BREAKING THE ICE.
Were I to say that at first Miss Moffat neither admired the country nor
liked the people of England, I should only be expressing the sentiments
of an entire nation in the person of a single individual; other people
may have met with Irish men and Irish women who took kindly to Saxon
soil on the first intention, but for my own part I have still to see the
recently imported Celt willing to admit there can be any good thing
found in the land.
It is very curious to consider how rapidly educated English tourists
take to Ireland—to the inhabitants, the brogue, the scenery, the
whisky—and then to contrast with this the length of time required to
acclimatize an Irish person of any rank to England and English ways.
Safely, I think, it may be asserted that there is nothing on this side
the channel, from the red-tiled roofs of picturesque old barns to the
glories of the Row, which finds favour in Hibernian eyes. They may like
England at last—many do—but they never like it at first.
To this rule Grace formed no exception. There was nothing she liked in
the foreign land to which she had voluntarily exiled herself. Amongst
her own country people, she even fancied Mrs. Hartley had changed, and
changed for the worse, from the decided, incisive widow, whose tongue
had been the terror and whose dress had been the envy of feminine
Kingslough.
She was more conventional and less amusing, the young lady considered;
but Mrs. Hartley’s latest surroundings presented no temptations to
unconventionality, and it would have been extremely difficult to prove
herself clever at the expense of the eminently dull and decorous people
amongst whom her lot was now cast.
The style in which her friend lived was also at first a trial to Grace.
The extreme simplicity of her own bringing up—the modesty of the Bayview
establishment—the unpretending fashion of receiving and visiting that at
one time obtained in Ireland rendered the rules and ceremonies of—to
quote Mrs. Hartley—“a more advanced civilization” irksome in the extreme
to a person who had from her childhood upwards been accustomed to an
exceptional freedom of action; whilst after the inoffensive familiarity
of Irish servants, the formality and decorum of Mrs. Hartley’s
highly-trained domestics seemed cold and heartless.
In a word, Miss Grace was more than slightly home-sick; in all
probability, had she possessed a home to go back to, she would have
received some early communication compelling her to return to Ireland.
All of this, or at least much of this, so shrewd a woman as Mrs. Hartley
could not fail to notice; she had expected the desire to manifest
itself, though not exactly so violently, and she was accordingly quite
prepared to let it run its course without much interference from her.
It was not in her nature, however, to refrain altogether from a little
raillery on the subject.
“The cakes and the ales of this gormandizing land will find favour in
your eyes some day, Grace,” she remarked. “I do not despair of hearing
you confess other forms of diet may be as appetizing as milk and
potatoes.”
“I can fancy many things more appetizing than potatoes as boiled in
England,” Miss Moffat would retort, not without some slight sign of
irritation. Her temper was not quite so sweet, Mrs. Hartley noticed, as
had been the case formerly.
“She will not make an amiable old maid,” considered her friend. “As she
gets on in life her wine will turn to vinegar; she is the kind of woman
who ought to have a husband and half-a-dozen children, to prevent her
growing morbid and disagreeable—like all other philanthropists, she has
had some serious disappointments, and I must say they have not improved
her. She ought to marry; but, like her, I confess I cannot imagine who
the happy man is to be. Beauty, wealth, amiability! she has the three
gifts men value most, and yet it seems to me that not a man suitable in
any solitary respect has ever yet asked her to be his wife—except John
Riley. I wonder what he would think of her now? Who could have imagined
she would ever have developed into so lovely a creature?”
There were two things by which Mrs. Hartley set great store—competence
and beauty.
Poor people and ugly people were to her as repellent as many diseases.
Genteel poverty was one of her abhorrences, plain faces another; and it
may therefore be imagined that when she found two most desirable
advantages combined in one human being, she gave way to exultation so
perfectly frank that it struck Grace with amazement.
“What a beautiful creature you are!” she said as, Grace seated beside
her in the carriage, they drove along the level English roads to Mrs.
Hartley’s house.
“I am not very beautiful now, I am afraid,” answered Miss Moffat;
“tired, burnt up with the sun and the wind, and smothered with dust, I
feel utterly ashamed of my appearance.”
“Ah! well you need not be, my dear. I always thought you would grow up
very pretty, but certainly I never expected to see you so pretty as you
are. What do the Kingslough oracles think of Gracie Moffat now?”
“The Kingslough oracles disapprove of my being personally presentable,”
Grace answered. “They likewise think it a pity that, if I were designed
to be good-looking, good looks were not conferred upon me in my youth.
Further, they consider that as I have plenty of money, I ought to be
plain; and, besides all this, they think I am not so particularly
good-looking after all.”
“The dear Kingslough! It is like a dream of old times to hear its
opinions summed up so concisely.”
“I wonder what Kingslough would think of your present state of
magnificence,” said Grace, a little mischievously. “If you were to drive
through Kingslough in this carriage, you would have the whole town out,
and furnish conversation for a month.”
Mrs. Hartley laughed, but her mirth was a little forced; she did not
like her splendour dimmed by the breath of ridicule, but she was too
much a woman of the world to show her annoyance.
“When we are in Turkey we do as the Turkeys do, to borrow a phrase from
one of your own countrymen,” she answered. “If any adverse wind stranded
me to-morrow in Ireland, I should at once purchase a jaunting-car and
advertise for a Protestant without incumbrance, able to drive and wait
at table.”
Miss Moffat remembered that when the speaker was stranded in Kingslough
she dispensed even with the jaunting-car; but Mrs. Hartley had so neatly
hit off the popular method of proceeding, that Grace, tired as she was,
and feeling rather lonely and miserable, thought that silence might be
wisdom, and refrained from reminding her friend of the dreary drives
they had taken in that particular style of conveyance which the young
lady detested.
“Besides,” went on Mrs. Hartley, as though guessing at her companion’s
thoughts. “I am now a much richer woman than I was in those days. Money
has come to me as it generally does to people who have it. Gold has a
way of attracting gold which is certainly very remarkable. I used to
think my income was as large as I should care to have it, but since more
has been added I find I can manage to spend it very comfortably.”
This scrap of conversation may be taken as samples of many which
followed. Mrs. Hartley and her guest talked, walked, drove, paid visits
together, but they did not at once fall into the old familiar relations
that had formerly been so pleasant.
In effect both were different persons from the young heiress and the
rich English widow of Grace’s genial spring-time; and even if they had
not so changed, it is a difficult matter to take up, after years of
separation, the thread of a friendship at the precise point where it was
dropped, and go on weaving the many-coloured web of intimate association
as though nothing had occurred to stop its progress.
Besides this, that which Grace styled “Mrs. Hartley’s magnificence” was
not a thing this country-bred maiden could accustom herself to in a
moment.
Hers was a model property; small, it is true, but maintained as Grace
had never seen any place maintained before, unless indeed it might be a
botanical garden. Not half so large as Bayview, a very doll’s house and
toy grounds in comparison with those of Woodbrook! but the order which
kept the lawns trimmed, the hedges clipped, the walks rolled, the house
from garret to cellar a marvel of comfort and luxury, was enough to make
a thoughtful and devoted Irishwoman like Grace ask herself a few very
awkward questions, and make her feel for the moment angry because she
could not avoid a sensation of shame at the contrast suggested.
“I wish I could ever hope to be so admirable a manager in all respects
as you are, Mrs. Hartley,” said Grace one day, after she had heard that
lady issue some rather peremptory commands to her head gardener.
“One cannot be a handsome young thing like you and a sharp old busybody
like myself,” replied Mrs. Hartley, not displeased, however, at the
compliment; “and then remember I was born and brought up in a country
where order is Heaven’s first law; in a land where it is the fashion to
keep the doorsteps white, it is natural that one should like to see
one’s own steps presentable. There is a great deal in habit. Although in
the abstract no doubt you admire English order and cleanliness, still I
have no doubt but that in your heart of hearts you think we are fussy
and over-particular.”
Miss Moffat laughed and coloured.
“To be quite frank,” she replied, “I like the result produced, but I do
not like the means by which it is produced. Perpetual hearthstoning and
rolling, and mowing and cutting and clipping produce marvellous effects,
I confess; but still I think the constant recurrence of such days of
small things must tend to dwarf the intellect and make life seem a very
poor affair.”
“Irish, my dear, very; but these are opinions about which there is no
use arguing. I should have considered begging in a town where I knew
every man, woman, and child, and where every man, woman, and child knew
me, a somewhat monotonous occupation; and I fail to see anything
calculated to enlarge the intellect in the acts of planting potatoes all
day and eating them for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Still there is a
certain amount of truth in what you say, or rather imply. The English
are not an imaginative people, and they do not consider it necessary to
idealize work. They labour for so much a day, and honestly say so. It is
in the nature of a quick, sympathetic nation to be desultory, and the
Irish are desultory till they come to England, when they suddenly
develope the most marvellous perseverance, and trot up and down ladders
with hods on their shoulders in a manner wonderful to behold.”
“Dear Mrs. Hartley, how I wish I could make you like the Irish!” said
Grace.
“I like you; is not that sufficient?” was the prompt reply.
“No, not half, nor quarter.”
“Ah! my love, you are like those unreasonable women who expect their
husbands to be fond, not merely of them but of the whole of their
relations, to the sixth and seventh cousins.”
It was a singular fact, and one Grace could not avoid remarking to
herself, that on paper she and Mrs. Hartley had been much more
confidential and friendly than they seemed ever likely to become while
they remained face to face. Doubtless this arose from the circumstance
that in their correspondence Mrs. Hartley still thought of Grace as the
young girl in whose fortunes she had once taken an almost motherly
interest, whilst Grace pictured Mrs. Hartley as the kindly, middle-aged
lady who had petted and ridiculed and been fond of her ever since she
attained to the dignity of long frocks and turned-up hair.
For Grace had never worn her hair in ringlets like Nettie; not all the
papers or irons on earth could have given her hair that curl which
Kingslough so much admired in Miss O’Hara; and after having had her
locks twisted up into some hundreds of little twists and screws, Grace
would appear an hour after her nurse had unfurled her curls with her
hair as straight as if no attempt had ever been made to dress it in the
approved fashion.
Thus it came to pass that as those were not the days in which children’s
tresses were allowed to float in the wind, or stream down to their
waists through the valley between their shoulders, Grace was condemned
to have her hair done up in two long plaits, which were sometimes worn
as pigtails, and sometimes doubled up like curtain-holders, being tied
together at the nape of the neck by ribbons brown or blue.
Considering that blue did not suit the child, and that a more hideous
style of dressing the hair never prevailed, it may be suggested that
Kingslough had some excuse for the opinion at which it then arrived
concerning little Miss Moffat’s looks.
Those days were gone, the days of plum-cake and delightful evenings,
with two people for a whole party, and Grace allowed to make the tea;
the days when Mrs. Hartley used to ask the girl to spend pleasant
afternoons with her, and took her drives and walks, and was very good to
her altogether.
Yes, they were gone, as the Grace of old was gone; the plain chrysalis
who was now so pretty a creature, the little, grave, silent orphan who,
wont to blush when any one spoke to her, could now speak for herself in
any place and in any company, but who could not talk confidentially to
Mrs. Hartley, perhaps for the reason that Mrs. Hartley now felt a
difficulty in asking questions she once would not have hesitated to put
by letter.
There was a break, not caused by disagreement, but by apparent lack of
sympathy between them, which both felt painfully, which each would have
given much to bridge over. I think this kind of reserve between staunch
friends is by no means so uncommon as many people imagine. It is more
difficult to get the heart to break silence than the tongue, and for
this reason the most fluent talkers are not those who speak of their
tenderest feelings.
How long this might have gone on it is hard to conjecture, had there not
one morning arrived a letter for Miss Moffat, directed in a man’s
handwriting. Mrs. Hartley noticed the fact. It was the first
communication from any gentleman, except her lawyer, Grace had received
since her arrival. Her friend knew this, because she opened the post-bag
and dealt out its contents.
The whole day after Grace was silent and thoughtful. Mrs. Hartley
noticed she looked in an abstracted manner out of the window, and that
occasionally she fixed her eyes on her with a sort of questioning and
anxious expression.
Towards evening Mrs. Hartley determined to break the ice. “That girl has
something on her mind,” she considered as she entered the drawing-room
five minutes before dinner, “I must find out what it is,” and she proved
herself as good as her words.
They had dined, dessert was on the table, Grace was toying with some
fruit on her plate, Mrs. Hartley had swallowed two of the three glasses
of port her doctor assured her she ought to take with as “much
regularity as if it were medicine.”
At this precise stage of the proceedings she had made up her mind to
speak, and with Mrs. Hartley, to make up her mind was to do.
“Grace,” she began, “there is something troubling you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Hartley, I have a very great trouble,” answered Grace calmly.
In an access of excitement Mrs. Hartley poured out and swallowed that
third glass of port.
“Let us go into the other room, where we can talk comfortably, my dear,”
she said, rising; and Grace, nothing loth, left her untouched fruit,
walked across the hall into the snug little drawing-room she had learned
to love so much, opening on one side to a conservatory, and on the other
to a lawn kept smooth and soft as velvet.
After all, spite of its shrubs, its trees, its long sea frontage, and
its acres of garden ground, there was room for much improvement at
Bayview.
“If ever I return to Ireland,” Grace had said to herself many and many a
time, “I will have that grass kept like these English lawns.”
And yet after all there is grass in the Emerald Isle smoother, shorter,
closer, and softer than any in England. Only in that case sheep have
been the mowers. I know an island in a lake where they fatten in six
weeks, and where it is perhaps unnecessary to say stand the ruins of an
old monastery.