A LINK WITH CIVILISATION
On the afternoon following Henry's departure, Esther went out for a
walk, and she came presently to a pretty little house half hidden in its
big garden. A well-kept lawn, richly bathed in sunlight, flashed through
the trees; and, opening the gate and following the tree-shaded path
along one side of the house, Esther presently mounted to a small
terrace, where, as she had hoped, she came upon a dainty little lady
watering her flowers.
"Why, Esther, it's you! How sweet of you! I was just dying to see you!"
exclaimed the little lady, turning a pretty, but somewhat worn, and
brilliantly sad face from her gardening. "Just let me finish this
thirsty bed, and then you must give me a kiss. There!"
Then the two embraced; and as Mrs. Myrtilla Williamson held Esther at
arm's length and looked at her admiringly,--
"How pretty you look to-day!" she exclaimed, generously. "That new
hat's a great success. Didn't I tell you mauve was your colour? Turn
round. Yes, dear, you look charming. Where in the world, I wonder, did
you all get that grand look of yours from?--I don't mean your good looks
merely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have it
too; but where did _they_ get it from? You're a puzzle-family--all of
you. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in," and she led the way
indoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, of
which a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots,
was to be caught from the terrace.
Everything about Myrtilla Williamson was scrupulously, determinedly
dainty, from the flowered tea-gown about her slim, girlish figure,--her
predilection for that then novel and suspected garment was regarded as a
sure mark of a certain Parisian levity by her neighbours,--to her just a
little "precious" enunciation. In France, in the seventeenth century,
she would almost certainly have been a visitor at the Hotel Rambouillet,
and to-day she was mysteriously and disapprovingly spoken of as
"aesthetic." She had a look as if she had tripped out of a Japanese fan,
and slept at night in a pot-pourri jar. And she had brains, those good
things--brains.
Her name was very like her life, one-half of which might be described as
Myrtilla, the other half as Williamson. She was Myrtilla during the day,
dabbling with her water-colours, her flowers, or her books; but at six
o'clock each afternoon, with the sound of aggressive masculine boots in
the hall, her life suddenly changed with a sigh to Williamson. The
Williamson half of her life was so clumsily, so grotesquely ill-matched
with the Myrtilla half that it was, and probably will always remain, a
mystery why she had ever attempted so tasteless and inconvenient an
addition,--a mystery, however, far from unique in the history of those
mysteriously stupid unhappy marriages with evident boors which refined
and charming women will, it is to be feared, go on making to the end of
the human chapter.
It was perhaps a day hardly less interesting for Myrtilla than for the
young people themselves when she had first met Henry and Esther
Mesurier. Before, in the dull bourgeois society into which Williamson
had transplanted her from London, she had found none with whom she dared
be her natural Myrtilla. There she was expected to be Williamson to the
bone. Henry and Esther, however, were only too grateful for Myrtilla,
through whom was to come to them the revelation of some minor graces of
life for which they had the instincts, but on which they had lacked
instruction; and who, still more important, at least for Henry, was to
be their first fragile link with certain strenuous new northern writers,
translations of whom in every tongue had just then descended, Gothlike,
upon Europe, to the great energising of its various literatures. She it
was too who first handed them the fretted golden key to the enchanted
garden of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the striking head of the young Dante
in sepia, which had hung in a sort of shrine-recess in Henry's study,
had been copied for him from Rossetti's sketch by Myrtilla's own hand.
She had, too, one of the most precious gifts for friendship, the gift of
unselfish and diligent and progressive appreciation of all a friend's
good points. She never flattered; but she never missed the smallest
opportunity for praise. She was one of those rare people who make you
feel happy in yourself, who send you away somehow dignified, profitably
raised in your own esteem; just as others have a mysterious power of
dejecting you in your proudest moments. If you had any charm, however
shy, Myrtilla Williamson would find it, and send you away with a great
gush of gratitude to her because it had been found at last. This was
perhaps the greatest charm of her clever letters; they were all about
"you,"--not, of course, that you didn't want to hear about her. But
frequently all she told you of herself was her name. Perhaps she would
write in the half-hour that remained between, say, a visit from Esther
and the arrival of Williamson, to fix in a few intimate vivid words the
charm of their afternoon together, and tell Esther in some new
gratifying way what she was to her and why and how she was it; or when
Henry had been there--even more carefully in the absence of
Williamson--to read her his new poem, she would write him a long letter
of literary criticism, just perceptibly vibrating with the emotion she
might have felt for the romantic young poet, whom she allowed to call
himself her "cavaliere servente," had she not been Williamson as well as
Myrtilla, and had she not, as she somewhat unscientifically declared,
been old enough to be his mother.
"Well," she said, as they sipped their tea, "so Henry's really gone. He
slipped round to bid me a sort of good-bye yesterday, and told me the
whole story. On the whole, I'm glad, though I know how you'll miss each
other. But I'm sorriest for your mother. Yes, yes, I'm sorry for her.
You must try to make it up to her, dear child. I think just that, above
all things, would make me fear to be a mother. One can do without
children," and there was a certain implication in the conversational
atmosphere that children of the name of Williamson had been mercifully
spared the world; "but when once they have come into one's life, it must
be terrible to see them go out again. I should like to come round and
have a little talk with your mother. I wonder if she'd care to see me?"
"So long as you don't come in your tea-gown," said Esther, with a laugh.
"Cruel child!" and then with a way she had of suddenly finding
something she wanted to hear of among the interests of her friends,
"Now," she said, "tell me something about Mike. I suppose the course of
true love runs as smoothly as ever. Happy children! Give him my love
when you see him, won't you?"
Esther told all there was to tell about Mike up-to-date, and wished she
could have repaid her friend's sympathetic interest with a request for
something similar about Williamson. But it was tacitly understood that
there was nothing further to be said on that subject, and that the news
of Myrtilla's life could hardly again take any more excitingly personal
form than the bric-a-brac excitements of art or literature,--though
indeed art and literature were, to be just to them, far more than
bric-a-brac in the life of Myrtilla Williamson. They were, indeed, it
was easy to see, a very sustaining religion for the lonely little woman
who, having no children to study, and having completed her studies of
Williamson, was driven a good deal upon the study and development of
herself. The Williamson half of the day provided her fully with
opportunities for the practice of all the philosophy she was likely to
acquire from writers ancient and modern, and for the absorption of all
the consolation history and biography was likely to afford in the
stories of women similarly circumstanced. It is to be feared that
Myrtilla not only wore tea-gowns in advance of her time, but was also
somewhat prematurely something of a "new" woman; but this was a subject
on which she really did very little to "poison" Esther's "young mind."
Esther's young mind, in common with those of her two subsequent sisters,
was little in need of "poisoning" from outside on such subjects. Indeed,
it was a curious phenomenon to observe how all these young minds, sprung
from a stock of such ancient, unquestioning faith, had, so to say, been
born "poisoned;" or, to state the matter less metaphorically, had all
been born with instincts for the most pitiless and effortless reasoning
on all subjects human and divine.
As the hour approached when poor Myrtilla must change back to
Williamson, Esther rose to say good-bye.
"Come again soon, dear girl; you don't know the good you do me."
The good, dear woman was entirely done by her unwearied, sympathetic
discussion of the affairs and dreams of Esther, Mike, and Henry.
"Oh, here is a wonderful new book I intended to talk to you about. You
can take it with you; I have finished it. Come next week and tell me
what you think of it."
As Esther walked down the path, Myrtilla watched her, and, as she passed
out of the gate, waved her a final kiss of parting, and turned indoors.
There seemed something ever so sad about her dainty back as it
disappeared into the doorway.
"Poor little woman!" said Esther to herself, as she looked to see the
title of the book she was carrying. It included a curious Russian name,
the correct pronunciation of which she foresaw she must ask Myrtilla on
their next meeting. It was "The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff."