CLEMENT AUSTIN'S DIARY.
"To-day I close a volume of the rough, careless, imperfect record which
I have kept of my life. As I run my fingers through the pages of the
limp morocco-covered volume, I almost wonder at my wasted labour;—the
random notes, jotted down now and then, sometimes with long intervals
between their dates, make such a mass of worthless literature. This
diary-keeping is a very foolish habit, after all. Why do I keep this
record of a most commonplace existence? For my own edification and
improvement? Scarcely, since I very rarely read these uninteresting
entries; and I very much doubt if posterity will care to know that I
went to the office at ten o'clock on Wednesday morning; that I couldn't
get a seat in the omnibus, and was compelled to take a Hansom, which
cost me two shillings; that I dined _tête-à-tête_ with my mother, and
finished the third volume of Carlyle's 'French Revolution' in the
course of the evening. _Is_ there any use in such a journal as mine?
Will the celebrated New Zealander, that is to be, discover the volumes
amidst the ruins of Clapham? and shall I be quoted as the Pepys of the
nineteenth century? But then I am by no means as racy as that
worldly-minded little government clerk; or perhaps it may be that the
time in which I live wants the spice and seasoning of that golden age
of rascality in which my Lady Castlemain's white petticoats were to be
seen flaunting in the wind by any frivolous-minded lounger who chose to
take notes about those garments.
"After all, it is a silly, old-fogeyish habit, this of diary-keeping;
and I think the renowned Pepys himself was only a bachelor spoiled.
Just now, however, I have something more than cab-drives, lost
omnibuses, and the perusal of a favourite book to jot down, inasmuch as
my mother and myself have lately had all our accustomed habits, in a
manner, disorganized by the advent of a lady.
"She is a very young lady, being, in point of fact, still at a remote
distance from an epoch to which she appears to look forward as a grand
and enviable period of existence. She has not yet entered what she
calls her 'teens,' and two years must elapse before she can enter them,
as she is only eleven years old. She is the only daughter of my only
sister, Marian Lester, and has been newly imported from Sydney, where
my sister Marian and her husband have been settled for the last twelve
years. Miss Elizabeth Lester became a member of our family upon the
first of July, and has since that time continued to make herself quite
at home with my mother and myself. She is rather a pretty little girl,
with very auburn plaits hanging in loops at the back of her head. (Will
the New Zealander and his countrymen care to know the mysteries of
juvenile coiffures in the nineteenth century?) She is a very good
little girl, and my mother adores her. As for myself, I am only
gradually growing resigned to the fact that I am three-and-thirty years
of age, and the uncle of a bouncing niece, who plays variations upon
'Non più mesta.'
"And 'Non più mesta' brings me to another strange figure in the narrow
circle of my acquaintance; a figure that had no place in the volume
which I have just closed, but which, in the six weeks' interval between
my last record and that which I begin to-day, has become almost as
familiar as the oldest friends of my youth. 'Non più mesta'—I hear my
niece strumming the notes I know so well in the parlour below my room,
as I write these lines, and the sound of the melody brings before me
the image of a sweet pale face and dove-like brown eyes.
"I never fully realized the number and extent of feminine requirements
until a hack cab deposited my niece and her deal travelling-cases at
our hall-door. Miss Elizabeth Lester seemed to want everything that it
was possible for the human mind to imagine or desire. She had grown
during the homeward voyage; her frocks were too short, her boots were
too small, her bonnets tumbled off her head and hung forlornly at the
back of her neck. She wanted parasols and hair-brushes, frilled and
furbelowed mysteries of muslin and lace, copybooks, penholders, and
pomatum, a backboard and a pair of gloves, drawing-pencils, dumb-bells,
geological specimens for the illustration of her studies, and a hundred
other items, whose very names are as a strange language to my masculine
comprehension; and, last of all, she wanted a musical governess. The
little girl was supposed to be very tolerably advanced in her study of
the piano, and my sister was anxious that she should continue that
study under the superintendence of a duly-qualified instructress, whose
terms should be moderate. My sister Marian underlined this last
condition. The buying and making of the new frocks and muslin furbelows
seemed almost to absorb my mother's mind, and she was fain to delegate
to me the duty of finding a musical governess for Miss Lester.
"I began my task in the simplest possible way by consulting the daily
newspapers, where I found so many advertisements emanating from ladies
who declared themselves proficients in the art of music, that I was
confused and embarrassed by the wealth of my resources: but I took the
ladies singly, and called upon them in the pleasant summer evenings
after office hours, sometimes with my mother, sometimes alone.
"It may be that the seal of old-bachelorhood is already set upon me,
and that I am that odious and hyper-sensitive creature commonly called
a 'fidget;' but somehow I could not find a governess whom I really felt
inclined to choose for my little Lizzie. Some of the ladies were
elderly and stern; others were young and frivolous; some of them were
uncertain as to the distribution of the letter _h_. One young lady
declared that she was fonder of music than anything in the world. Some
were a great deal too enthusiastic, and were prepared to adore my
little niece at a moment's notice. Many, who seemed otherwise eligible,
demanded a higher rate of remuneration than we were prepared to give.
So, somehow or other, the business languished, and after the researches
of a week we found ourselves no nearer a decision than when first I
looked at the advertisements in the _Times_ supplement.
"Had our resources been reduced, we should most likely have been much
easier to please; but my mother said, that as there were so many people
to be had, we should do well to deliberate before we came to any
decision. So it happened that, when I went out for a walk one evening,
at the end of the second week in July, Miss Lester was still without a
governess. She was still without a governess: but I was tired of
catechizing the fair advertisers as to their qualifications, and went
out on this particular evening for a solitary ramble amongst the quiet
Surrey suburbs, in any lonely lanes or scraps of common-land where the
speculating builder had not yet set his hateful foot. It was a lovely
evening; and I, who am so much a Cockney as to believe that a London
sunset is one of the grandest spectacles in the universe, set my face
towards the yellow light in the west, and walked across Wandsworth
Common, where faint wreaths of purple mist were rising from the
hollows, and a deserted donkey was breaking the twilight stillness with
a plaintive braying. Wandsworth Common was as lonely this evening as a
patch of sand in the centre of Africa; and being something of a
day-dreamer, I liked the place because of its stillness and solitude.
"Something of a dreamer: and yet I had so little to dream about. My
thoughts were pleasant, as I walked across the common in the sunset;
and yet, looking back now, I wonder what I thought of, and what image
there was in my mind that could make my fancies pleasant to me. I know
what I thought of, as I went home in the dim light of the newly-risen
moon, the pale crescent that glimmered high in a cloudless heaven.
"I went into the little town of Wandsworth, the queer old-fashioned
High Street, the dear old street, which seems to me like a town in a
Dutch picture, where all the tints are of a sombre brown, yet in which
there is, nevertheless, so much light and warmth. The lights were
beginning to twinkle here and there in the windows; and upon this July
evening there seemed to be flowers blooming in every casement. I
loitered idly through the street, staring at the shop-windows, in utter
absence of mind while I thought—
"What could I have thought of that evening? and how was it that I did
not think the world blank and empty?
"While I was looking idly in at one of those shop-windows—it was a
fancy-shop and stationer's—a kind of bazaar, in its humble way—my eye
was attracted by the word 'Music;' and on a little card hung in the
window I read that a lady would be happy to give lessons on the
piano-forte, at the residences of her pupils, or at her own residence,
on very moderate terms. The word 'very' was underscored. I thought it
had a pitiful look somehow, that underscoring of the adverb, and seemed
almost an appeal for employment. The inscription on the card was in a
woman's hand, and a very pretty hand—elegant but not illegible, firm
and yet feminine. I was in a very idle frame of mind, ready to be
driven by any chance wind; and I thought I might just as well turn my
evening walk to some account by calling upon the proprietress of the
card. She was not likely to suit my ideas of perfection, any more than
the other ladies I had seen; but I should at least be able to return
home with the consciousness of having made another effort to find an
instructress for my niece.
"The address on the card was, 'No. 3, Godolphin Cottages.' I asked the
first person I met to direct me to Godolphin Cottages, and was told to
take the second turning on my right. The second turning on my right
took me into a kind of lane or by-road, where there were some
old-fashioned, semi-detached cottages, sheltered by a row of sycamores,
and shut in by wooden palings. I opened the low gate before the third
cottage, and went into the garden,—a primly-kept little garden, with a
grass-plat and miniature gravel-walks, and with a grotto of shells and
moss and craggy blocks of stone in a corner. Under a laburnum-tree
there was a green rustic bench; and here I found a young lady sitting
reading by the dying light. She started at the sound of my footsteps on
the crisp gravel, and rose, blushing like one of the cabbage-roses that
grew near her. The blush was all the more becoming to her inasmuch as
she was naturally very pale. I saw this almost immediately, for the
bright colour faded out of her face while I was speaking to her.
"'I have come to inquire for a lady who teaches music,' I said; 'I saw
a card, just now, in the High Street, and as I am searching for an
instructress for my little niece, I took the opportunity of calling.
But I fear I have chosen an inconvenient time for my visit.'
"I scarcely know why I made this apology, since I had omitted to
apologize to the other ladies, on whom I had ventured to intrude at
abnormal hours. I fear that I was weak enough to feel bewildered by the
pensive loveliness of the face at which I looked, and that my
confidence ebbed away under the influence of those grave hazel eyes.
"The face is so beautiful,—as beautiful now that I have learned the
trick of every feature, though even now I cannot learn all the varying
changes of expression which make it ever new to me, as it was that
evening when it beamed on me for the first time. Shall I describe
her,—the woman whom I have only known four weeks, and who seems to fill
all the universe when I think of her?—and when do I not think of her?
Shall I describe her for the New Zealander, when the best description
must fall so far below the bright reality, and when the very act of
reducing her beauty into hard commonplace words seems in some manner a
sacrilege against the sanctity of that beauty? Yes, I will describe
her; not for the sake of the New Zealander, who may have new and
extraordinary ideas as to female loveliness, and may require a blue
nose or pea-green tresses in the lady he elects as the only type of
beautiful womanhood. I will describe her because it is sweet to me to
dwell upon her image, and to translate that dear image, no matter how
poorly, into words. Were I a painter, I should be like Claude Melnotte,
and paint no face but hers. Were I a poet, I should cover reams of
paper with wild rhapsodies about her beauty. Being only a cashier in a
bank, I can do nothing but enshrine her in the commonplace pages of my
diary.
"I have said that she is pale. Hers is that ivory pallor which
sometimes accompanies hazel eyes and hazel-brown hair. Her eyes are of
that rare hazel, that soft golden brown, so rarely seen, so beautiful
wherever they are seen. These eyes are unvarying in their colour; it is
only the expression of them that varies with every emotion, but in
repose they have a mournful earnestness in their look, a pensive
gravity that seems to tell of a life in which there has been much
shadow. The hair, parted above the most beautiful brow I ever looked
upon, is of exactly the same colour as the eyes, and has a natural
ripple in it. For the rest of the features I must refer my New
Zealander to the pictures of the old Italian masters—of which I trust
he may retain a handsome collection;—for only on the canvases of
Signori Raffaello Sanzio d'Urbino, Titian, and the pupils who emulated
them, will he find that exquisite harmony, that purity of form and
tender softness of outline, which I beheld that summer evening in the
features of Margaret Wentworth.
"Margaret Wentworth,—that is her name. She told it me presently, when I
had explained to her, in some awkward vague manner, who I was, and how
it was I wanted to engage her services. Throughout that interview, I
think I must have been intoxicated by her presence, as by some subtle
and mysterious influence, stronger than the fumes of opium, or the
juice of lotus flowers. I only know that after ten minutes'
conversation, during which she was perfectly self-possessed, I opened
the little garden-gate again, very much embarrassed by the latch on one
hand, and my hat on the other, and went back out of that little
paradise of twenty feet square into the dusty lane.
"I went home in triumph to my mother, and told her that I had succeeded
at last in engaging a lady who was in every way suitable, and that she
was coming the following morning at eleven o'clock to give her first
lesson. But I was somewhat embarrassed when my mother asked if I had
heard the lady play; if I had inquired her terms; if I had asked for
references as to respectability, capability, and so forth.
"I was fain to confess, with much confusion, that I had not done any
one of these things. And then my mother asked me why, in that case, did
I consider the lady suitable,—which question increased my embarrassment
by tenfold. I could not say that I had engaged her because her eyes
were hazel, and her hair of the same colour; nor could I declare that I
had judged of her proficiency as a teacher of the piano by the
exquisite line of her pencilled eyebrows. So, in this dilemma, I had
recourse to a piece of jesuitry, of which I was not a little proud. I
told my dear mother that Miss Wentworth's head was, from a
phrenological point of view, magnificent, and that the organs of time
and tune were developed to an unusual degree.
"I was almost ashamed of myself when my mother rewarded this falsehood
by a kiss, declaring that I was a dear clever boy, and _such_ a judge
of character, and that she would rather confide in a stranger, upon the
strength of my instinct, than, upon any inferior person's experience.
"After this I could only trust to the chance of Miss Wentworth's
proficiency; and when I went home from the city upon the following
afternoon, my mind was far less occupied with the business events of
the day than with abstruse speculations at to the probabilities with
regard to that young lady's skill upon the piano-forte. It was with an
air of supreme carelessness that I asked my mother whether she had been
pleased with Miss Wentworth.
"'Pleased with her!' cried the good soul; 'why, she plays
magnificently, Clement. Such a touch, such brilliancy! In my young days
it was only concert-players who played like that; but nowadays girls of
eighteen and twenty sit down, and dash away at the keys like a
professor. I think you'll be charmed with her, Clem'—(I'm afraid I
blushed as my mother said this; had I not been charmed with her
already?)—'when you hear her play, for she has expression as well as
brilliancy. She is passionately fond of music, I know; not because she
went into any ridiculous sentimental raptures about it, as some girls
do, but because her eyes lighted up when she told me what a happiness
her piano had been to her ever since she was a child. She gave a little
sigh after saying that; and I fancied, poor girl, that she had perhaps
known very little other happiness.'
"'And her terms, mother?' I said.
"'Oh, you dear commercial Clem, always thinking of terms!' cried my
mother.
"Heaven bless her innocent heart! I had asked that sordid question only
to hide the unreasoning gladness of my heart. What was it to me that
this hazel-eyed girl was engaged to teach my little niece 'Non più
mesta'? what was it to me that my breast should be all of a sudden
filled with a tumult of glad emotions, and thus shrink from any
encounter with my mother's honest eyes?
"'Well, Clem, the terms are almost ridiculously moderate,' my mother
said, presently. 'There's only one thing that's at all inconvenient,
that is to say, not to me, but I'm afraid _you'll_ think it an
objection.'
"I eagerly asked the nature of this objection. Was there some cold
chill of disappointment in store for me, after all?
"'Well, you see, Clem,' said my mother, with some little hesitation,
'Miss Wentworth is engaged almost all through the day, as her pupils
live at long distances from one another, and she has to waste a good
deal of time in going backwards and forwards; so the only time she can
possibly give Lizzie is either very early in the morning or rather late
in the evening. Now _I_ should prefer the evening, as I should like to
hear the dear child's lessons; but the question is, would _you_ object
to the noise of the piano while you are at home?'
"Would I object? Would I object to the music of the spheres? In spite
of the grand capabilities for falsehood and hypocrisy which had been
developed in my nature since the previous evening, it was as much as I
could do to answer my mother's question deliberately, to the effect
that I didn't think I should mind the music-lessons _much_.
"'You'll be out generally, you know, Clem,' my mother said.
"'Yes,' I replied, 'of course, if I found the music in any way a
nuisance.'
"Coming home from the City the next day, I felt like a schoolboy who
turns his back upon all the hardships of his life, on some sunny summer
holiday. The rattling Hansom seemed a fairy car, that was bearing me in
triumph through a region of brightness and splendour. The sunlit
suburban roads were enchanted glades; and I think I should have been
scarcely surprised to see Aladdin's jewelled fruit hanging on the trees
in the villa gardens, or the gigantic wings of Sinbad's roc
overshadowing the hills of Sydenham. A wonderful transformation had
changed the earth to fairy land, and it was in vain that I fought
against the subtle influence in the air around me.
"Oh, was I in love, was I really in love at last, with a young lady
whose face I had only looked upon eight-and-forty hours before? Was I,
who had flirted with the Miss Balderbys; and half lost my heart to Lucy
Sedwicke, the surgeon's sister; and corresponded for nearly a year with
Clara Carpenter, with the sanction of both our houses, and everything
_en règle_, only to be jilted ignominiously for the sake of an
evangelical curate?—was I, who had railed at the foolish passion—(I
have one of Miss Carpenter's long tresses in the desk on which I am
writing, sealed in a sheet of letter-paper, with Swift's savage
inscription, 'Only a woman's hair,' on the cover)—was I caught at last
by a pair of hazel eyes and a Raffaellesque profile? Were the wings
that had fluttered in so many flames burnt and maimed by the first
breath of this new fire? I was ashamed of my silly fancy in one moment,
and proud of my love in the next. I was ten years younger all of a
sudden, and my heart was all a-glow with chivalrous devotion for this
beautiful stranger. I reasoned with myself, and ridiculed my madness,
and yet yielded like the veriest craven to the sweet intoxication. I
gave the driver of the Hansom five shillings. Had I not a right to pay
him a trifle extra for driving me through fairy-land?
"What had we for dinner that day? I have a vague idea that I ate cherry
tart and roast veal, fried soles, boiled custard, and anchovy sauce,
all mixed together. I know that the meal seemed to endure for the
abnormal period of half-a-dozen hours or so; and yet it was only seven
o'clock when we adjourned to the drawing-room, and Miss Wentworth was
not due until half-past seven. My niece was all in a flutter of
expectation, and ran out of the drawing-room window every now and then
to see if the new governess was coming. She need not have had that
trouble, poor child, had I been inclined to give her information;
since, from the chair in which I had seated myself to read the evening
papers, I could see the road along which Miss Wentworth must come. My
eyes wandered very often from the page before me, and fixed themselves
upon this dusty suburban road; and presently I saw a parasol, rather a
shabby one, and then a slender figure coming quickly towards our gate,
and then the face, which I am weak enough to think the most beautiful
face in Christendom.
"Since then Miss Wentworth has come three times a week; and somehow or
other I have never found myself in any way bored by 'Non più mesta,' or
even the major and minor scales, which, as interpreted by a juvenile
performer, are not especially enthralling to the ear of the ordinary
listener. I read my books or papers, or stroll upon the lawn, while the
lesson is going on, and every now and then I hear Margaret's—I really
must write of her as Margaret; it is such a nuisance to write Miss
Wentworth—pretty voice explaining the importance of a steady position
of the wrist, or the dexterous turning over or under of a thumb, or
something equally interesting. And then, when the lesson is concluded,
my mother rouses herself from her after-dinner nap, and asks Margaret
to take a cup of tea, and even insists on her accepting that feminine
hospitality. And then we sit talking in the tender summer dusk, or in
the subdued light of a shaded lamp on the piano. We talk of books; and
it is wonderful to me to find how Margaret's tastes and opinions
coincide with mine. Miss Carpenter was stupid about books, and used to
call Carlyle nonsensical; and never really enjoyed Dickens half as much
as she pretended. I have lent Margaret some of my books; and a little
shower of withered rose-leaves dropped from the pages of 'Wilhelm
Meister,' after she had returned me the volume. I have put them in an
envelope, and sealed it. I may as well burn Miss Carpenter's hair, by
the way.
"Though it is only a month since the evening on which I saw the card in
the window at Wandsworth, Margaret and I seem to be old friends. After
a year Miss Carpenter and I were as far as ever—farther than ever,
perhaps—from understanding each other; but with Margaret I need no
words to tell me that I am understood. A look, a smile, a movement of
the graceful head, is a more eloquent answer than the most elaborate of
Miss Carpenter's rhapsodies. She was one of those girls whom her
friends call 'gushing;' and she called Byron a 'love,' and Shelley an
'angel:' but if you tried her with a stanza that hasn't been done to
death in 'Gems of Verse,' or 'Strings of Poetic Pearls,' or
'Drawing-room Table Lyrics,' she couldn't tell whether you were quoting
Byron or Ben Jonson. But with Margaret—Margaret,—sweet name! If it were
not that I live in perpetual terror of the day when the dilettante New
Zealander will edit this manuscript, I think I should write that lovely
name over and over again for a page or so. If the New Zealander should
exercise his editorial discretion, and delete my raptures, it wouldn't
matter; but I might furnish him with the text for an elaborate
disquisition on the manners and customs of English lovers. Let me be
reasonable about my dear love, if I can. My dear love—do I dare to call
her that already, when, for anything I know to the contrary, there may
be another evangelical curate in the background?
"We seem to be old friends; and yet I know so little of her. She shuns
all allusion to her home or her past history. Now and then she has
spoken of her father; always tenderly, but always with a sigh; and I
fancy that a deepening shadow steals over her face when she mentions
that name.
"Friendly as we are, I can never induce her to let me see her home,
though my mother has suggested that I should do so. She is accustomed
to go about by herself, she says, after dark, as well as in the
daytime. She seems as fearless as a modern Una; and that would indeed
be a savage beast which could molest such a pure and lovely creature."