AT MIDDLEMEADS.
Cultivated taste and the tender sentiment which finds delightful
occupation in preparing a house for a beloved object had not been
called into operation in the arrangement and decoration of the abode
to which Robert Streightley brought his bride in the early spring
which succeeded their marriage. These motive powers had, however, been
efficiently replaced by the care and experience of a first-rate London
upholsterer; and a more refined and _exigeant_ taste than that of the
young mistress of Middlemeads might have pronounced a favourable
judgment upon the result. There was, indeed, nothing ancient about the
mansion but the mansion itself. Its family associations were all with
those from whose keeping it had passed, and by the change had lost the
subtle touch of dignity which lingers about a residence within whose
walls many lines of the same race have begun and ended. It had none of
those grand though dingy _pieces de famille_ which lent an air of
refinement and meaning to the faded house in Queen Anne Street; but it
was a home which any man might be proud to inaugurate--a home to which
all these things might be suitably added in time. Seen as Katharine
Streightley saw it first, with the tender glory of the spring upon the
woods, with the sunshine pouring down upon the grand old façade, and
the joyous music of innumerable birds piercing the pure air, her new
home elicited an exclamation of delighted surprise from her, which was
eagerly welcomed by Robert. He had seen but rarely of late any
evidence of the enthusiasm and freshness of heart which had been among
the first and most potent of Katharine's charms for him. He had looked
for them in vain when new scenes and new impressions might have been
expected to call them forth during their travels; but they had
rewarded his search so rarely, that he had begun to wonder if he was
ever again to see that peculiar smile, like sudden sunshine, in the
eyes whose beauty had grown sombre of late, or to recognise that keen
trill of girlish pleasure in the voice whose refined intonation had
acquired depth and seriousness since he had heard it first. Robert
Streightley knew very little of the woman he had married, as little of
her strength as of her weakness; and the passionate ardour of his love
for her, the undiminished admiration with which he regarded her, were
accompanied with all the interest and curiosity attendant upon a new
study. His narrow experience of life, his little knowledge of women,
preserved him from much pain in the present at least. It never
occurred to him to impute the alteration in Katharine to its true
source. He had taken Mr. Guyon's word for the trifling nature of the
sentiment entertained by his daughter for Gordon Frere, though even at
that period it is probable he would have hesitated at taking Mr.
Guyon's word upon any other subject; and though he could not deceive
himself so far as to believe that his beautiful wife reciprocated the
feelings with which he regarded her, he never ceased to hope that in
time she would come to love him. At least he would deserve her love,
if unlimited indulgence, if ceaseless observance, if the gratification
of every wish, every fantasy could merit it. At least he would
atone---- And when Robert's meditations reached that point they were
apt to become very uncomfortable, and he would fall back upon the
recollection of his wealth, and of all that he intended to do with it
solely for Katharine's benefit and pleasure, and he would say in his
heart, "At all events, Frere could have given her nothing that she
values; for she likes luxury and pleasure--she is quite a woman of the
world." In saying which he, the poor fellow, believed he passed an
eulogium upon her; for that "world," seen through the medium of his
passion, had quite bewildered his fancy and obscured his judgment.
It was, therefore, with intense pleasure that Robert observed the glow
of satisfaction, the eager alacrity with which Katharine inspected the
house and grounds; that he noted the bright eyes and glowing smiles
with which she praised all the arrangements made for her comfort, and
approved of the scale and order of the household. The irrepressible
girlishness of her age aided her in these circumstances. It was quite
impossible not to feel pride and delight in such possessions; and she
felt them to the full. Ignorant as she had been of the real state of
her father's affairs, and guiltless of the false pretences of their
life in London, she had always had a vague sense of insecurity; she
had always been annoyed by a dearth of ready-money; she had constantly
found herself wishing papa would give her a cheque when she went out
shopping, and would not oblige her to remain so long and so deeply in
her milliner's debt; and now she felt the contrast in the sense of an
unexplained but intense relief. The perfect order, the luxury, the
quiet of her house, the beauty of the gardens and the woods, the
deference, the observance with with which she was treated--differing
widely from the capricious caresses of her father, under which her
keen intelligence detected the unscrupulousness, selfishness, and
the contempt for her sex from which her pride and her delicacy
revolted--the novel sense of the importance of her position,--all
these united to rouse Katharine from the coldness and bitterness of
feeling which had succeeded the awakening from her love-trance. She
thought in after-days that during the time which immediately succeeded
her arrival at Middlemeads she had not been far from loving her
husband. Certain it is that she thought less of her false lover, that
she nourished her anger against him less sedulously, that she fed less
upon the poisonous fruit of pride, rage, and mortification. She took
pleasure in the beauty and luxury which surrounded her: she owed it
all to Robert; she could hardly look upon and enjoy it without feeling
some gratitude to the giver, without some softening of the pride of
her resentful heart, without some more tender and womanly sentiment
than that she had purchased all this at the price of herself, and it
was but her right. The love which she could not deny, which she was
forced to acknowledge, to wonder at every day since she had been
Robert's wife, had at first inspired her only with contemptuous
wonder; she treated it with disdain in her thoughts, as another proof
of the reckless selfishness of men. Here was one ready and willing to
pay any price for the gratification of a fancy. So much the better! He
had his reward; and her father's needs were supplied, and her defeat
and mortification covered by the same means. But was she bound to feel
any affection or gratitude to this man in consequence? He loved her
for his own sake, not for hers; it was a selfish passion, and he was
rich enough to buy its object; that was all. It suited her to be sold;
and there was the whole transaction. Love and gratitude had no part in
it, could never have any part in any thing in which she should be
concerned any more. Gordon Frere was a poor man, she believed: well,
she could have been grateful to him if he had shared his narrow means
with her, and incurred the anger of his family for her sake; she could
have been very happy and very good. But what was the use of thinking
of these things? He had only amused himself with her. Was she to be
grateful to this man, who had merely purchased her, as he might have
purchased any other expensive object which it pleased him to possess.
They would get on very well together, no doubt. She had no fear of any
disagreements; she trusted, with reason, in her own high breeding and
her entire indifference; and then rich people never need quarrel and
be disagreeable to each other, the restrictions of life were not for
them; finally, it did not much matter, after all. Katharine believed
that she had discovered life to be a swindle, and that she should
never more be deceived. This was already a sufficiently lamentable
effect of the disappointment she had sustained. With such a character,
what might not result from a discovery of the whole truth--from a
discovery that the man she loved had never been false to her, and that
the marriage into which she had entered in self-defence was the basest
of transactions!
For the present no such discovery was within the reach of calculation
or apprehension, and Robert revelled in the new-born graciousness of
Katharine's manner and in the revival of her girlish brightness. A
little sense of duty now; a little of that training in principle, that
discipline in well-doing, which only a mother's care, or that of a
woman fitted to replace a mother, can bestow; and a life of happiness
and usefulness might have begun for Katharine. But all such influences
were wanting; and the instincts for good which made themselves heard
occasionally in her tempestuous soul were but impulses--they had no
root in themselves, and they withered away. The future process by
which they were to be planted, and watered, and given increase, would
be full of pain no doubt, as every such process of cultivation of the
human soul must be; in those early days at Middlemeads it had not
begun. The joyous, gracious manner which shed sunshine into her
husband's heart was but the ebullition of Katharine's girlish
pleasure, and the natural demonstration of a perfectly well-bred
woman, to whom it was pleasant to be gracefully grateful, and to whom
polished prettiness of speech was "free as bird on branch." It
sufficed to create an Elysium for Robert, who found it easy to
accommodate himself to the change in all his habits and in his manner
of living, and to whom each day brought a renewed opportunity of
ministering to his wife's tastes and pleasures.
Among the earliest of their visitors was Ellen Streightley, who had
received a polite invitation from Katharine, a few days after her
arrival in England. This invitation had included Mrs. Streightley; but
there had been no serious wish on the part of Katharine that it should
be accepted, and a satisfactory conviction that there was no danger of
such an event. Any thing like _rapprochement_ between his mother and
his wife was beyond Robert's expectation, almost beyond his desire.
They belonged to two distinct worlds of thought, feeling, habits, and
ideas; and though he comprehended the fact rather by instinct than by
perception, he did comprehend it too fully to be led into any danger
of making an effort to bring them together, which must be
unsuccessful, and might be disastrous. Mrs. Streightley's naturally
quiet temper had made her accept Robert's marriage with tranquil
acquiescence. Her son would be less widely parted from her than most
sons from their mothers, under such circumstances; they would still
have many subjects of common interest, and she must be content with
that. She had never seriously expected that Robert would make a
selection from their narrow circle; she had not expected that he would
be attracted by the Miss Pratts and the Miss Perkinses of the Brixton
connection, who exchanged patterns for Berlin-wool work and manuscript
music with Ellen, who wore Oxford-Street bonnets, and took notes of
Sunday's sermon and Wednesday evening's lecture. She had been content
so long as Robert made no choice at all, but devoted himself
exclusively to his business; and now that he had chosen a beautiful,
fashionable young lady, whose habits, whose pursuits, whose very
speech was all but unintelligible to her, she would be content still.
Her religious principles were largely assisted by her natural
temperament; and their combined action made her the most inoffensive,
the most distant, and the most silent of mothers-in-law.
"But you have never seen my fine country-house, mother; you will
surely come and see it," Robert remonstrated, when his mother
requested him to bear her excuses to Katharine.
"I shall see it in time, my dear," she answered, "never fear; but you
must let me have my own way; you know I have always had it;" and she
smiled gently, with the touching smile of the old looking back upon
the past "Your wife must have many friends whom she wishes to see. I
could neither bear to find myself among fine people, to whom I am
totally unaccustomed, nor to feel that I was excluding her friends.
You will be constantly in town, Robert, and you will come and see me
very often." And then she began to speak of his health, to inquire
into the details of Katharine's illness at Martigny; and Robert saw
that the matter must remain as it was for the present. It was,
however, decided that Ellen should accept Katharine's invitation; and
accordingly she made her appearance at Middlemeads within a fortnight
of Katharine's installation in her new house. It would have needed a
less kindly nature than Katharine's--in which, perverted as it was,
true womanly feeling had its place--to resist the frank and innocent
gaiety of Ellen, the _naïf_ pleasure which she showed in the
inspection of the house, her admiration of the luxurious furniture,
and her surprise at finding herself in a scene of such unaccustomed
splendour, and yet, after a fashion, at home there. All this was her
brother's--all this was Robert's, who had been so well content with
the modest comfort of the Brixton villa; and the beautiful young woman
who had inspired him with tastes thus gratified, and admitted him into
a circle of society of which Ellen had never before had even a
glimpse, was her own sister-in-law. She had a kind of prescriptive
right to be intimate with her; she wondered whether she might venture
to call her "Katharine." Not on the first day of her visit certainly;
for though Katharine was perfectly polite, there was no approach to
familiarity in her manner; and she inquired, at luncheon, whether
"Miss Streightley" would drive, in a tone which seemed to render any
such sisterly appellations as "Ellen" and "Katharine" hopeless. But
this did not last: they were, after all, two young girls; and the very
superiority of intellect and of breeding, of which Katharine was
conscious, made her readier to thaw towards Ellen, whose admiration of
her brother's beautiful wife was as sincere and single-hearted as it
was warm and humble. The warnings of the Rev. Decimus lost their power
over the girl's imagination; she yielded to the charm which Katharine
exercised over all whom she chose to attract, and was almost as much
dazzled as her brother. To Robert the good understanding which
subsisted between the two was a source of the purest pleasure; he
loved his sister dearly, and he had a sense of her piety, her
gentleness, her humility of mind, and the beneficence of such an
influence, though he had never defined these things to his own mind or
reasoned upon them. On the whole, these early days at Middlemeads were
good days; they were a fair seedtime, and the harvest might have been
blessed; but the enemy had sown the tares early, and they were
destined to flourish in sinister strength.
As for Katharine, the genuine affection and admiration with which her
sister-in-law regarded her soon began to be sweet and precious to her;
her former life had been isolated from all such ties of girlish
friendship and confidence, and she had despised them in theory,
holding them among the missish follies which she laughed at and held
herself above. She had aspired to the reputation of a woman of the
world, and she had attained it; and in right of it had no intimacies
except of convenience, and no relations with her own sex except
those of the most superficial social observance. To Katharine,
therefore--who had not, since she left the elegant establishment in
which she had acquired all the graces with which nature had not
previously supplied her, had any more congenial companion for the
hours not absolutely demanded by society than Lady Henmarsh--the
novelty of such a friendship as that offered her by Ellen Streightley
possessed an ineffable charm. The purity, the simplicity, the very
narrowness of the girl's mind pleased her; the unquestioning
submission with which she received her opinions, the unqualified
admiration which she evinced in every look and word, conveyed, by
their simple sincerity, the subtlest charm of flattery. Katharine felt
that Ellen's presence did her good; that the peace of mind which
pervaded her diffused a tranquil and wholesome atmosphere around her:
she did not know whence came the salutary influence; she had never
been taught to recognise piety and principle by their peaceable
fruits; but she felt all that she did not analyse; and above all she
became conscious that she was beginning to live less for herself--that
she was acquiring new, unselfish, and harmless interests. Her heart
had begun to soften in those days; she was won by the artless
confidence of the girl to whom she was an object of wondering
admiration, and the wrath and bitterness of her soul began to subside.
The last thing in the world to occur to such a mind as that of Ellen
Streightley would have been such a possibility as a marriage without
perfect affection and confidence. She had never met with an instance
of any thing so dreadful and unnatural out of a novel; and the Rev.
Decimus disapproved of novels, so that she had discontinued their
perusal, and had even had the hardihood to endeavour to induce
Katharine to do likewise, and to substitute the interesting details of
the _Missionary Record_, over which she was accustomed to shiver and
cry a good deal. Thus, Ellen never doubted for a moment that
Katharine's had been, in the language of young ladies, "a love-match;"
and the matter-of-course way in which she took this for granted,
founded all her talk to Katharine upon it, and treated her brother and
his wife as absolutely one in undivided interest and unreserved
confidence, though, no doubt, a conclusive evidence of Ellen's own
dullness of perception, had all the good effect which an opposite
quality, and the exercise of the most perfect tact, could have
produced. It was impossible to resist the influence of this frank and
perfect belief in the mutual good faith of their relation; it was
impossible to resist the gay and happy simplicity which persisted in
believing in its ideal; and, but for the sore spot in Katharine's
heart, so obstinately hidden, and the sorer spot in Robert's
conscience, which ever and anon pained him horribly and vainly, the
angel of peace might have found an abiding resting-place with them
then. The soft rustle of his wings was often audible to both in those
early days; to which they were destined to look back in the future
with vain yearning and regret.
"Were you not surprised, Robert, to hear of Hester's good fortune?"
said Ellen Streightley to her brother one morning, as the little
party were engaged in the pleasing occupation of reading their
letters, of which an unusually large number had been laid upon the
breakfast-table.
"Yes," said Robert, raising his eyes from a letter which he had been
reading with a moody and troubled expression. "Yes, I was indeed, and
very much pleased. She was an admirable example of industry and
courage. I never could bear to think of a woman having to work; that
is a man's part in life. Is your letter from Hester?" he asked, in a
tone of interest.
"O yes," said Ellen; "Hester is just the same to me as ever, though
Matilda Perkins said she wouldn't be, and I must be very silly to
imagine a rich heiress would care about me. I can't think how people
can be so mean; can you, Robert? Only fancy any one imagining that
money can influence people in that way! I am ashamed to say she made
me feel almost afraid of Hester; and I cannot tell you how relieved I
was when I found her just the same. I was very near confessing to her
that I had wronged her in my thoughts; but then I knew they were not
my thoughts, but Matilda Perkins's; and I had no business to tell
her sins, you know; and after all, perhaps she was not so much to
blame,--she did not know Hester as well as I do."
Katharine, who had laid aside her letters, and was now busily
crumbling bread into a saucer half-full of cream--an operation which
her beautiful little Maltese dog, Topaze, watched with placid but
appreciative interest--smiled at the ingenious eagerness with which
Ellen sought to exculpate one friend and to exalt another. Robert's
attention strayed from his sister; his eyes were following the
movements of his wife's slender fingers. She placed the saucer on the
ground and called her dog.
"Here, Topaze, come and eat your breakfast!--And now, Ellen, tell me
all about this wonderful Miss Gould. She is tremendously rich, isn't
she, and very handsome, blue, and _bel esprit_, and all the rest of
it?"
Ellen looked rather puzzled as she said, "Hester is very rich,
certainly; but I am not sure about her being very handsome; she always
seemed so to me, of course--but then I knew her so well."
"And every one is handsome whom you know well?" said Katharine
laughing. "What a beauty your brother must be, and Mr. Dutton, and
I--after a while, when you know me long enough!"
"You know quite well that you are a beauty now and always, to me and
to every one," said Ellen with beaming eyes; "and it is wicked of you
to laugh at me because I cannot exactly express what I mean. Hester is
not beautiful like you, so that every one must acknowledge and no one
can deny her beauty; but I love her face. And she is very clever,
wonderfully clever. Robert, have you never told Katharine about
Hester? She used to be quite one of ourselves, you know. She knows all
about you, Katharine, and takes the greatest interest in you."
"Does she?" said Katharine with rather a vacant smile.
"O yes; and--Katharine," said Ellen timidly, "I should so like
her to know you, I should so like my two best friends to be
acquainted--and--and she is so accustomed to be with me and
Robert--and I have told her so much about Middlemeads, that--if you
don't think I take a liberty in asking you----"
"You would wish me to invite Miss Gould here, you mean, my dear
Ellen?" said Katharine with her most graceful air; "and you stammer
about it as if I were a tigress, and you were afraid to ask so
trifling a favour in your brother's house. You are a dear silly little
goose,--go pluck one of your own quills, and send off your invitation
to your friend immediately. Ask her for Tuesday--Lady Henmarsh comes
to-morrow, and we must have her and Sir Timothy _casés_ before any one
else arrives."
Katharine rose as she spoke, and Ellen did the same, turning with
sparkling eyes to her brother.
"O, Robert, do you hear what Katharine says?" she exclaimed. "She
desires me to invite Hester to Middlemeads; and I hardly dare tell you
how I longed for her to come here. Is she not kind?"
"Yes, indeed," said Robert; but he spoke rather absently. "She is--I
am sure we shall be delighted to see Hester here."
"Come, Ellen," said Katharine; "I am going to look after my hyacinths:
leave your brother to his letters, and come with me."
A minute later the two girls passed by the window of the room in which
Robert sat, still engaged in what was apparently no pleasant task. He
looked up as their voices caught his ear, drew near to the window, and
followed the graceful figures with thoughtful, regretful eyes, until
they disappeared. Then he sighed deeply, and gathering up his papers
left the room.
Half an hour later Robert sought his wife and sister in the garden,
and found them in deep conversation with the gardener, a Scotchman of
unparalleled skill and obstinacy.
"I beg your pardon, Katharine," he said, "but I overlooked this letter
this morning. It is from your father, enclosed to me, from Paris. It
must have fallen out when I opened his."
"Thank you," said Katharine carelessly, as she took the note from his
hand and stuck it into her belt; then resumed her conversation with
the gardener. Ellen felt rather surprised that Katharine could
possibly defer the reading of a letter from her father, and recurred
to the matter again as she sat down to her desk to enjoy the delight
of sending off the longed-for invitation to Hester Gould. She had seen
Mr. Guyon at his daughter's wedding, but only on that occasion, and
she had not been particularly attracted by him.
"Could it be possible that he was not kind to Katharine, and that she
is not very fond of him?" thought the guileless Ellen, to whom any
perversion of the relations and duties of life was almost
inconceivable and incredible. She shook her simple head gravely at the
suspicion, and then proceeded to write a gushing letter to Miss Gould,
in answer to that which she had received, and in which, had she
indulged a second person with its perusal, that individual would have
discerned a very distinct intimation that the writer expected and
exacted from Ellen that she should obtain precisely such an invitation
as Katharine had so readily and gracefully suggested.