A VILLAGE IAGO.
Edward Clare came back to his native village a few days later, looking
somewhat dilapidated by his campaign in the great metropolis. He had
found the gates of literature so beset with aspirants, many of them as
richly endowed as himself, that the idea of pushing his way across the
threshold seemed almost hopeless, indeed quite hopeless, for a young
man who wanted to succeed in life without working very hard, or with at
most a little spasmodic industry. His verses, when he was lucky, had
earned him something like five pounds a month; when luck was against
him he had earned nothing. A newspaper man, whose acquaintance he made
at the Cheshire Cheese, had advised him to learn shorthand, and try
his fortune as a reporter, working upwards from that platform to the
editorial chair. This was an honest drudgery which might do very well
for your dull plodders, but against which the fiery soul of Edward
Clare revolted.
‘I am a poet, or I am nothing,’ he told his friend. ‘_Aut Cæsar aut
nullus_.’
‘That was a first-rate motto----for Cæsar,’ said the journalist, ‘but I
think it’s rather misleading for fellows of average talent. The result
is so often _nullus_.’
Mr. Clare was on the point of asking his friend to take another brandy
and soda, but at this remark he coiled up, as the Yankees say! Average
talent, indeed. Imagine one of Mr. Swinburne’s most facile plagiarists
hearing himself called a fellow of average talent!
Edward Clare would not yoke his noble mind to the newspaper plough, nor
would he stoop even so low as to write prose. A wretched publisher had
told him that if he would write children’s books there was a field open
for him; but Edward left that publisher’s office bursting with offended
pride.
‘Children’s books, forsooth!’ he muttered. ‘I suppose if Catnach had
been alive he would have asked me to write halfpenny ballads.’
So having failed to carve his way to fame, or to make a regular income,
and having wasted the money he had earned on kid gloves and stalls at
fashionable theatres, Mr. Clare conceived an intense disgust for the
metropolis, which had treated him so scurvily, and turned his thoughts
homewards to woodland and moor, to trout stream and meadow. He found
that the poetic temperament required rural scenery, blue skies, and
pure air. Heine had contrived to live and write in Paris, and so had
De Musset: but Paris is not London. Edward made up his mind that the
streets and squares of Bloomsbury were antagonistic to poetry. No bird
could sing in such a cage. True that Milton had composed ‘Paradise
Lost’ within close City lanes, under the Clamorous bells of St.
Bride’s, but then Milton was blind, and Edward Clare was like a popular
lady novelist of the present day, who begged that she might not be
compared with Dickens. He would have protested against being put on a
level with such a passionless bard as Milton.
‘I shall never achieve any great work in London,’ he told himself. ‘For
my _magnum opus_ I must have the tranquillity of wood and moor.’
He had quite made up his mind that he was to write a great poem, though
he had settled neither the subject nor the form. He was waiting for
the divine breath to inspire him. The poem was to be as popular as the
‘Idylls of the King,’ but as passionate as ‘Chastelard.’ He was not
going to write in a goody-goody strain to please anybody.
Edward Clare felt himself a little like the prodigal son, when he came
home to the Vicarage after this abortive campaign in the field of
literature. If he had not wasted his substance, it was only because
he had little substance to waste. He had spent all that his father
had sent him, and had received small additions to this allowance out
of his mother’s scantily-supplied purse. He came home penniless and
dispirited: and he felt rather offended that no fatted calf was slain
to do him honour, and that his parents received him with an air of
unmistakable despondency.
‘Really, my dear Edward, you ought to begin to think of some definite
course,’ said the father. ‘It may be too late for a profession, but the
Government offices----’
‘Red tape and drudgery, with a salary that would scarcely afford dry
bread and a garret,’ interrupted Edward contemptuously. ‘No, my dear
father, as a poet I will stand or fall.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ sighed the Vicar, ‘for at present it looks like
falling.’
What Edward really meant was that he would depend upon his father until
the public and the critics, or the critics and the public, could be
brought to acknowledge him as one of the new lights in the starry world
of imagination. Mr. Clare understood this, and felt that it was rather
hard upon him as a man of limited means.
Edward arrived at Hazlehurst only the night before Mrs. Treverton’s
dinner-party.
‘Oh, yes, I’m going,’ he told Celia, when she asked him if he had
accepted Laura’s invitation. ‘I want to see how this Treverton fellow
plays the country squire.’
‘As if to the manner born,’ answered Celia. ‘The part suits him
admirably. I don’t want to wound your feelings, Ted, dear, but Mr.
Treverton and Laura are the happiest couple I ever saw.’
‘“These violent delights have violent ends,
And in their triumph die,”’
quoted Edward, with a diabolical sneer. ‘I am not going to envy them
their happiness, my dear. Whatever feeling I once entertained for Laura
is dead and buried. A woman who could sell herself, as she has done--’
‘Sell herself! Oh, Ted, how can you say anything so dreadful? I tell
you she is devotedly attached to John Treverton.’
‘And he rewards her devotion by running away from her before the end
of their honeymoon; and when he turns up again, after an interval of
six months or so, during which nobody knows what he has been doing,
she receives him with open arms. A curious couple assuredly. But an
estate worth fourteen thousand pounds a year excuses a good deal of
eccentricity; and I can quite understand that Mr. and Mrs. Treverton
are immensely popular in the neighbourhood.’
‘They are,’ said Celia, warmly; ‘and they deserve to be. If you knew
how good they are to their tenants, their servants, and the poor.’
‘Goodness of that kind is a very sagacious investment, my
unsophisticated child. It may cost a man five per cent. of his income,
and it buys him respectability.’
‘Don’t be bitter, Edward.’
‘I am a man of the world, Celia, and not to be hoodwinked by shams and
appearances.’
‘Then you’ll never be a poet,’ protested his sister. ‘A man who doesn’t
believe that good deeds come from the hearts of men--a man who looks
for an unworthy motive behind every generous action--such a man as that
will never be a great poet. It is quite too dreadful to hear you talk,
Edward. That odious London has corrupted you.’
Edward went to the dinner next day, but not with his family. He came
alone, and rather late, in order to observe the effect of his entrance
upon Laura Treverton. Alas, for his wounded vanity! She welcomed him
with a frank smile and a friendly grasp of the hand.
‘I am so glad you have come back in time to be with us to-night,’ she
said.
‘I came back on purpose for to-night,’ he answered, throwing as much
tenderness as he could into a commonplace remark.
‘I think you know every one here. I need not introduce you.’
‘I know the local magnates, of course. But I dare say there are some of
your husband’s swell friends who are strangers to me.’
‘There are none of my husband’s friends,’ answered Laura, ‘we are
strictly local.’
‘Then I’m afraid you’ll find the evening rather uphill work.’
‘I expect you to help me through it by the brilliancy of your
conversation,’ Laura answered lightly, as Edward moved aside to make
way for a new arrival.
He had contrived to make her uncomfortable for a minute or so, for that
speech of his had set her wondering why her husband had no friends
worth summoning to his side now that fortune smiled upon him.
The dinner-party was not a very joyous festivity, but everybody felt,
nevertheless, that it was a great social success. Lady Parker, in ruby
velvet and diamonds, and Lady Barker in black satin and rubies, made
two central lights round which the lesser planets revolved. There was
the usual county and local talk; reprobation against the farming parson
of a neighbouring parish for having treacherously trapped and slain
four cub foxes since last season; cordial approval of a magistrate who
had sent a lad of nine to jail for stealing three turnips, and who had
been maligned and held up to ridicule by the radical newspapers for
that necessary assertion of the rights of property; a good deal of
discussion as to the prospects of the hunting season; a good deal of
talk about horses and dogs, and a little about the outside world, and
its chances of peace or war, famine or plenty. The party was too large
for general conversation, but now and then the subdued Babel of tongues
became concentrated here and there into a focus, and a gentle hush
descended on a select few listening eagerly to a single talker. This
happened oftenest at that part of the table near which Edward Clare
was sitting, next but one to John Treverton. Mr. and Mrs. Treverton
were seated opposite each other in the middle of the long table, with
all the more important guests clustered about them in a constellation
of local splendour, leaving the two ends of the table for youth and
obscurity. Edward Clare had got himself into the constellation by a
fluke; a portly justice of the peace having suddenly succumbed to gout,
and sent an apology at the last moment; whereupon Laura had despatched
Celia with a message to the butler, and had contrived that there should
be a shuffling of cards, and that Edward Clare should be put into this
place of honour.
She did this from a benevolent desire to soothe his wounded feeling,
suspecting that there might be some soreness in his mind at this first
meeting with her in her new character, and knowing that vanity made the
larger half of this young man’s sensibility.
Edward had rewarded her by talking remarkably well. He was fresh
from London, and well posted in all that is most interesting in the
butterfly life of a London season. He told them all about the pictures
of the year, let fly some sharp arrows of ridicule against the new
school of painting, described the belle of the season, and let his
hearers into the secret of her popularity.
‘The curious part of the story’ he said, in conclusion, ‘is that nobody
ever considered the lady pretty till she burst all at once upon society
as the one perfect creature that the world had seen since the Venus
was dug up at Milo. She never was thought so in her own world. No one
was more surprised than her own family when she was elected queen
of beauty, unless it was herself. Her mother never suspected it. At
school she was considered rather plain than otherwise. They say she
was married off early because she was the dowdy of the family, and now
she cannot take her drive in the park without all London craning its
neck and straining its eyes to get a look at her. When she goes into
society the women stand upon chairs to stare at her over other people’s
shoulders. I suppose they want to find out how it’s done. This kind of
popularity may seem very pleasant in the abstract, but I think it’s
rather hard upon the lady.’
‘Why hard upon her?’ inquired John Treverton.
‘Because there’s no salary goes with the situation. The belle of the
season ought to get something to lighten the expenses of her year of
office like the Lord Mayor. See what is expected of her! Every eye
is upon her. Every woman in London looks to her as a model of taste
and elegance, and eagerly strives to dress after her. How is she to
put a limit upon her milliner’s bill, when she knows that all the
society journals are lying in wait to describe her last gown, to
eulogise her newest bonnet, to write an epigram upon her parasol, to
be ecstatic about her boots. Can she ride in a hired carriage? No. Can
she be absent from Goodwood, or missing at Cowes? No. She must die
standing. I say that since she furnishes the public with interest and
amusement--much better than the Lord Mayor does, by the way--she ought
to get a handsome allowance out of the public purse.’
When he had exhausted pictures, and reigning beauties, and the winner
of the Leger, Edward began to talk about crime.
‘People in London have a knack of wearing a subject to tatters,’ he
said. ‘I thought neither the newspapers nor the public would ever get
tired of talking about the Chicot murder.’
‘The Chicot murder. Ah, that was the ballet dancer, was it not?’
inquired Lady Barker, who was so interested in this vivacious young
man on her right hand, that she had hardly given due attention to Mr.
Treverton, who was on her left. ‘I remember feeling rather interested
in that mystery. A diabolical murder, certainly. And how stupid the
police must have been not to find the murderer.’
‘Or how clever the murderer to sink his identity so completely as to
give the police the slip,’ suggested Edward.
‘Oh, but he must have got away to the Colonies, or somewhere, surely,’
cried Lady Barker. ‘There are so many vessels leaving England
now-a-days. You don’t imagine for a moment that the murderer of that
wretched woman remained in England?’
‘I think it highly probable that he did, discreetly hidden under some
outer shell of intense respectability.’
‘I suppose you think it was the husband?’ put in Sir Joshua Parker,
from his place at Laura’s right hand.
‘I don’t see any ground for doubt,’ replied Edward. ‘If the husband
was not guilty, why should he disappear the moment the crime was
discovered?’
‘He may have had reasons of his own for wishing to get away, reasons
unconnected with the mode and manner of his wife’s death,’ hazarded
John Treverton.
‘What reasons could he have had strong enough to induce him to run the
risk of being thought a murderer?’ asked Edward, incredulously. ‘No
innocent man would place himself in such a position as that.’
‘Not knowingly,’ said John, ‘but this man may have acted on impulse,
without reckoning the consequences of his act.’
‘To admit that would be to consider him a fool,’ retorted Edward; ‘and
from all I have heard of the fellow, he belonged to the other half of
humanity.’
‘You mean that he was a knave?’
‘I mean that he was a fellow who knew the ropes. He was not the sort of
man to find his wife’s throat cut, and to make a bolt, leaving every
newspaper in London free to brand him as a coward and a murderer,’ said
Edward, decisively.
John Treverton pursued the subject no further. Lady Parker, who sat at
his left, had just begun to question him about a late importation of
Jersey cows, in which she was deeply interested; whereupon he favoured
her with a detailed account of their graces and merits. Laura happened
to look up at Edward Clare as he finished speaking, and the expression
of his countenance startled and shocked her. Never had she seen so
keen a look of malice in any living face. Only in the face of Judas in
an old Italian picture had she ever beheld such craft and such venom.
And that malignant look--brief as a flash of lightning--glanced at her
unconscious husband, whose face was gravely courteous as he bent his
handsome head a little to tell Lady Parker about the Jersey cows.
‘Good heavens!’ thought Laura, with a sense of absolute fear. ‘Is
it possible that this young man can be so bitter against my husband
because I loved him best? What could the love be like that could
engender such malice?’
Later in the evening when Edward came and hung over the ottoman where
Laura was sitting, she turned from him with an involuntary movement of
disgust.
‘Have I offended you?’ he asked, in a low voice.
‘Yes. I saw a look in your face at dinner that told me you dislike my
husband.’
‘Do you expect me to love him--very dearly--at first? You must at least
give me time to get accustomed to the idea that he is your husband.
Time cures most wounds. Give me time, Laura, and do not judge me too
hardly. I possess the poet’s curse, a mind more sensitive than the
minds of ordinary men--dowered with the love of love, the hate of hate,
the scorn of scorn.’
‘I hope you will leave your dowry outside when you come across this
threshold,’ said Laura, with a smile that was more contemptuous than
relenting. ‘I can accept friendship from no one who does not like my
husband.’
‘Then I will struggle with the original man within me, and try to like
John Treverton. Believe me, Laura, I want to be your friend--in honest
and unequivocal friendship.’
‘That is the kind of friendship I expect from your father’s son,’ said
Laura, in a gentler tone.
She was too happy, too secure in her own happiness to be unforgiving.
She reasoned with herself--arguing against instinct and conviction--and
told herself that Edward Clare’s malevolent look had meant less than it
seemed to mean.
Edward looked on, and saw John Treverton play his part as host and
master in a manner that he was compelled to admit was irreproachable.
The new squire showed none of the pride in himself and his surroundings
which might have been anticipated in a man unexpectedly raised to the
possession of a large fortune. He did not brag of his wine, or his
horses, his pictures, or his farm. He accepted his position as quietly,
and filled it as naturally, as if he had been born heir to an entailed,
unalienable estate.
‘Upon my word, they are a charming couple,’ said Sir Joshua Parker, in
his fat voice, ‘and an acquisition to our county families.’
Sir Joshua was very fond of talking about our county families,
although his own establishment in that galaxy had been but recent, his
father and grandfather having made their fortunes in the soap-boiling
business, amidst the slums of Lambeth. Lady Barker, the dowager, was of
the _vieille roche_, having been a Trefusis and an heiress when
she married the late General Sir Rodney Barker, K.C.B.
After that one little flash of anger on the night of the dinner-party,
Edward Clare was all friendliness. Celia spent a large portion of her
life at the Manor House, where she was always welcome; and it seemed
only natural that her brother Edward should drop in frequently, almost
as he had done in the old days when Jasper Treverton was alive. There
were so many reasons for his coming. The library at the Manor House
was much larger and better than the vicar’s modest collection of
old-fashioned books. The gardens were a delight to the young man’s
poetic soul. John Treverton showed no dislike to him. He appeared to
consider the poet a poor creature, whose going or coming could make no
difference.
‘I confess that I have a contempt for that kind of man,’ he told his
wife, candidly. ‘An effeminate, white-handed mortal, who sets up as a
wit and a poet on the most limited stock-in-trade--all his best goods
in his windows, and nothing but empty shelves inside the shop. But, of
course, as long as you like him, Laura, he will be welcome here.’
‘I like him for the sake of his father and mother, who are my oldest
and best friends,’ answered Laura.
‘Which means in plain English that you only tolerate him?’ said John,
carelessly. ‘Well, he is harmless, and sometimes amusing. Let him
come.’
Edward came, and seemed at home and happy in the small family circle.
He lounged beside the fire in the snug book-room, and joined in the
easy familiar talk, when the autumn dusk was deepening, and Laura made
tea at her pretty little table, with her husband by her side, while
Celia, who had a fancy for eccentric positions and attitudes, sat on
the hearthrug.
One November evening, about a month after the dinner party, the
conversation happened to light upon the county magnates who had adorned
that banquet.
‘Did anybody ever see such a funny little figure as Lady Barker,
surmounted by that wig!’ cried Celia. ‘I really think her dressmaker
must be very clever to make any kind of gown that will hold together
upon her. I don’t complain of her being fat. A woman may weigh sixteen
stone and carry herself like a duchess. But Lady Barker is such an
undecided figure. There’s no consistency in her. When she sinks on a
sofa one expects to see her collapse, like a mould of jelly that hasn’t
cooled properly. Oh, Edward, you should see Mr. Treverton’s portrait of
her--the most delicious caricature.’
‘Caricature!’ echoed Edward. ‘Why, that is another new talent. If
Treverton goes on in this way we shall have to call him the admirable
Crichton. It was only last week that I found out he could paint; and
now you say he is a caricaturist. What next?’
‘I believe you have come to the end of my small stock of
accomplishments,’ said John Treverton, laughing. ‘I used once to amuse
myself by an attempt to illustrate the absurdities of human nature in
pen and ink. It pleased my brother officers, and helped to keep us
alive sometimes in the dulness of country quarters.’
‘Talking of caricature, by the way,’ said Edward, lazily, as he slowly
stirred his cup of tea, ‘did you ever see “Folly as it Flies?”’
‘The comic newspaper? Yes, often.’
‘Ah, then you must have noticed the things done by that fellow
Chicot--the man who murdered his wife. They were extraordinarily
clever--out and away the best things I have ever seen since the days of
Gavarni; rather too French, perhaps, but remarkably good.’
‘It was natural the style should be French, since the man was French.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Edward, ‘he was as English as you or I.’
Celia had risen from the floor and lighted a pair of candles on Laura’s
open davenport, near which Edward was sitting. She selected a sheet
of paper from a heap of loose sheets lying there and showed it to her
brother, candle in hand.
‘Isn’t that too lovely?’ she asked.
Edward examined the sketch with a critical air.
‘I don’t want you to suppose I’m trying to flatter you,’ he said at
last, ‘but, upon my word, this little sketch is as good as anything of
Chicot’s, and very much in his style.’
‘It is the only accomplishment of my husband’s that I cannot praise,’
said Laura, with gentlest reproof, ‘for it cannot be exercised without
unkindness to the subject of the caricature.’
‘“He that is robbed not wanting what is stolen, let him not know it,
and he is not robbed,”’ quoted Celia, who had resumed her lowly place
at Laura’s feet. ‘Shakespeare’s ineffable wisdom found that out; and
may not the same thing be said of caricature? If Lady Barker never
knows what a lifelike portrait you have drawn of her, with half-a-dozen
scratches of a Hindoo pen, the faithfulness of the picture can’t hurt
her.’
‘But isn’t it the usual course to show that kind of thing to all the
lady’s particular friends, till the knowledge of it percolates to the
lady herself?’ inquired Edward with his lazy sneer.
‘I had rather cut off my right hand than make a harmless good-natured
old lady unhappy,’ said Laura, warmly.
‘Turn up your cuff, Mr. Treverton, and prepare your wrist for the
chopper,’ cried Celia. ‘But really now, if Lady Barker’s figure is
like a dilapidated mould of jelly, she ought to know it. Did not one
of those seven old plagues of Greece, whose names nobody ever could
remember, resolve all the wisdom of his life into that one precept,
“Know thyself”?’
Celia rattled on gaily; Laura and Edward both joined in her careless
talk; but John Treverton sat grave and silent, looking at the fire.