This Caroline Ryder was a character almost impossible to present so as
to enable the reader to recognize her should she cross his path: so
great was the contradiction between what she was, and what she seemed;
and so perfect was the imitation.
She looked a respectable young spinster, with a grace of manner beyond
her station, and a decency and propriety of demeanour that inspired
respect.
She was a married woman, separated from her husband by mutual consent:
and she had had many lovers, each of whom she had loved ardently--for
a little while. She was a woman that brought to bear upon foolish,
culpable, loves, a mental power that would have adorned the wool-sack.
The moment prudence or waning inclination made it advisable to break
with the reigning favourite, she set to work to cool him down by
deliberate coldness, sullenness, insolence; and generally succeeded.
But, if he was incurable, she never hesitated as to her course;
she smiled again on him and looked out for another place: being an
invaluable servant, she got one directly; and was off to fresh pastures.
A female rake; but with the air of a very prude.
Still the decency and propriety of her demeanour were not all
hypocrisy, but half hypocrisy, and half inborn and instinctive good
taste and good sense.
As dangerous a creature to herself and others as ever tied on a bonnet.
On her arrival at Hernshaw Castle she cast her eyes round to see what
there was to fall in love with; and observed the gamekeeper, Tom
Leicester. She gave him a smile or two that won his heart; but there
she stopped: for soon the ruddy cheek, brown eyes, manly proportions,
and square shoulders of her master attracted this connoisseur in
masculine beauty. And then his manner was so genial and hearty, with a
smile for everybody. Mrs. Ryder eyed him demurely day by day, and often
opened a window slily to watch him unseen.
From that she got to throwing herself in his way: and this with such
art that he never discovered it, though he fell in with her about the
house six times as often as he met his wife or any other inmate.
She had already studied his character, and, whether she arranged
to meet him full, or to cross him, it was always with a curtsy and
a sunshiny smile; he smiled on her in his turn, and felt a certain
pleasure at sight of her: for he loved to see people bright and
cheerful about him.
Then she did, of her own accord, what no other master on earth would
have persuaded her to do: looked over his linen; sewed on buttons
for him; and sometimes the artful jade deliberately cut a button off
a clean shirt, and then came to him and sewed it on during wear. This
brought about a contact none knew better than she how to manage to a
man's undoing. The eyelashes lowered over her work, deprecating, yet
inviting,--the twenty stitches, when six would have done,--the one coy
glance at leaving. All this soft witchcraft beset Griffith Gaunt, and
told on him; but not as yet in the way his inamorata intended. "Kate,"
said he one day, "that girl of yours is worth her weight in gold."
"Indeed!" said 'Mrs. Gaunt, frigidly; "I have not discovered it."
When Caroline found that her master was single-hearted, and loved his
wife too well to look elsewhere, instead of hating him, she began to
love him more seriously, and to hate his wife, that haughty beauty who
took such a husband as a matter of course, and held him tight without
troubling her head.
It was a coarse age, and in that very county more than one wife had
suffered jealous agony from her own domestic. But here the parts were
inverted: the lady was at her ease; the servant paid a bitter penalty
for her folly. She was now passionately in love, and had to do menial
offices for her rival every hour of the day: she must sit with Mrs.
Gaunt, and make her dresses, and consult with her how to set off her
hateful beauty to the best advantage. She had to dress her, and look
daggers at her satin skin and royal neck, and to sit behind her an hour
at a time combing and brushing her long golden hair.
How she longed to tear a handful of it out, and then run away! Instead
of that, her happy rival expected her to be as tender and coaxing with
it as Madame de Maintenon was with the Queen's of France.
Ryder called it "yellow stuff" down in the kitchen; that was one
comfort: but a feeble one; the sun came in at the lady's window, and
Ryder's shapely hand was overflowed, and her eyes offended, by waves of
burnished gold: and one day Griffith came in and kissed it in her very
hand. His lips felt nothing but his wife's glorious hair; but, by that
exquisite sensibility which the heart can convey in a moment to the
very fingernails, Caroline's hand, beneath, felt the soft touch through
her mistress's hair; and the enamoured hypocrite thrilled, and then
sickened at her own folly.
For in her good sense could be overpowered, but never long blinded.
On the day in question she was thinking of Griffith, as usual, and
wondering whether he would always prefer yellow hair to black. This
actually put her off her guard for once, and she gave the rival hair a
little contemptuous tug: and the reader knows what followed.
Staggered by her mistress's question, Caroline made no reply, but only
panted a little, and proceeded more carefully.
But, oh the struggle it cost her not to slap both Mrs. Gaunt's fair
cheeks with the backs of the brushes! And what with this struggle, and
the reprimand, and the past agitations, by-and-by the comb ceased, and
the silence was broken by faint sobs.
Mrs. Gaunt turned calmly round and looked full at her hysterical
handmaid.
"What is to do?" said she. "Is it because I chid you, child? Nay, you
need not take that to heart; it is just my way: I can bear anything
but my hair pulled." With this she rose and poured some drops of
sal-volatile into water, and put it to her secret rival's lips: it was
kindly done, but with that sort of half contemptuous and thoroughly
cold pity women are apt to show to women, and especially when one of
them is Mistress and the other is Servant.
Still it cooled the extreme hatred Caroline had nursed, and gave her a
little twinge, and awakened her intelligence. Now her intelligence was
truly remarkable when not blinded by passion. She was a woman with one
or two other masculine traits beside her roving heart. For instance,
she could sit and think hard and practically for hours together: and
on these occasions her thoughts were never dreamy and vague; it was
no brown study, but good hard thinking. She would knit her coal-black
brows, like Lord Thurlow himself, and realize the situation, and weigh
the pros and cons with a steady judicial power rarely found in her sex:
and, nota bene, when once her mind had gone through this process, then
she would act with almost monstrous resolution.
She now shut herself up in her own room for some hours and weighed the
matter carefully.
The conclusion she arrived at was this: that, if she stayed at Hernshaw
Castle, there would be mischief; and probably she herself would be the
principal sufferer to the end of the chapter, as she was now.
She said to herself, "I shall go mad, or else expose myself, and be
turned away with loss of character; and then what will become of me,
and my child? Better lose life or reason than character. I know what I
have to go through; I have left a man ere now with my heart tugging at
me to stay beside him. It is a terrible wrench: and then all seems dead
for a long while without him. But the world goes on and takes you round
with it; and by-and-by you find there are as good fish left in the sea
as ever came out on't. I'll go, while I've sense enough left to see I
must."
The very next day she came to Mrs. Gaunt and said she wished to leave.
"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, coldly. "May I ask the reason?"
"Oh, I have no complaint to make, ma'am, none whatever; but I am not
happy here; and I wish to go when my month's up, or sooner, ma'am, if
you could suit yourself."
Mrs. Gaunt considered a moment: then she said, "You came all the way
from Gloucestershire to me: had you not better give the place a fair
trial? I have had two or three good servants that felt uncomfortable
at first; but they soon found out my ways, and stayed with me till
they married. As for leaving me before your month, that is out of the
question." To this Ryder said not a word, but merely vented a little
sigh, half dogged, half submissive; and went cat-like about, arranging
her mistress's things with admirable precision and neatness. Mrs. Gaunt
watched her, without seeming to do so, and observed that her discontent
did not in the least affect her punctual discharge of her duties. Said
Mrs. Gaunt to herself, "This servant is a treasure: she shall not go."
And Ryder to herself, "Well, 'tis but for a month; and then no power
shall keep me here."