SEPIA.
As naturally as if she had been born to that very duty and no other,
Mary slid into the office of lady's-maid to Mrs. Redmain, feeling in
it, although for reasons very different, no more degradation than her
mistress saw in it. If Hesper was occasionally a little rude to her,
Mary was not one to _accept_ a rudeness--that is, to wrap it up in
resentment, and put it away safe in the pocket of memory. She could not
help feeling things of the kind--sometimes with indignation and anger;
but she made haste to send them from her, and shut the doors against
them. She knew herself a far more blessed creature than Hesper, and
felt the obligation, from the Master himself, of so enduring as to keep
every channel of service open between Hesper and her. To Hesper, the
change from the vulgar service of Folter to the ministration of Mary
was like passing from a shallow purgatory to a gentle paradise. Mary's
service was full of live and near presence, as that of dew or summer
wind; Folter handled her as if she were dressing a doll, Mary as if she
were dressing a baby; her hands were deft as an angel's, her feet as
noiseless as swift. And to have Mary near was not only to have a
ministering spirit at hand, but to have a good atmosphere all
around--an air, a heaven, out of which good things must momently come.
Few could be closely associated with her and not become aware at least
of the capacity of being better, if not of the desire to be better.
In the matter of immediate result, it was a transition from decoration
to dress. If in any sense Hesper was well dressed before, she was in
every sense well dressed now--dressed so, that is, as to reveal the
nature, the analogies, and the associations of her beauty: no manner of
dressing can make a woman look more beautiful than she is, though many
a mode may make her look less so.
There was one in the house, however, who was not pleased at the change
from Folter to Mary: Sepia found herself in consequence less necessary
to Hesper. Hitherto Hesper had never been satisfied without Sepia's
opinion and final approval in that weightiest of affairs, the matter of
dress; but she found in Mary such a faculty as rendered appeal to Sepia
unnecessary; for she not only satisfied her idea of herself, and how
she would choose to look, but showed her taste as much surer than
Sepia's as Sepia's was readier than Hesper's own. Sepia was equal to
the dressing of herself--she never blundered there; but there was
little dependence to be placed upon her in dressing another. She cared
for herself, not for another; and to dress another, love is
needful--love, the only true artist--love, the only opener of eyes. She
cared nothing to minister to the comfort or beautification of her
cousin, and her displeasure did not arise from the jealousy that is
born of affection. So far as Hesper's self was concerned, Sepia did not
care a straw whether she was well or ill dressed; but, if the link
between them of dress was severed, what other so strong would be left?
And to find herself in any way a less object in Hesper's eyes, would be
to find herself on the inclined plane of loss, and probable ruin.
Another, though a smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally
been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to
herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and
Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like,
vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain
positions and circumstances, the one would recall the other; and it was
therefore a matter of no small consequence to Sepia that the relation
of her dress to Hesper's should be such as to give herself any
advantage to be derived in it from the relation of their looks. This
was far more difficult, of course, when she had no longer a voice in
the matter of Hesper's dress, and when the loving skill of the new maid
presented her rival to her individual best. Mary would have been glad
to help her as well, but Sepia drew back as from a hostile nature, and
they made no approximation. This was more loss to Sepia than she knew,
for Mary would have assisted her in doing the best when she had no
money, a condition which often made it the more trying that she had now
so little influence over her cousin's adornment. To dress was a far
more difficult, though not more important, affair with Sepia than with
Hesper, for she had nothing of her own, and from, her cousin no fixed
allowance. Any arrangement of the kind had been impossible at
Durnmelling, where there was no money; and here, where it would have
been easy enough, she judged it better to give no hint in its
direction, although plainly it had never suggested itself to Hesper.
There was nothing of the money-mean in her, any more than in her
husband. They were of course, as became people of fashion, regular and
unwearied attendants of the church of Mammon, ordering all their
judgments and ways in accordance with the precepts there delivered; but
they were none of Mammon's priests or pew-openers, money-grubs, or
accumulators. They gave liberally where they gave, and scraped no
inferior to spend either on themselves or their charities. They had
plenty, it is true; but so have many who withhold more than is meet,
and take the ewe-lamb to add to their flock. For one thing, they had no
time for that sort of wickedness, and took no interest in it. So
Hesper, although it had not come into her mind to give her the ease of
a stated allowance, behaved generously to Sepia--when she thought of
it; but she did not love her enough to be love-watchful, and seldom
thought how her money must be going, or questioned whether she might
not at the moment be in want of more. There are many who will give
freely, who do not care to understand need and anticipate want. Hence
at times Sepia's purse would be long empty before the giving-thought
would wake in the mind of Hesper. When it woke, it was gracious and
free.
Had Sepia ventured to run up bills with the tradespeople, Hesper would
have taken it as a thing of course, and settled them with her own. But
Sepia had a certain politic pride in spending only what was given her;
also she saw or thought she saw serious reason for avoiding all
appearances of taking liberties; from the first of Mr. Redmain's visits
to Durnmelling, she had been aware, with an instinct keen in respect of
its objects, though blind as to its own nature, that he did not like
her, and soon satisfied herself that any overt attempt to please him
would but ripen his dislike to repugnance; and her dread was that he
might make it a condition with Mr. Mortimer that Hesper's intimacy with
her should cease; whereas, if once they were married, the husband's
disfavor would, she believed, only strengthen the wife's predilection.
Having so far gained her end, it remained, however, almost as desirable
as before that she should do nothing to fix or increase his
dislike--nay, that, if within the possible, she should become pleasing
to him. Did not even hate turn sometimes to its mighty opposite? But
she understood so little of the man with whom she had to deal that her
calculations were ill-founded.
She was right in believing that Mr. Redmain disliked her, but she was
wrong in imagining that he had therefore any objection to her being for
the present in the house. He certainly did not relish the idea of her
continuing to be his wife's inseparable companion, but there would be
time enough to get rid of her after he had found her out. For she had
not long been one of his _family,_ before he knew, with insight
unerring, that she had to be found out, and was therefore an
interesting subject for the exercise of his faculty of moral analysis.
He was certain her history was composed mainly of secrets. As yet,
however, he had discovered nothing.
I must just remind my reader of the intellectual passion I have already
mentioned as characterizing Mr. Redmain's mental constitution. His
faults and vices were by no means peculiar; but the bent to which I
refer, certainly no virtue, and springing originally from predominant
evil, was in no small degree peculiar, especially in the degree to
which, derived as it was from his father, he had in his own being
developed it. Most men, he judged with himself, were such fools as well
as rogues, that there was not the least occasion to ask what they were
after: they did but turn themselves inside out before you! But, on the
other hand, there were not a few who took pains, more or less
successful, to conceal their game of life; and such it was the delight
of his being to lay bare to his own eyes-not to those of other people;
that, he said, would be to spoil his game! Men were his library, he
said-his history, his novels, his sermons, his philosophy, his poetry,
his whole literature--and he did not like to have his books thumbed by
other people. Human nature, in its countless aspects, was all about
him, he said, every mask crying to him to take it off. Unhappily, it
was but the morbid anatomy of human nature he cared to study. For all
his abuse of it, he did not yet recognize it as morbid, but took it as
normal, and the best to be had. No doubt, he therein judged and
condemned himself, but that he never thought of--nor, perceived, would
it have been a point of any consequence to him.
From the first, he saw through Mr. Mortimer, and all belonging to him,
except Miss Yolland: she soon began to puzzle--and, so far, to please
him, though, as I have said, he did not like her. Had he been a younger
man, she would have captivated him; as it was, she would have repelled
him entirely, but that she offered him a good subject. He said to
himself that she was a bad lot, but what sort of a bad lot was not so
clear as to make her devoid of interest to him; he must discover how
she played her life-game; she had a history, and he would fain know it.
As I have said, however, so far it had come to nothing, for, upon the
surface, Sepia showed herself merely like any other worldly girl who
knows "on which side her bread is buttered."
The moment he had found, or believed he had found, what there was to
know about her, he was sure to hate her heartily. For some time after
his marriage, he appeared at his wife's parties oftener than he
otherwise would have done, just for the sake of having an eye upon
Sepia; but had seen nothing, nor the shadow of anything--until one
night, by the merest chance, happening to enter his wife's
drawing-room, he caught a peculiar glance between Sepia and a young
man--not very young--who had just entered, and whom he had not seen
before.
To not a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of
fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place
in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same
time it must be confessed there was something about her which made not
a few men shy of her. Some found that, if her eyes drew them within a
certain distance, there they began to repel them, they could not tell
why. Others felt strangely uncomfortable in her presence from the
first. Not only much that a person has done, but much of what a person
is capable of, is, I suspect, written on the bodily presence; and,
although no human eye is capable of reading more than here and there a
scattered hint of the twilight of history, which is the aurora of
prophecy, the soul may yet shudder with an instinctive foreboding it
can not explain, and feel the presence, without recognizing the nature,
of the hostile.
Sepia's eyes were her great power. She knew the laws of mortar-practice
in that kind as well as any officer of engineers those of projectiles.
There was something about her engines which it were vain to attempt to
describe. Their lightest glance was a thing not to be trifled with, and
their gaze a thing hardly to be withstood. Sustained and without hurt
defied, it could hardly be by man of woman born. They were large, but
no fool would be taken with mere size. They were as dark as ever eyes
of woman, but our older poets delighted in eyes as gray as glass:
certainly not in their darkness lay their peculiar witchery. They were
grandly proportioned, neither almond-shaped nor round, neither
prominent nor deep-set; but even shape by itself is not much. If I go
on to say they were luminous, plainly there the danger begins. Sepia's
eyes, I confess, were not lords of the deepest light--for she was not
true; but neither was theirs a surface light, generated of merely
physical causes: through them, concentrating her will upon their
utterance, she could establish a psychical contact with _almost_ any
man she chose. Their power was an evil, selfish shadow of original,
universal love. By them she could produce at once, in the man on whom
she turned their play, a sense as it were of some primordial, fatal
affinity between her and him--of an aboriginal understanding, the rare
possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those
eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light,
in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations--not from great, black
pupils alone--to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna
lent its aid--but from great, dark irids as well--nay, from eyeballs,
eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would
she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as
irresistible as subtile the soul of the man she chose to assail, who,
thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for,
scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full
force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to
captivate. There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little
birds and all; but Sepia did not so waste herself: her quarry must be
worth her hunt: she must either love him or need him. _Love!_ did I
say? Alas! if ever holy word was put to unholy use, _love_ is that
word! When Diana goes to hell, her name changes to Hecate, but love
among the devils is called love still!
In more than one other country, whatever might be the cause, Sepia had
found _the men_ less shy of her than here; and she had almost begun to
think her style was not generally pleasing to English eyes. Whether
this had anything to do with the fact that now in London she began to
amuse herself with Tom Helmer, I can not say with certainty; but almost
if not quite the first time they met, that morning, namely, when first
he called, and they sat in the bay-window of the drawing-room in
Glammis Square, she brought her eyes to play upon him; and, although he
addressed "The Firefly" poem to Hesper in the hope of pleasing her, it
was for the sake of Sepia chiefly that he desired the door of her house
to be an open one to him. Whether at that time she knew he was a
married man, it is hardly necessary to inquire, seeing it would have
made no difference whatever to one like her, whose design was only to
amuse herself with the youth, and possibly to make of him a screen. She
went so far, however, as to allow him, when there was opportunity, to
draw her into quiet corners, and even to linger when the other guests
were gone, and he had had his full share of champagne. Once, indeed,
they remained together so long in the little conservatory, lighted only
by an alabaster lamp, pale as the moon in the dawning, that she had to
unbolt the door to let him out. This did not take place without coming
to the knowledge of both Mr. and Mrs. Redmain; but the former was only
afraid there was nothing in it, and was far from any wish to control
her; and Sepia herself was the in-formant of the latter. To her she
would make game of her foolish admirer, telling how, on this and that
occasion, it was all she could do to get rid of him.