BRASS POTS AND EARTHENWARE PIPKINS
The worst of winter had stormed itself away, and it was March—the
latter end of March. The leonine portion of his reign had endured a
long time this year, and though it was now over, the warmer gales
had yet some north-east to blow back, and the dominion of the lamb
had not fairly set in. And yet, there was the caress of spring in
the air—that caress which is unmistakable, and which may be felt, if
it be there, through the bleakest wind and the coldest rain. This
caress was in the air, and the hue of spring was in the sky. Here
and there her fingers had swept aside the withered leaves, and
allowed a violet to push its way up; and in some very sheltered
southern corners appeared a tuft or two of primroses. In the garden
borders at Thorsgarth, the crocuses were beginning to make a gallant
show. The blue behind the rolling white clouds was deep and
profound,—steady and to be relied upon. In the shady corners of the
garden, under the budding trees, the clumps of daffodils were
putting forth their tender first shoots, ready to nod their heads
and laugh through the April showers. And the grass, too, was
recovering its colour,—its green, which weeks under the snow had
faded and browned. Everything was full of promise. Nature stepped
forward, erect and laughing, jocund, casting the burden of her
sadness behind her; not as in autumn, advancing droopingly towards
it.
So much for the garden, the cultivated. Outside, the roads were
heavy and soft with mud; but it was a mud to make glad the heart of
man, especially farming man. The ploughed fields, stretching their
great shoulders towards the uplands, looked rich in their
purple-brown hue. The hedgerows here and there seemed to wear a
filmy, downy veil, the first output of yellow-green buds. In the
great pastures near Rookswood, on the Durham side of Tees, the giant
ash-trees stood yet in their winter bareness, giving no sign, save
by the hard, burnished black buds, which for months to come were
meaning to hold fast their secret wealth of bud and leaf, their
treasure of summer glory. There was every promise that this year the
oak would be out before the ash, with, it was to be hoped, the
proverbial result.
It was on such an afternoon as this, when the breeze blew from the
south-west, that Eleanor walked along one of the muddy lanes leading
from Thorsgarth to Bradstane. Beside her trotted Mrs. Johnson’s
little girl, Effie, whom Eleanor had borrowed a week or two ago from
her mother, to keep her company in the solitude of Thorsgarth. For
Gilbert’s prophecy had been fulfilled. She found it very lonely
there, so lonely that she was now on her way, half-willingly,
half-reluctantly, to the Dower House, in order to inspect it from
garret to cellar, and think whether it would not better suit her as
a residence than the great dreary house which had grown so
oppressive to her.
As they came in their walk to a bend in the river, Effie suddenly
said—
‘How full the river is just now; and so brown and strong! Dr.
Langstroth says he remembers the river longer than anything else;
and he says that Tees is as broad as Bradstane is long. Isn’t that
queer?’
Eleanor laughed. It is an indubitable fact, and one which she had
herself noted with amusement during the first part of her stay in
Bradstane, that in a town like this, or, indeed, in any small town
or village situated upon a stream as big as the Tees, ‘the river’
becomes the important feature of the neighbourhood. What it looks
like, whether it be high or low; in winter, whether the river be
frozen or flowing; and in fishing-time, what sort of a water the
river shows to-day; whether there has been rain to the north-west,
which floods it, or whether drought, which makes it dry. Whenever
the conversation turns upon out-of-door subjects, the river is sure
to assert itself somewhere or other, and that before very long. It
is the same as a living thing, and that a powerful one; its moods
are watched and recorded as if they were the moods of a person in
whom one took a deep interest. It is for ever the river, the river;
and this watery friend, and enemy—for it is both—gives a colour, and
has an influence over the lives that are lived near it, which is
very remarkable, especially to those who know nothing of such
surroundings. And Tees, be it remarked, is a river with a powerful
individuality, which none in his vicinity can afford to despise.
‘He says that because people think so much about the river here,’
said Eleanor. ‘You must know how they talk about it. You never go
anywhere without finding the Tees,—in people’s houses as well as
here flowing through the meadows. That is what he means.’
‘I suppose it must be,’ said Effie, who was a philosophical child.
And they went on in silence. Eleanor resumed the mental debate which
had been occupying her before—as to the wisdom of the step she
contemplated taking. It would be separating herself from Otho, at
one moment, she thought; and then she remembered Gilbert’s dry
words—that Otho left her without scruple, and that no thought of her
loneliness would bring him back a moment before it was convenient or
pleasant to him to come. That was true; she would most likely see
quite as much of him at the Dower House as at Thorsgarth. She had
not had a line from him since he had gone away with Gilbert to
London. Once or twice she had seen Magdalen, who had mentioned
having heard from him; but Eleanor suspected that his letters to
Magdalen even, were very brief. Miss Wynter volunteered no details
or news, and Eleanor felt no more drawn to her than before, and
disdained to ask for information which was not proffered.
Once or twice she had ventured on making a tour of inspection all
round the Thorsgarth park and grounds, penetrating even to the
courtyards, the kennels, and stables which lay behind the house.
What she saw there did not tend to encourage her. She found that
everything was conducted with a lavish profusion, a reckless
extravagance, which would have been foolish in any case; and it was
a lavishness which had also its stingy side, as such lavishness
usually has. While necessary repairs were left neglected for months,
or undone altogether, many pounds would be spent on some new
contrivance for warming or ventilating a stable, already luxuriously
fitted up. While some of the men on the farm complained that their
carts were falling to pieces, silver-mounted harness was
accumulating in the harness-room, for no earthly purpose except to
make a show behind the glass doors. Many another extravagant and
senseless fancy or whim was indulged to the full, while ordinary
necessaries were stinted. It seemed to Eleanor that the
establishment swarmed with servants, both men and maids. Their
functions and offices were a mystery to her. They always seemed
exceedingly busy when she appeared upon the scene, but she had an
uneasy consciousness that it was only in seeming, and that as soon
as her back was turned, a very different state of things again
prevailed. She had been accustomed to a liberal, and even splendid
establishment, but one conducted on principles of enlightened
economy—without a superfluous retainer, but at the same time without
a fault or a failure, from one year’s end to the other. The contrast
which she saw here offended her sense of decency and order. She knew
that Otho ought to retrench, and she would gladly have helped him to
do so, with the joy usually brought to bear by women, unskilled in
active financial matters, upon this negative process of saving by
means of renouncing things.
Thinking over these things, she now walked with Effie towards the
Dower House. The old square, when they reached it, looked very
pleasant that sunny afternoon; bright sunshine lighting up all the
sober, solid old houses, which stood reposefully, as if secure for
ever of peace and plenty; their quiet closed doors and shining
window panes revealing nothing of the emotions which might be
stirring those who inhabited them. The trees on either side the
square had begun to show a first tinge of green, like the rest of
nature. Not a soul stirred in the afternoon quietness; only
Michael’s great dog, Pluto, who lay basking on the flags outside the
Red Gables, looked and blinked at them lazily as they passed, and
slightly moved the tip of his tail in reply to their greeting. Next
door but one was the Dower House—a pleasant old stone building,
gray, with a door in the middle, and two windows on either side;
upstairs five windows, and a third story with five windows more. It
was, in fact, a large, substantial stone house, very suitable as the
country residence of a single woman of some means and position. It
stood on the sunny side of the square, and like nearly all the
houses in it, its gardens and its pleasantest rooms lay to the back.
It was furnished with old-fashioned furniture, and kept in order by
an old gardener and his wife, who lived there. Eleanor liked it. She
liked the windows looking into the broad open street. Such a
prospect seemed to bring her nearer to humanity, and to the
wholesome everyday life of her fellow-creatures. The recollection of
Thorsgarth, rising stately from its basement of velvet sward,
rendered dark by the towering trees which surrounded it,—of the
terraces sloping to the river; the flights of steps, the discoloured
marble fauns and nymphs—this recollection came over her, and made
her feel dreary. She felt as if she had lived in it all for years,
and had no joy in any one of them.
In her own mind she almost resolved to go to this other house, but
she wished to wait for Otho’s return, and explain it all to him—if
ever he should return; if only he would return!
Three days later, without letter and without warning, he came home,
late in the evening, having no apologies to make, and very few
remarks concerning his long absence and silence. He sat for an hour
or two with his sister, and she found something in his looks and
aspect which did not tend to allay whatever anxiety she might have
felt about him. The ruddy brown of his skin had grown sallow and
dark, and his cheeks were hollow. There was a haggard look about
him, and the traces, unmistakably to be read, that he had been
living hard and fast. His eyes had sunk; he was not an encouraging
spectacle, and there was an uneasy restlessness about him which
fretted her. She tried to talk about commonplace things.
‘Did you see much of the Websters?’ she asked, alluding to some
distant cousins with whom she had been on terms of intimacy in
former days—days which now seemed very far back.
‘Websters—no! When I go to town, I don’t go to do the proper with
them. I have other friends and other places to go to.’
‘Lucy told me in a letter that Dick had met you somewhere.’
‘And I’ve met Dick,’ retorted Otho, with an uncomplimentary sneer;
‘and a precious prig he is.’
‘Indeed, Otho, he is not. He is a very nice lad, and very free from
priggishness. That’s his great charm.’
‘He’s a young milksop.’
‘He is neither vulgar nor dissipated, if that is what you mean.’
‘I haven’t wasted my time in thinking about him.’
‘And Mr. Langstroth—how did you leave him?’
‘Gilbert—oh, he’s flourishing. By the way, he sent a message to
you,—rather a complimentary message—and he told me to be sure and
not change it into the very reverse of what he wished it to be.’
Otho chuckled a little. ‘Let me see. He wished to be remembered to
you, sent his best compliments, and hoped to see you again during
the year—perhaps when he comes for the shooting. I fancy Gilbert was
a bit taken with you, Eleanor. He was mighty particular about his
message.’
‘You fancy very uncalled-for things.’
‘Hey, but I wouldn’t mind having him for a brother-in-law,’
persisted Otho; but he was too careless even to look at her as he
aired his views. ‘A first-rate fellow is Gilbert, and he has rid me
of those blessed factories, and stumped up like a man. I’ve never
repented standing his friend when I did.’
She made no answer, and as they were alone (for Eleanor had judged
it better to send Effie into the background) there was a
silence—that profound silence only to be heard in the country.
Suddenly Otho started, passed his hand over his eyes, and exclaimed
impatiently—
‘What a hole of a place this is! What a deadly stillness; it’s
enough to give one the blues. I’d open the window, only that would
make it worse, letting in the “swish” of that beastly river, which
is a sound I hate. I do detest the country,’ he continued, poking
the fire with vigour. ‘Give me the pavement, and chambers, where you
hear the rattle going on all night. This confounded place would
depress the spirits of a dog, I do believe.’
‘Does Magdalen know you are here? Why don’t you go up and see her?’
‘Magdalen?’ He gave a little start. ‘Oh, never mind Magdalen! She
understands me. She is not a child, nor a love-sick girl, to expect
me to be always at her apron-strings. I shall see Magdalen, trust
me. But I’m off into Friarsdale the day after to-morrow.’
‘Friarsdale again!’
‘Ay! There’s a heap of things to see after. I shall have to be back
and forward from there till it’s time to take Crackpot down to
Epsom.... Did you ever see a Derby, Eleanor?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to?’
‘Not when a horse of yours is running.’
‘Little starched out puritan! You might write a tract, or get
Michael Langstroth to do it, and have it printed, and salve your
conscience over, by distributing it over the grand stand.’
‘I have something to say to you, Otho. I do not like living alone in
this great house when you are so much away; and I have been thinking
whether to go to the Dower House, and take up my abode there.’
‘Hoh!’ Otho paused. ‘While you are about it, why not cut the whole
concern, and go to the Websters?’ he said. ‘They would be overjoyed
to have you. It doesn’t suit you? I knew it wouldn’t; but you would
come. You see, my dear, when a little earthenware pipkin of a woman
jumps into the water, and is for sailing along with the brass pots,
she generally comes to grief. My life suits me; but it is so unlike
all you have been accustomed to, that you can’t fit into it—can’t
even settle down to look on at it. You look downright ill now,
and——’
‘Otho! that shows how little you understand,’ said she, a convulsive
laugh struggling with her inner bitterness of heart. The whole thing
came before her as so tragi-comic; so horrible, yet so laughable. So
Otho thought that playing fast and loose with his life, drinking and
dicing, brawling and betting, and generally conducting himself like
a blackguard, was a fine, heroic thing—a proof that he was a brass
pot amongst men, and able to sail unharmed down _that_ stream.
Ludicrous, pitiable, agonisingly laughable theory!
‘It remains to be proved which of us two is the brass pot, and which
the pipkin,’ she went on, unable to help smiling. ‘For my part, I
fancy we are both made of very common clay. But, to leave parables,
I would rather not go to the Websters. My ideas about life and other
things have changed very much lately. I would rather not return to
my old one at present. I should prefer to go to the Dower House, if
it will be all the same to you.’
‘Oh, quite. Since you prefer to stay here. It is an odd taste, I
think, for a girl brought up as you have been. But you are better
away from here. There’s no doubt of that.’
Eleanor was looking at him as he spoke, and saw, more plainly than
before, the haggardness, and the lines upon his face; it seemed to
her that they had been planted there since she had last seen him,
but this might be imagination. She was startled by a resemblance
which she fancied she discovered in this altered face of his, to a
miniature of their father which was in her possession—that father
who had been in tastes, character, and disposition, so utterly
unlike the son who followed him. Since coming to Thorsgarth she had
often studied this miniature, wondering how such a father came to
have such a son. At this moment Otho was leaning his head back, as
if weary. His wild eyes were closed, so that their strange, savage
look did not distort the likeness. Compunction, longing, yea, love
rushed into her heart.
‘Otho!’ she said, in a voice which trembled; and he looked up.
‘What’s up?’ he demanded, seeing with surprise that she had risen
and was coming towards him.
‘Dear Otho!’ she repeated, as she knelt before him, and clasped his
hand in her own; ‘_why_ am I better away from you? Why better away
from my own brother, and my father’s house, where he intended me to
find my home? It is not right, Otho; it is not right that it should
be so. Ah, if you would only be different, how happy we might be—you
and Magdalen and I; and where in all your world outside will you
find anything that will endure as our love to you will?—for I know
that Magdalen does love you, though you treat her cruelly, as you
treat me.’
Otho stared down into her face with a strange, alien glance; a
shocked, wondering look. He was not rough; he did not repulse her,
but he looked as if she had been apostrophising him in some strange
tongue, which he could not understand. Presently he said—
‘Little girl, you don’t know what you are talking about. _I_ settle
down with you and Magdalen! Heaven help you! I should be mad, or
dead of it in a very short time. It is a thousand pities you should
think you have got anything to do with my concerns. Leave me alone,
that’s a good child. I’m past any mending of yours.’
She still knelt by his chair, gazing, as if she would have forced
the secret of his wild, unhappy nature to show itself. Perhaps she
thought of the happy dark days she had read of, when holy women, by
dint of fasting and prayer and faith, could master even such savage
souls as Otho’s—could cast forth devils, and so relieve the souls of
wretched men. Those days must be past, for she could gather nothing
from her searching gaze. Perhaps she was not holy enough. She had
prayed, but she had not fasted; and to judge from Effie’s chatter,
she had renounced none of the pomps and vanities of her station.
‘You will be all right at the Dower House,’ Otho resumed presently.
‘Then you can have people to stay with you, and make yourself a
little less dull. There! get up, don’t look so desperately
sentimental. I am as I am; and I shall get along, if you’ll leave me
alone.’
With that, he rose and put her aside, but gently and quietly; and
she was almost sure that the hands which rested for a moment on her
shoulders, quivered a little.
Otho went into the smoking-room, shut the door, and turned up the
light. He took a brandy decanter from a case of spirits which stood
on the sideboard, and poured some into a glass; and this time there
was no question as to his hand trembling. His lips, too, were
unsteady. He drank the brandy, and muttered to himself—
‘I must go and see Magdalen, or she will be suspicious. But not
to-night—not to-night. Surely to-morrow will do. What was it she
said to me that night about wronging her?’
He threw himself into a chair, and tried to collect his thoughts,
and shape a coherent recollection of Magdalen’s words. At last he
had gradually pieced them together, and with them the scene in which
they had been uttered—the great square, draughty vestibule before
the Balder Hall door; the north-west storm wind screaming past it;
his own figure, and that of Magdalen; the way in which they had
stood close together, and the vows he had forced from her; and how
at last she had put her hands upon his shoulders, and looked him
straight in the eyes, and said that she did not claim any vows from
him, but only bade him remember that whatever wrong he did her,
directly or indirectly, from that day forth, he did to his wife, for
that he was hers, as much as she was his.
‘Well,’ he thought, as he laughed a feeble echo of his old
blustering laugh, ‘it would not be the first time a man had wronged
his wife either; but I shan’t. I shall tell the little baggage not
to make a fool of herself, but to keep her languishing eyes for her
bear of a lover.’
Otho, as he made these reflections, was thinking of no one in
London. His sister had taken it for granted that he came straight
from his sojourn with Gilbert Langstroth,—a very great mistake, as
he had driven that very morning from Friarsdale to Darlington, and
taken the train thence to Bradstane.
On the following day some kind of an interview took place between
Otho and Magdalen. Eleanor saw very little of the other. They were
amicable when they met, but nothing more. The day after that Otho
went into Friarsdale, not saying that he was returning there, but
simply that he was going. Eleanor was thus again left alone, and as
soon as her young visitor had returned to the Vicarage, she began
her preparations for removing to the Dower House.
One day, in the course of these preparations, she had cause to go
into the shop of Ada Dixon’s father. Mrs. Dixon herself came
forward to serve her. She was, as usual, stout, pompous, and
important-looking, had on a superfine gown, and a cap which struck
Miss Askam as being ridiculously young and small for her. Mrs.
Dixon wore it with an air, as if it had been a coronet, which
added to the absurdity of the spectacle. Eleanor had never liked
this woman, whose hard eyes and want of simplicity and directness
had always offended her; and she liked not the air with which she
now came forward. But that it was (thought Eleanor) absurd on the
face of the thing, she would have considered the glance bestowed
upon her by Mrs. Dixon as an insolent one. It was at least hard,
bold, and supercilious. Not thinking it worth while to betray that
she had even noticed this manner, Eleanor made her purchases,
which were set aside for her by Mrs. Dixon in lofty silence. While
she sought in her purse for the sum with which to pay for the
things, she inquired—
‘How is your daughter, Mrs. Dixon? I have not seen her lately.’
‘Thank you, Miss Dixon is very well.’ (Eleanor repressed a smile on
hearing Ada’s mother speak of her thus.) ‘She is not at home just at
present. She’s staying with some friends in Yorkshire—in the
Dales—some relations of Mr. Dixon’s.’
‘Oh yes. In which of the Dales?’
‘Wensleydale. My husband’s cousin has a place there’ (a large farm
would have been the correct description), ‘near Bedale, it is.’
‘Oh, I hope she is enjoying herself.’
‘Oh, very much, thank you. She’s very much sought after—sixpence you
will want, I think—and they visit a good deal amongst the
neighbours.’
‘Yes? And Mr. Camm? I hope you have good accounts of him?’
‘I really haven’t heard anything about him lately,’ said Mrs. Dixon,
in an indescribable tone, as she poised the fingers of both hands on
the counter and looked out of the window, as if she thought the
interview had better come to an end.
‘Ah, I suppose Ada will be the person to get news of him. I was so
glad to hear he had done so well, and got such an excellent
situation at Leeds. Ada will like to live near a large town like
that, I should think.’
‘Well, yes—perhaps. Perhaps not,’ said Mrs. Dixon, with a glacial
reserve, and then with crushing mysteriousness—‘There’s no saying
where Ada may end, or what she’s born to. She is not a common girl,
by any means.’
‘I hope she will end in marrying Mr. Camm, and making him a very
good wife. He is a first-rate young man, and deserves to be made
happy,’ said Eleanor, nettled by the supercilious tone in which
Roger’s future mother-in-law spoke of him.
‘Oh, he’s a very worthy young man, I don’t doubt,’ came the
rejoinder; ‘a little rough, and wanting in polish—hardly the genteel
manners one could desire.’
‘No, not very genteel, certainly,’ said Eleanor, hurrying a little
in her desire to be able to laugh at leisure over the complaint that
Roger Camm’s manners were not ‘genteel.’ Indeed, they were not. If
gentility were the desideratum, they were deplorably wanting, and
likely to remain so.
Going up the street she suddenly met Michael Langstroth, and could
not help telling him the joke, her eyes dancing as she spoke.
‘Mr. Langstroth, do you know that for years you have cherished as
your brother a person—I can call him nothing else—whose manners are
not genteel. At least, Mrs. Dixon says they are not,—not as genteel
as she could wish in her son-in-law—and she ought to know.’
Michael looked at her searchingly for a perceptible time, before he
replied—
‘At last you have heard something that has made you laugh,’ said he.
‘I am delighted, and Roger may congratulate himself on his want of
gentility, if it leads even indirectly to that good result.’
‘Why—how—what do you know about my laughing?’ she asked, crimsoning.
‘Nothing, except that you don’t do it often enough. I wish I could
give you a prescription, but there is none for the ailment that is
want of mirth; none in all the pharmacopeia.’
She took her leave of him, and walked away. No, she thought; the
herb that brings laughter is called heartsease, and for her just now
it grew not in Bradstane.