POOR EMERALD
Of all passions that tear and worry at the human heart, jealousy seems to
be not only the most painful but the most contradictory. Anger, desire,
avarice, revenge, all these propose to themselves a certain end, in the
accomplishment of which there is doubtless an evil satisfaction for the
moment, however closely remorse may tread on the heels of indulgence,
but jealousy, conscious only of its own bitterness, knows not even what
to hope or what to fear. It hates itself, though its torture is purely
selfish; it hates another whom all the while it madly loves. It is proud,
yet stoops to meanness—cruel, yet quivers with the pain it inflicts,
desperate while cowardly, pitiless though sensitive, obstinate and
unstable, a mass of incongruities, and a purgatory from which there is
neither present purification nor prospective escape.
It may please a woman to feel that she can make her lover jealous, it
may even please her, in her feminine relish for dominion, to mark the
painful effect of her power; but if it were possible to love and be
wise, he would know that he had better hold his hand in the fire without
wincing, than let her discover the force of the engine with which she
can thus place him on the rack. Some women are generous enough not to
inflict a torture so readily at command, but even these take credit for
their forbearance, and assume, in consequence, a position of authority,
which is sometimes fatal to the male interest in such a partnership. The
sweetest kisses to a woman are those she gives on tiptoe. A man, at least
such a one as is best worth winning, cares for a woman because she loves
_him_. A woman, I imagine, is never so devoted as when she feels there is
yet something more to be gained of that dominion at which she is always
striving, but which she is apt to undervalue when attained.
Now, if she has taken it into her head to make her lover jealous, and
finds his equanimity utterly undisturbed, the result is a mortifying
and irremediable defeat to the aggressive Amazon. She has hazarded a
large stake and won nothing. Worse than this, she is led to suspect
the stability of her empire, and sees it (because women always jump to
conclusions) slipping like ice out of her grasp. Besides, she has put
herself in the wrong, as after a burst of tears and a storm of unfounded
reproaches, she will herself acknowledge; and the probable result of
her operations will be a penitent and unqualified submission. Let the
conqueror be high-minded enough to abstain from ever casting this little
vagary in her teeth, and he will have reason to congratulate himself on
his own self-command for the rest of the alliance.
But if the indulgence of jealousy be thus impolitic in a lover, it is
not only an unworthy weakness, but a fatal mistake on the part of a
husband. The doubts and fears, the uncertainties and anxieties, that
are only ludicrous in the outer courts of Cupid, become contemptible at
the fire-side of Hymen, derogatory to the man’s dignity, and insulting
to the woman’s faith. There are few individuals of either sex, even
amongst the worst natures, but can be safely trusted, if only the trust
be complete and unqualified. It is the little needless reservation,
the suspicion rather inferred than expressed, that leads to breach of
confidence and deceit. With ninety-nine women out of every hundred, the
very fact of possessing full and unquestioned freedom constitutes the
strongest possible restraint from its abuse. To suspect a wife, is to
kindle a spark of fire that eats into, and scorches, and consumes the
whole comfort of home; to let her know she is suspected, is to blow that
spark into a conflagration which soon reduces the whole domestic edifice
to ruins.
There are some noble natures, however, that unite with generosity of
sentiment, keen perceptive faculties, and a habit of vigilance bordering
on suspicion. These cannot but suffer under the possibility of betrayal,
the more so that they despise themselves for a weakness which yet they
have not power to shake off. They stifle the flame indeed, and it burns
them all the deeper to the quick—they scorn to cry out, to groan, even to
remonstrate, but the sternest and bravest cannot repress the quiverings
of the flesh under the branding-iron, and perhaps she, of all others,
from whom it would be wise to conceal the injury, is the first to find
it out. Wounded affections chafe in silence on one side, insulted pride
scowls and holds aloof on the other; the evil festers, the sore spreads,
the breach widens, the gloom gathers; it is well if some heavy blow falls
to bring the sufferers to their senses, if some grand explosion takes
place to clear the conjugal atmosphere, and establish a footing of mutual
confidence once more.
Cerise could hardly keep her tears back when Sir George, passing hastily
through the hall, booted as usual for the saddle, would stop to address
her in a few commonplace words of courtesy, with as much deference, she
told herself bitterly, as if she had been an acquaintance of yesterday.
There were no more little foolish familiarities, no more affected
chidings, betraying in their childish absurdities the overflowing of
happy affection, no more silly jests of which only themselves knew the
import. It was all grave politeness and ceremonious kindness now. It
irritated, it maddened her—the harshest usage had been less distressing.
If he would only speak cruel words! If he would only give her an excuse
to complain!
She could not guess how this change had been caused, or if she did guess,
she was exceedingly careful not to analyse her suppositions; but she
hunted her husband about wistfully, looking penitent without a fault,
guilty without a crime, longing timidly for an explanation which yet she
had not courage to demand.
The room at Hamilton in which Sir George spent his mornings on those
rare occasions when he remained indoors, was, it is needless to observe,
the gloomiest and most uncomfortable apartment in the house. Its
furniture consisted chiefly of guns, fishing-rods, and jack-boots. It
was generally very untidy, and contained for its only ornaments a model
of a brigantine and a sketch in crayons of his wife. Whenever Sir George
thought he had anything very particular to do, it was his habit to retire
here and barricade himself in.
The morning after Florian’s interview with Malletort, Cerise took up her
post at the door of this stronghold, with a vague hope that chance might
afford an opportunity for the explanation she desired.
“If he is really angry,” thought poor Cerise, “and I am sure he must be,
perhaps he will have taken my picture down, and I can ask him why, and he
will scold me, and I shall put my arms round his neck, and he cannot help
forgiving me then! Nobody else would be so unkind without a reason. And
yet he is not unkind; I wish he were; and I wish, too, I had courage to
speak out! Ah! it would be so much easier if I did not care for him!”
Lady Hamilton’s hands were very cold while she stood at the door. After
waiting at least five minutes she took courage, gave a timid little
knock, and went in.
Nothing in the aspect of the apartment or its inmate afforded the
opportunity she desired. Sir George, tranquilly engaged with a pair
of compasses and a foot-rule, was whistling softly over a plan of his
estates. Her own picture hung in its usual place. Glancing at it, she
wondered whether she had ever been so pretty, and if so, how he could
have got tired of her already. His calmness, too, was in irritating
contrast to her own agitation. Altogether she did not feel half so meek
as on the other side of the door.
He looked up from his employment, and rose.
“What is it, my lady?” he asked, pushing the implements aside. “Can I be
of any service to you before I get on my horse? Emerald is at this moment
saddled and waiting for me.”
The tone was good-humoured enough, but cool and unconcerned as if he
had been speaking to his grandmother. Besides, scarcely yet more than a
bride, and to be called _my lady_! It was unbearable!
“If you are in such a hurry,” she answered, angrily, “I will not detain
you. What I had to say was of no importance, and probably would not in
the least interest _you_. I am sorry I came in.”
“Not at all,” he replied, in the same matter-of-course voice. “When I am
at leisure I am always glad of your society. Just now, I fear, I cannot
take advantage of it. I must be absent all the morning, but St. Croix is,
doubtless, at home, and will keep you company.”
Guarded as was his tone, either her woman’s ear detected a false note in
the mention of Florian’s name, whom he seldom spoke of so ceremoniously,
or her woman’s intuition taught her to suspect the true grievance. At
any rate, she persuaded herself she ought to be more displeased than she
really felt. It would have been only right to show it. Now was the time
to get upon her high horse, and she would have mounted at once, but that
her blushes would not be kept down. It was too provoking! What must her
husband think of them? She could have burst out crying, but that would
be infinitely worse. She turned away, therefore, and assuming all the
dignity she could muster, walked off to her own apartment without another
word.
Sir George did not follow. Had he done so, it might have altered his
whole morning’s employment, to see his young wife fling herself down on
her knees at the bedside, and weep as if her heart would break.
No, _he_ flung himself into the saddle, and in five minutes was alone
with Emerald on the moor.
I wonder what the good horse thought of his rider, when he felt his head
steadied by the strong familiar hand, the well-known limbs grasping his
sides with pliant energy, the caressing voice whispering its cheering
words of caution and encouragement? Did he know that his master urged him
to his speed because the care that is proverbially said to sit behind
the horseman _cannot_ keep her seat on a fine goer, in good condition,
when fairly in his swing? Did he know that while that smooth, powerful
stride, regular and untiring as machinery, swept furlong by furlong over
the elastic surface of the moor, she must be left panting behind, to come
up indeed at the first check, rancorous and vindictive as ever, but still
beaten by a horse’s length at least so long as the excitement of the
gallop lasted and the extreme pace could hold?
Emerald enjoyed it as much as his master. When pulled up, he stopped
willingly, his whole frame glowing with health and energy, his eye
glancing, his ear alert, his broad red nostril drinking in the free
moorland air like a cordial, and his bit ringing cheerfully, while he
tossed his head in acknowledgment of the well-earned caress that smoothed
the warm supple skin on his swelling neck.
The horse seemed a little puzzled too, looking round in vain for his
friends the hounds, as if he wondered why he had been brought thus
merrily over the moor, good fun as it was, without any further object
than the ride.
In this matter there was little sympathy between man and horse. Sir
George was thinking neither of hounds, nor hawks, nor any other
accessories of the chase. He neither marked the secluded pool in which
he had set up the finest stag of the season at bay last month, nor the
ledge of rocks into which he ran his fox to ground last week. He was far
back in the past. He was a young Musketeer again, with neither rank,
nor wealth, nor broad acres, but with that limitless reversion of the
future which was worth all his possessions ten times told. Yet even thus
looking back to his earliest manhood, he could not shake himself free
from the memory of Cerise. Ever since he could remember, that gentle face
and those blue eyes had softened his waking thoughts and haunted him in
his dreams; there was no period in his life at which she had not been
the ideal of his imagination, the prize he desired. Even if he had not
married her, he thought with a groan, he would still be cursed with this
gnawing, festering pain that drove him out here into the wilderness for
the mere bodily relief of incessant action. If he had not married her!
Another thought stung him now. Perhaps then she might have continued
to love him. Were they all alike, these women? All vain, unstable,
irrational creatures; best acted on by the jugglery of false sentiment,
alive only to the unworthy influence of morbid pique or unbridled
passion, tempted to evil by an infamous notoriety, or dazzled by the
glare of an impossible romance? He asked himself these questions, and his
own observation afforded no satisfactory reply.
He had lived much at the Court of France, when that Court, with all
its splendour and all its refinement, was little distinguished by
self-denial in man, or self-restraint in woman. Amongst those of his own
age and sphere, he was accustomed to hear conjugal fidelity spoken of
as a prejudice not only superfluous but unrefined and in bad taste. The
wife _as_ a wife was to be considered a proper object of pursuit, the
husband to be borne with as an encumbrance, but in right of his office
habitually to be derided, out-witted, and despised. That a woman should
care for the man to whom she had plighted her faith at the altar seemed
an absurdity not to be contemplated; that a man should continue to love
the girl he had chosen was a vulgarity to which no gentleman would
willingly plead guilty. Such were the morals of the stage, such was the
too common practice of real life. And George had laughed with the rest at
the superstition of matrimony, had held its sanctity in derision, perhaps
trifled with its vows _en mousquetaire_.
And now was the punishment overtaking him at last? Was the foundation of
_his_ happiness, like that of others, laid in sand, and the whole edifice
crumbling to pieces in his very sight? It was hard, but he was a man, he
thought, and he must bear it as best he might. As for the possibility
that Cerise should actually love another, he dismissed such an idea
almost ere it was formed. That was not the grievance, he told Emerald
aloud, while he stood by the good horse on the solitary moor, it was that
Cerise should not love _him_! He could scarcely believe it, and yet he
could see she was unhappy, she for whose happiness he would sacrifice so
willingly wealth, influence, position, life itself, everything but his
honour. When he thought of the pale pining face, it seemed as if a knife
was driven into his heart.
He sprang into his saddle, and once more urged his horse to a gallop.
Once more the brown heathery acres flew back beneath his eyes, but
Emerald began to think that all this velocity was a waste of power when
unaccompanied by the music of the hounds, and stopped of his own accord
to look for them within a bow-shot of the great north road where it led
past the “Hamilton Arms.”
Ordinary people do not usually talk to themselves, but I believe every
man speaks aloud to his horse.
“Quite right, old fellow!” said Sir George, as if he were addressing a
comrade. “I may as well stop and have a glass of beer, for I am as hot as
you are, and I dare say twice as thirsty.”
Emerald acquiesced with a snort and a prolonged shake the moment his
rider’s foot touched the ground, and Sir George, filling the whole of the
narrow passage to the bar, bounced against Florian de St. Croix returning
from an interview with the Abbé on the first floor. Each must have been
thinking of the other, for both exclaimed mentally, “The very man!” while
at the same instant Slap-Jack, looking rather sheepish, and not in his
usual spirits, slunk out of another room and tried to leave unobserved.
“Foretop, there!” hallooed Sir George, good-humouredly, “as you are
aloft, look smart and make yourself useful. See that lubber gives Emerald
a go-down of chilled water, and tows him about at a walk till I come out.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” replied Slap-Jack, his whole face brightening up. He loved
to be so addressed by his old commander; and although he was to-day not
without his own troubles, or he would scarce have been here so early, he
set to work to obey instructions with a will.
Florian accompanied the new arrival into the bar, where Mrs. Dodge,
all smiles and ribbons, drew for this honoured guest a measure of the
best with her own fat hands; while Alice, who looked as if she had been
crying, hovered about admiringly, watching Sir George quench his thirst
as if he had been some rare and beautiful animal she had paid her penny
to see.
“Good stuff!” said the baronet, setting down his jug with a sigh. “Better
than _vin ordinaire_, or even three-water grog. Eh, Florian?”
But Florian’s mind was bent on other matters. “You are always so
occupied,” said he, “that I can never catch you for half an hour alone.
Will you have your horse led home, and walk back the short way with me?
We had more leisure on board ‘The Bashful Maid,’ after all; especially in
the ‘Trades.’”
Sir George assented cheerily. For the moment his gloomy thoughts fled at
the sound of the other’s voice. They were tried comrades in many a rough
adventure, and it takes a good deal to turn a man’s heart from an old
friend.
“Of course I will,” he assented, putting his arm through Florian’s. “We
can cross the deer-park, and go over the footbridge above the waterfall.
It saves nearly half a mile. Slap-Jack,” he added, emerging from the
house, “take that horse home, under easy sail, d’ye mind? and see him
well dressed over when you get to the stable.”
Then he and Florian strolled quietly away to cross the deer-park and
thread a certain picturesque dingle adorned by the above-mentioned
waterfall. It was the show bit of scenery at Hamilton Hill, and the track
leading to it was so precipitous as to be impassable by any four-footed
animal less nimble than a goat.
It was Slap-Jack’s duty to conduct Emerald by an easier route to his
own stable; and for this purpose the adventurous seaman proceeded to
“get up the side,” as he called it, an ascent which he effected with
some difficulty, and so commenced his voyage with considerable prudence,
according to orders, “under easy sail.”
But Emerald’s blood was up after his gallop. The seaman’s awkward seat
and unskilled hand on the rein irritated him considerably. He fretted,
he danced, he sidled, he snatched at his bridle, he tossed his head, he
showed symptoms of mutiny from the very beginning.
“I knowed as we should make bad weather of it,” said Slap-Jack, relating
his adventure that evening in the servants’ hall, “when we come into open
sea. Steer he wouldn’t, and every time I righted him he broached-to, as
if he was going down stern foremost. So I lashed the helm amid-ships, and
held on by my eyelids to stand by for a capsize.”
In truth the horse soon took the whole affair into his own management,
and after one or two long reaching plunges, that would have unseated
Slap-jack had he not held on manfully by the mane, started off at a
furious gallop, which brought him to his own stable-yard in about five
minutes from the time he left the inn door.
Cerise, wandering pale and listless amongst her roses, heard the clatter
of hoofs entering at this unusual pace, and rushed to the stables
in some alarm. She was relieved to find that no serious casualty had
occurred, and that Slap-Jack, very much out of breath, with his legs
trembling and powerless from the unwonted exercise, was the only
sufferer. He gasped and panted sadly; but she gathered that he had been
ordered to bring the horse quietly home, at which she could not forbear
smiling, and that Sir George was going to walk back the short way. It was
a chance to be seized eagerly. She had been very low and dispirited all
the morning, wishing she had spoken out to him before he went, and now
here came another opportunity. Cerise was still young, and, to use the
graphic expression of her own country, “a woman to the very tips of her
fingers.” She ran upstairs, put on her prettiest hat, and changed her
breast-knots for fresh ribbons of newer gloss and a more becoming colour.
Then she fluttered out through her garden, and crossing the home-park
with a rising colour and a more elastic step, as the fresh air told upon
her animal spirits, reached one end of the wooden footbridge as the two
gentlemen arrived at the other.
She had only expected _one_. It was a disappointment; more, it was an
embarrassment. She coloured violently, and looked, as she felt, both
agitated and put out. Sir George could not but observe her distress, and
again his heart ached with the dull, wearing, unacknowledged pain.
He jumped to conclusions; a man under such an influence always does. It
seemed clear to him that his wife must have chosen this direction for
her walk in order to meet the Jesuit. He did not blame Florian, for the
priest had himself proposed they should return together, and could not,
therefore, have expected her. Stay! Was this a blind? He stole a glance
at him, and thought he seemed as much discomposed as her ladyship. All
that he could disentangle afterwards. In the meantime one thing alone
seemed clear. That Cerise, contrary to her usual habits, had come this
distance on foot to meet her lover, and had found—her husband! He laughed
to himself fiercely, with a grim savage humour, and felt as once or twice
formerly in a duel, when his adversary, taking unfair advantage, had been
foiled by his own act. Well, he would fight this battle at least with all
the skill of fence he knew; patiently, warily, scientifically, without
loss of temper or coolness, neglecting no precaution, overlooking no
mistake, and giving no quarter.
He could not help thinking of his old comrade, Bras-de-Fer, as he
remembered him, one gloomy morning in Spain, stripped and in silk
stockings on the wet turf outside the lines, with the deadliest point
in three armies six inches from his throat, and how nothing but perfect
self-command and endurance had given his immoveable old comrade the
victory. His heart softened when he thought of those merry campaigning
days, but not to Lady Hamilton nor to the pale thoughtful Jesuit on the
other side.
It was scarcely a pleasant walk home for any one of the three. Florian,
though he loved the very ground she trod on, was disconcerted at her
ladyship’s inopportune appearance just as he thought he was gaining
ground in his canvass, and had prepared the most telling arguments for
the conversion of his proselyte. Moreover, he had now passed the stage
at which he could converse freely with Cerise in company, and grudged
her society even to the man who had a right to it. Alone with her he had
plenty to say; but, without approaching forbidden topics, he had acquired
a habit of conversing on abstruse and speculative subjects, interesting
enough to two persons in the same vein of thought, but which strike even
these as exaggerated when submitted to the criticism of a third. Many a
pleasant and harmonious duet jangles painfully when played as a trio.
He was impatient now of any interference with Lady Hamilton’s opinions.
These he considered his own, in defiance of a thousand husbands; and so
strangely constituted is the human mind, he could presume to be jealous
even of the vague, shadowy, unsubstantial share in her mind that he
imagined he possessed.
So he answered in monosyllables, and took nothing off the constraint
under which they all laboured. Sir George conversed in a cold formal
tone on indifferent matters, and was as unlike himself as possible. He
addressed his remarks alternately to Florian and Cerise, scanning the
countenance of each narrowly the while. This did not tend to improve
their good understanding; and Lady Hamilton, walking with head erect and
set face, looking straight before her, dared not trust herself to answer.
It was a relief when they reached the house, and most of all to her, for
she rushed upstairs and locked herself into her own room, where she could
be miserable to her heart’s content.
It was hard for this fair young wife, good, loving, and true, to seek
that refuge, so cruelly wounded, twice in one day.