frequent invitations from her, and these
now and then led to others; but then that was not his world, and he was
not able to devote himself to a system of social toadyism in the way.
that would have suggested itself to a mother with daughters for sale.
If ever Rhoda and Hilda were to find husbands it must probably be by the
irregular course upon which the former had already made her first essay.
To be sure it was a course attended with not a few dangers, but Society
intends this presumably; it is its method for keeping up the price of
virtue.
Owing to her illness, Rhoda did not hear of the postponement of Ada’s
marriage till some weeks had gone by. Mr. Meres had it announced to him
in the letter from Mrs. Clarendon which just preceded Ada’s arrival,
but he kept the news to himself, not caring to speak with Rhoda of these
topics, and taking it for granted that it would come to be spoken of
between the three girls sooner or later. Hilda was the first to elicit
the fact. This young lady deserves rather more special description than
we have yet had time to devote to her. She was delightful. Sixteen years
old, already as tall as her sister, delicate in form, delicate in her
manners and movements, in watching her you forgot that she was not
exactly pretty. Her face, in fact, would not allow you to consider its
features individually; together they made one bright, pure, girlish
laugh. She crossed your path like a sunbeam; you stopped to gaze after
the slim, winsome figure with its airy gait, to wonder at the grace
with which she combined the springing lightness of a child and the
decorous motions of womanhood. To see her on her way home from school,
wishing, yet afraid, to run; books held up against her side, the quick
twinkle of her feet and the fairy waft of her skirts--all so fresh, so
dainty, so unconscious of things in the world less clean than herself.
She met your gaze with delicious frankness; the gray eyes were alive
with fun and friendliness and intelligence, they knew no reason why
they should not look straight into yours as long as they chose, which,
however, was not the same as rendering to you a mutual privilege. If
gazed at too persistently she would move her shoulders with a pretty
impatience, and ask you some surprising question likely to prove a test
of intellectual readiness. Yet it was hard not to take a very long look;
the face was puzzling, fascinating, suggestive; there was cleverness
in every line of it. Already she had advanced in her studies beyond the
point at which Rhoda ceased. How much she knew! She could render you an
ode of Horace, could solve a quadratic equation, could explain to you
the air-pump and the laws of chemical combination, could read a page of
Ælfric’s “Homilies” as if it were modern English. And all the while the
very essence of her charm lay in the fact that she knew nothing at all.
She lived in a fantastic world, in which every occurrence was stateable
in young lady’s language, every person was at heart well-meaning, even
if sometimes mistaken, where every joy was refined, and every grief
matter for an elegy. Her innocence was primordial. When she came into
the room, there entered with her a breath of higher atmosphere; her
touch on your hands cooled and delighted like a mountain stream in
summer; her laughter was a tradition from the golden age. She was
devoted to music, and would have a fine voice; at present she sang
everything. When she came back from school in the evening, she would run
up to Ada’s room, tap at the door, and look in like a frolicsome fairy.
“Well?” Ada would ask, good-naturedly.
“Come down and sing ‘Patience,’” was the whispered entreaty. “Just
half-an-hour.”
The aesthetic opera was fresh then, and Hilda could not have enough of
it; and she laughed, she laughed!
Thomas Meres often sat thinking gloomily of this his favourite child. It
was well that she was so clever, for she would have to teach, or so he
supposed. What else was there for a girl to do? He could not send her
into a postoffice, or make her a dispenser of drugs. Poor Hilda!
But I was saying that it was she who first ventured to speak to Ada of
the latter’s marriage. It was on a walk they took together, over the
bridge and along the Park edge of the river, one windy evening at
the end of February. It was dusking, and they had the Embankment to
themselves, so ran a race from Chelsea Bridge to Battersea Park Pier,
to reach it before a steamer coming from the City; having won the race,
they stood to-see the boat move on towards the pier at Chelsea. The
lights along the opposite bank were just being lit, and made a pretty
effect.
“Ada,” said the younger girl, as they walked on.
“Yes.”
“When are you going to be married?”
A gust of wind excused silence for a moment; they both had to bend
forward against it.
“Perhaps never,” was the reply at length. Ada would not have spoken thus
at another time and place; just now she was enjoying the sense of full
life, quickened in her veins by the run in keen air.
“Never? But I thought it was going to be very soon?--Am I rude?”
“Not at all; there’s no secret conspiracy. It was to have been soon, but
that’s altered.”
“Really? And how long will you stay with us?”
“As long as you’ll have me. All the year perhaps.”
“You don’t mean that! Oh, that’s splendiferous!” The school-girl came
out now and then. “Really, now that is jolly! Do you know, I find it
just a little dull with Rhoda. She doesn’t seem to care to talk, or to
sing, or to do anything. I suppose it’s because she hasn’t been feeling
well for a long time. I do wish she’d get better; it makes everything
rather miserable, doesn’t it?”
“We shall have to take her to the sea-side-at Easter,” Ada said.
“Yes, so father was saying the other day. When you _are_ married, where
shall you live, Ada?”
“One of those houses,” Ada replied, pointing to Cheyne Walk.
“That’s a splendid idea! And you’ll have musical parties, won’t you?”
“Certainly I will; and you shall sing.”
“No, that’s _too_ good! Then we shall get more society; you’ll ask us
sometimes to dinner in state, won’t you?”
“If you will honour me with your company.”
“Now you shouldn’t be ironical; you know very well the honour will all
be on the other side. I mean in the case of us girls; father, of course,
could go anywhere.”
It was an article of faith with Hilda that her father was a conspicuous
man of letters, welcome at any table.
The same night Rhoda heard what had been imparted to her sister. She
appeared to receive the news with indifference.
It was about this time that Ada received a letter, written on club
note-paper, and in a scrawl difficult to decipher, from one of the
trustees under Mr. Clarendon’s will, the gentleman whose address she had
sought from Mrs. Clarendon.
“Dear Miss Warren,
“In reply to your letter of the 26th inst., asking me for information
regarding Mrs. Warren, and saying that you had Mrs. C.’s permission to
apply to me, I am sorry to say that I cannot tell you anything of Mrs.
W.’s present whereabouts, and that I do not even know whether she is
living. As you expressly state your desire for particulars, whatever may
be their nature, I suppose I ought not to hesitate to inform you of
such facts as have come under my notice, though I should myself have
preferred to suggest that you should let Mrs. C.’s information suffice;
I can’t think that you will derive any satisfaction from pursuing these
inquiries. However, I may say thus much: that up to about two years ago,
Mrs. Warren was in the habit of making application to me for pecuniary
assistance, her circumstances being very straitened, and such assistance
I several times rendered. She had abandoned her profession, which was
that of the stage, owing to ill-health. But for two years at least I
have heard nothing of her. As you express yourself so very emphatically,
I engage that I will send you any information about Mrs. W. which may
come to my knowledge. I do not know any person that it would be of use
to apply to, but you shall hear from me if I have anything to tell.
“Believe me, yours very truly,
“C. Ledbury.”
This letter irritated Ada; she was sorely tempted to write back in yet,
plainer terms than she had used before, and to protest that she was not
a child, but a woman who had all manner of difficult problems before
her, and who sought definite information which she held was due to her.
But she remembered that this gentleman would of course only think of her
as a girl not yet twenty, and would no doubt persist in what he deemed
his duty, of keeping from her disagreeable subjects. And, after all,
perhaps his letter contained all she really wished to know.
She had kept closely to her own room for more than a week, when one day
at lunch she requested Mr. Meres to let her speak with him for a moment
before he left the house. She came to the study holding a roll which
looked like manuscript.
“Do you think,” she asked, “that you could find time to look over
something that I have been writing? It isn’t long.”
“By all means; I will make time.”
“No, don’t look at it now,” Ada exclaimed nervously, as he put his eyes
near to the first page. “Afterwards, when you are at leisure.”
She stopped at the door.
“When shall I come and see you?”
“Say to-morrow morning, the first thing after breakfast,” replied Mr.
Meres, smiling benevolently.
This interview accordingly followed. Ada was requested to seat herself,
and her friend, half turning from his desk, stroked his nose for some
moments in silence.
“Now, Miss Ada Warren,” he began, with a light tone, which rang kindly
enough, yet was a little hard for the listener to bear, “I am not going
to discourse vanity, and to prophesy smooth things, because I don’t want
you to come to me at some future date and inform me that I was an old
humbug. I am at present, you understand, the impartial critic, and I
shall use purely professional language. What I have to say about this
little story of yours is that it shows very considerable promise, and
not a little power of expression, but that, for a work of art, it is
too--you understand the word--too subjective. It reads too much like
a personal experience, which the writer is not far enough away from to
describe with regard to artistic proportion. I suspected what was going
on upstairs, and, on the whole, I was pleased when you put this into my
hands. But, one question. This is not the only story you have written?”
Ada admitted that it was only one of several.
“So I supposed. Now let me have them all, let me look through them.
Time, pooh! I am going to help you if I can. I believe you are quite
capable of helping yourself if left alone, and for that very reason, a
hint or two out of my experience may prove useful. In a manner, you have
always been my pupil, and I am proud of you; I will say so much. There
are several things in this sketch which I think uncommonly well put;
and--a great thing--the style is not feminine. But--it isn’t a piece of
artistic workmanship. You haven’t got outside of the subject, and looked
at it all round. It is an extempore, in short, and that you mustn’t
allow yourself. Will you do something for me?”
“What is it?”
“Will you write a story in which every detail, every person, shall be
purely a product of your imagination--nothing suggested by events within
your own experience? That is, of course, _directly_ suggested; you must
work upon your knowledge of the world. Write me such a story in about a
dozen of these pages--will you? Perhaps you have one already written?”
Ada reflected, and, with an abashed smile, thought not.
“Well, let me have all the others, and set to work upon the new one.
Mind, I don’t regard this impulse of yours at all in a trivial light. I
say get to _work_; and I mean it. Write with as determined endeavour as
if your bread and cheese depended upon it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Well, let that pass. I have no right to speak in that way of the
priceless blessing of independence--the gift of Heaven----”
“If it _be_ the gift of Heaven,” remarked Ada, with meaning.
“Oh, it always is; though not always used to celestial ends.”
“You meant, though, that you doubted my power of perseverance, when
there was temptation to idleness.”
“Something of that, perhaps. But it’s clear you haven’t been idle of
late. Did you write any of those stories at Knightswell?”
“One.”
“Did you show it to Mrs. Clarendon?”
She shook her head.
Mr. Meres drummed upon his desk; there was an expression of pain on his
forehead. But he dismissed it with a sigh.
“By-the-bye, this is a first manuscript?”
“Yes.”
“Never dare to show me one again! You are to copy the new story
twice,--you understand?”
“Copying is terrible work.”
“So is every effort that leads to anything. You are beginning an
apprenticeship; don’t think you can carve masterpieces straight from the
block, or dash on frescoes without cartoon. Now shake hands with me
and go. And Ada, if you can find it in your heart to do me a great
kindness-----”
“Would I not?”
“Well, I can’t ask it now. Some evening when we have talked the fire
low, and our tongues are loosened. To work! To work!”