MRS. CAMERON was seated alone in her pretty drawing-room, with a book
lying open, but unheeded, on her lap. She was looking away from its
pages, seemingly into the garden without, but rather into empty space.
To a very acute and practised observer, there was in her countenance
an expression which baffled the common eye.
To the common eye it was simply vacant; the expression of a quiet,
humdrum woman, who might have been thinking of some quiet humdrum
household detail,--found that too much for her, and was now not
thinking at all.
But to the true observer, there were in that face indications of a
troubled past, still haunted with ghosts never to be laid at
rest,--indications, too, of a character in herself that had undergone
some revolutionary change; it had not always been the character of a
woman quiet and humdrum. The delicate outlines of the lip and nostril
evinced sensibility, and the deep and downward curve of it bespoke
habitual sadness. The softness of the look into space did not tell of
a vacant mind, but rather of a mind subdued and over-burdened by the
weight of a secret sorrow. There was also about her whole presence,
in the very quiet which made her prevalent external characteristic,
the evidence of manners formed in a high-bred society,--the society in
which quiet is connected with dignity and grace. The poor understood
this better than her rich acquaintances at Moleswich, when they said,
"Mrs. Cameron was every inch a lady." To judge by her features she
must once have been pretty, not a showy prettiness, but decidedly
pretty. Now, as the features were small, all prettiness had faded
away in cold gray colourings, and a sort of tamed and slumbering
timidity of aspect. She was not only not demonstrative, but must have
imposed on herself as a duty the suppression of demonstration. Who
could look at the formation of those lips, and not see that they
belonged to the nervous, quick, demonstrative temperament? And yet,
observing her again more closely, that suppression of the
constitutional tendency to candid betrayal of emotion would the more
enlist our curiosity or interest; because, if physiognomy and
phrenology have any truth in them, there was little strength in her
character. In the womanly yieldingness of the short curved upper lip,
the pleading timidity of the regard, the disproportionate but elegant
slenderness of the head between the ear and the neck, there were the
tokens of one who cannot resist the will, perhaps the whim, of another
whom she either loves or trusts.
The book open on her lap is a serious book on the doctrine of grace,
written by a popular clergyman of what is termed "the Low Church."
She seldom read any but serious books, except where such care as she
gave to Lily's education compelled her to read "Outlines of History
and Geography," or the elementary French books used in seminaries for
young ladies. Yet if any one had decoyed Mrs. Cameron into familiar
conversation, he would have discovered that she must early have
received the education given to young ladies of station. She could
speak and write French and Italian as a native. She had read, and
still remembered, such classic authors in either language as are
conceded to the use of pupils by the well-regulated taste of orthodox
governesses. She had a knowledge of botany, such as botany was taught
twenty years ago. I am not sure that, if her memory had been fairly
aroused, she might not have come out strong in divinity and political
economy, as expounded by the popular manuals of Mrs. Marcet. In
short, you could see in her a thoroughbred English lady, who had been
taught in a generation before Lily's, and immeasurably superior in
culture to the ordinary run of English young ladies taught nowadays.
So, in what after all are very minor accomplishments,--now made major
accomplishments,--such as music, it was impossible that a connoisseur
should hear her play on the piano without remarking, "That woman has
had the best masters of her time." She could only play pieces that
belonged to her generation. She had learned nothing since. In short,
the whole intellectual culture had come to a dead stop long years ago,
perhaps before Lily was born.
Now, while she is gazing into space Mrs. Braefield is announced. Mrs.
Cameron does not start from revery. She never starts. But she makes
a weary movement of annoyance, resettles herself, and lays the serious
book on the sofa table. Elsie enters, young, radiant, dressed in all
the perfection of the fashion, that is, as ungracefully as in the eyes
of an artist any gentlewoman can be; but rich merchants who are proud
of their wives so insist, and their wives, in that respect,
submissively obey them.
The ladies interchange customary salutations, enter into the customary
preliminaries of talk, and after a pause Elsie begins in earnest.
"But sha'n't I see Lily? Where is she?"
"I fear she has gone into the town. A poor little boy, who did our
errands, has met with an accident,--fallen from a cherry-tree."
"Which he was robbing?"
"Probably."
"And Lily has gone to lecture him?"
"I don't know as to that; but he is much hurt, and Lily has gone to
see what is the matter with him."
Mrs. Braefield, in her frank outspoken way,--"I don't take much to
girls of Lily's age in general, though I am passionately fond of
children. You know how I do take to Lily; perhaps because she is so
like a child. But she must be an anxious charge to you."
Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious "No; she is still a child, a very
good one; why should I be anxious?"
Mrs. Braefield, impulsively,--"Why, your child must now be eighteen."
Mrs. Cameron,--"Eighteen--is it possible! How time flies! though in a
life so monotonous as mine, time does not seem to fly, it slips on
like the lapse of water. Let me think,--eighteen? No, she is but
seventeen,--seventeen last May."
Mrs. Braefield,--"Seventeen! A very anxious age for a girl; an age in
which dolls cease and lovers begin."
Mrs. Cameron, not so languidly, but still quietly,--"Lily never cared
much for dolls,--never much for lifeless pets; and as to lovers, she
does not dream of them."
Mrs. Braefield, briskly,--"There is no age after six in which girls do
not dream of lovers. And here another question arises. When a girl
so lovely as Lily is eighteen next birthday, may not a lover dream of
her?"
Mrs. Cameron, with that wintry cold tranquillity of manner, which
implies that in putting such questions an interrogator is taking a
liberty,--"As no lover has appeared, I cannot trouble myself about his
dreams."
Said Elsie inly to herself, "This is the stupidest woman I ever met!"
and aloud to Mrs. Cameron,--"Do you not think that your neighbour, Mr.
Chillingly, is a very fine young man?"
"I suppose he would be generally considered so. He is very tall."
"A handsome face?"
"Handsome, is it? I dare say."
"What does Lily say?"
"About what?"
"About Mr. Chillingly. Does she not think him handsome?"
"I never asked her."
"My dear Mrs. Cameron, would it not be a very pretty match for Lily?
The Chillinglys are among the oldest families in Burke's 'Landed
Gentry,' and I believe his father, Sir Peter, has a considerable
property."
For the first time in this conversation Mrs. Cameron betrayed emotion.
A sudden flush overspread her countenance, and then left it paler than
before. After a pause she recovered her accustomed composure, and
replied, rudely,--
"It would be no friend to Lily who could put such notions into her
head; and there is no reason to suppose that they have entered into
Mr. Chillingly's."
"Would you be sorry if they did? Surely you would like your niece to
marry well, and there are few chances of her doing so at Moleswich."
"Pardon me, Mrs. Braefield, but the question of Lily's marriage I have
never discussed, even with her guardian. Nor, considering the
childlike nature of her tastes and habits, rather than the years she
has numbered, can I think the time has yet come for discussing it at
all."
Elsie, thus rebuked, changed the subject to some newspaper topic which
interested the public mind at the moment and very soon rose to depart.
Mrs. Cameron detained the hand that her visitor held out, and said in
low tones, which, though embarrassed, were evidently earnest, "My dear
Mrs. Braefield, let me trust to your good sense and the affection with
which you have honoured my niece not to incur the risk of unsettling
her mind by a hint of the ambitious projects for her future on which
you have spoken to me. It is extremely improbable that a young man of
Mr. Chillingly's expectations would entertain any serious thoughts of
marrying out of his own sphere of life, and--"
"Stop, Mrs. Cameron, I must interrupt you. Lily's personal
attractions and grace of manner would adorn any station; and have I
not rightly understood you to say that though her guardian, Mr.
Melville, is, as we all know, a man who has risen above the rank of
his parents, your niece, Miss Mordaunt, is like yourself, by birth a
gentlewoman?"
"Yes, by birth a gentlewoman," said Mrs. Cameron, raising her head
with a sudden pride. But she added, with as sudden a change to a sort
of freezing humility, "What does that matter? A girl without fortune,
without connection, brought up in this little cottage, the ward of a
professional artist, who was the son of a city clerk, to whom she owes
even the home she has found, is not in the same sphere of life as Mr.
Chillingly, and his parents could not approve of such an alliance for
him. It would be most cruel to her, if you were to change the
innocent pleasure she may take in the conversation of a clever and
well-informed stranger into the troubled interest which, since you
remind me of her age, a girl even so childlike and beautiful as Lily
might conceive in one represented to her as the possible partner of
her life. Don't commit that cruelty; don't--don't, I implore you!"
"Trust me," cried the warm-hearted Elsie, with tears rushing to her
eyes. "What you say so sensibly, so nobly, never struck me before. I
do not know much of the world,--knew nothing of it till I
married,--and being very fond of Lily, and having a strong regard for
Mr. Chillingly, I fancied I could not serve both better
than--than--but I see now; he is very young, very peculiar; his
parents might object, not to Lily herself, but to the circumstances
you name. And you would not wish her to enter any family where she
was not as cordially welcomed as she deserves to be. I am glad to
have had this talk with you. Happily, I have done no mischief as yet.
I will do none. I had come to propose an excursion to the remains of
the Roman Villa, some miles off, and to invite you and Mr. Chillingly.
I will no longer try to bring him and Lily together."
"Thank you. But you still misconstrue me. I do not think that Lily
cares half so much for Mr. Chillingly as she does for a new butterfly.
I do not fear their coming together, as you call it, in the light in
which she now regards him, and in which, from all I observe, he
regards her. My only fear is that a hint might lead her to regard him
in another way, and that way impossible."
Elsie left the house extremely bewildered, and with a profound
contempt for Mrs. Cameron's knowledge of what may happen to two young
persons "brought together."