The Misses Ponsonby speedily came to a conclusion about Catharine, and
she was forthwith labelled as a young lady of natural ability, whose
education had been neglected, a type perfectly familiar, recurring every
quarter, and one with which they were perfectly well able to deal. All
the examples they had had before were ticketed in exactly the same terms,
and, so classed, there was an end of further distinction. The means
taken with Catharine were those which had been taken since the school
began, and special attention was devoted to the branches in which she was
most deficient, and which she disliked. Her history was deplorable, and
her first task, therefore, was what were called dates. A table had been
prepared of the kings and queens of England--when they came to the
throne, and when they died; and another table gave the years of all the
battles. A third table gave the relationship of the kings and queens to
each other, and the reasons for succession. All this had to be learned
by heart. In languages, also, Catharine was singularly defective. Her
French was intolerable and most inaccurate, and of Italian she knew
nothing. Her dancing and deportment were so "provincial," as Miss Adela
Ponsonby happily put it, that it was thought better that the dancing and
deportment teacher should give her a few private lessons before putting
her in a class, and she was consequently instructed alone in the
rudiments of the art of entering and leaving a room with propriety, of
sitting with propriety on a sofa when conversing, of reading a book in a
drawing-room, of acknowledging an introduction, of sitting down to a meal
and rising therefrom, and in the use of the pocket-handkerchief. She had
particularly shocked the Misses Ponsonby on this latter point, as she was
in the habit of blowing her nose energetically, "snorting," as one of the
young ladies said colloquially, but with truth, and the deportment
mistress had some difficulty in reducing them to the whisper, which was
all that was permitted in the Ponsonby establishment, even in cases of
severe cold. On the other hand, in one or two departments she was far
ahead of the other girls, particularly in arithmetic and geometry.
It was the practice on Monday morning for the girls to be questioned on
the sermons of the preceding Sunday, and a very solemn business it was.
The whole school was assembled in the big schoolroom, and Mr. Cardew,
both the Misses Ponsonby being present, examined _viva voce_. One Monday
morning, after Catharine had been a month at the school, Mr. Cardew came
as usual. He had been preaching the Sunday before on a favourite theme,
and his text had been, "So then with the mind I myself serve the law of
God, but with the flesh the law of sin," and the examination at the
beginning was in the biography of St. Paul, as this had formed a part of
his discourse. No fault was to be found with the answers on this portion
of the subject, but presently the class was in some difficulty.
"Can anybody tell me what meaning was assigned to the phrase, 'The body
of this death'?"
No reply.
"Come, you took notes, and one or two interpretations were discarded for
that which seemed to be more in accordance with the mind of St. Paul.
Miss Arden"--Miss Arden was sitting nearest to Mr. Cardew--"cannot you
say?"
Miss Arden shook her ringlets, smiled, and turned a little red, as if she
had been complimented by Mr. Cardew's inquiries after the body of death,
and, glancing at her paper, replied--"The death of this body."
"Pardon me, that was one of the interpretations rejected."
"This body of death," said Catharine.
"Quite so."
Mr. Cardew turned hastily round to the new pupil, whom he had not noticed
before, and looked at her steadily for a moment.
"Can you proceed a little and explain what that means?"
Catharine's voice trembled, but she managed to read from her paper: "It
is strikingly after the manner of St. Paul. He opposes the two pictures
in him by the strongest words at his command--death and life. One _is_
death, the other _is_ life, and he prays to be delivered from death; not
the death of the body, but from death-in-life."
"Thank you; that is very nearly what I intended."
Mr. Cardew took tea at the Limes about once a fortnight with Mrs. Cardew.
The meal was served in the Misses Ponsonby's private room, and the girls
were invited in turn. About a fortnight after the examination on St.
Paul's theory of human nature, Mr. and Mrs. Cardew came as usual, and
Catharine was one of the selected guests. The company sat round the
table, and Mrs. Cardew was placed between her husband and Miss Furze. The
rector's wife was a fair-haired lady, with quiet, grey eyes, and regular,
but not strikingly beautiful, features. Yet they were attractive,
because they were harmonious, and betokened a certain inward agreement.
It was a sane, sensible face, but a careless critic might have thought
that it betokened an incapability of emotion, especially as Mrs. Cardew
had a habit of sitting back in her chair, and generally let the
conversation take its own course until it came very chose to her. She
had a sober mode of statement and criticism, which was never brilliant
and never stupid. It ought to have been most serviceable to her husband,
because it might have corrected the exaggeration into which his impulse,
talent, and power of pictorial representation were so apt to fall. She
had been brought up as an Evangelical, but she had passed through no
religious experiences whatever, and religion, in the sense in which
Evangelicalism in the Church of England of that day understood it, was
quite unintelligible to her. Had she been born a few years later she
would have taken to science, and would have done well at it, but at that
time there was no outlet for any womanly faculty, much larger in quantity
than we are apt to suppose, which has an appetite for exact facts.
Mr. Cardew would have been called a prig by those who did not know him
well. He had a trick of starting subjects suddenly, and he very often
made his friends very uncomfortable by the precipitate introduction,
without any warning, of remarks upon serious matters. Once even,
shocking to say, he quite unexpectedly at a tea-party made an observation
about God. Really, however, he was not a prig. He was very sincere. He
lived in a world of his own, in which certain figures moved which were as
familiar to him as common life, and he consequently talked about them. He
leaned in front of his wife and said to Catharine--
"Have you read much, Miss Furze?"
"No, very little."
"Indeed! I should have thought you were a reader. What have you read
lately? any stories?"
"Yes, I have read 'Rasselas.'"
"'Rasselas'! Have you really? Now tell me what you think of it."
"Oh! I cannot tell you all."
"No; it is not fair to put the question in that way. It is necessary to
have some training in order to give a proper account of the scope and
purpose of a book. Can you select any one part which struck you, and
tell me why it struck you?"
"The part about the astronomer. I thought all that is said about the
dreadful effects of uncontrolled imagination was so wonderful."
"Don't you think those effects are exaggerated?"
She lost herself for a moment, as we have already seen she was in the
habit of doing, or rather, she did not lose herself, but everything
excepting herself, and she spoke as if nobody but herself were present.
"Not in the least exaggerated. What a horror to pass days in dreaming
about one particular thing, and to have no power to wake!"
Her head had fallen a little forward; she suddenly straightened herself;
the blood rose in her face, and she looked very confused.
"I should like to preach about Dr. Johnson," said Mr. Cardew.
"Really, Mr. Cardew," interposed the elder Miss Ponsonby, "Dr. Johnson is
scarcely a sacred subject."
"I beg your pardon; I do not mean preaching on the Sabbath. I should
like to lecture about him. It is a curious thing, Miss Ponsonby, that
although Johnson was such a devout Christian, yet in his troubles his
remedy is generally nothing but that of the Stoics--courage and
patience."
Nobody answered, and an awkward pause followed. Catharine had not
recovered from the shock of self-revelation, and the Misses Ponsonby were
uneasy, not because the conversation had taken such an unusual turn, but
because a pupil had contributed. Mrs. Cardew, distressed at her
husband's embarrassment, ventured to come to the rescue.
"I think Dr Johnson quite right: when I am in pain, and nothing does me
any good, I never have anything to say to myself, excepting that I must
just be quiet, wait and bear it."
This very plain piece of pagan common sense made matters worse. Mr.
Cardew seemed vexed that his wife had spoken, and there was once more
silence for quite half a minute. Miss Adela Ponsonby then rang the bell,
and Catharine, in accordance with rule, left the room.
"Rather a remarkable young woman," carelessly observed the rector.
"Decidedly!" said both the Misses Ponsonby, in perfect unison.
"She has been much neglected," continued Miss Ponsonby. "Her manners
leave much to be desired. She has evidently not been accustomed to the
forms of good society, or to express herself in accordance with the usual
practice. We have endeavoured to impress upon her that, not only is much
care necessary in the choice of topics of conversation, but in the mode
of dealing with them. I thought it better not to encourage any further
remarks from her, or I should have pointed out that, if what you say of
Dr. Johnson is correct, as I have no doubt it is, considering the party
in the church to which he belonged, it only shows that he was
unacquainted experimentally with the consolations of religion."
"Isn't Mr. Cardew a dear?" asked Miss Arden, when she and Catharine were
together.
"I hardly understand what you mean, and I have not known Mr. Cardew long
enough to give any opinion upon him."
"How exasperating you are again! You _do_ know what I mean; but you
always pretend never to know what anybody means."
"I do _not_ know what you mean."
"Why, isn't he handsome; couldn't you doat on him, and fall in love with
him?"
"But he's married."
"You fearful Catharine! of course he's married; you do take things so
seriously."
"Well, I'm more in the dark than ever."
"There you shall stick," replied Miss Arden, lightly shaking her curls
and laughing. "Married!--yes, but they don't care for one another a
straw."
"Have they ever told you so?"
"How very ridiculous! Cannot you see for yourself?"
"I am not sure: it is very difficult to know whether people really love
one another, and often equally difficult to know if they dislike one
another."
"What a philosopher you are! I'll tell you one thing, though: I believe
he has just a little liking for me. Not for his life dare he show it.
Oh, my goodness, wouldn't the fat be in the fire! Wouldn't there be a
flare-up! What would the Ponsonbys do? Polite letter to papa announcing
that my education was complete! That's what they did when Julia Jackson
got in a mess. They couldn't have a scandal: so her education was
complete, and home she went. Now the first time we are out for a walk
and he passes us and bows, you watch."
Miss Julia Arden went to sleep directly she went to bed, but Catharine,
contrary to her usual custom, lay awake till she heard twelve o'clock
strike from St. Mary, Abchurch. She started, and thought that she alone,
perhaps, of all the people who lay within reach of those chimes had heard
them. Why did she not go to sleep? She was unused to wakefulness, and
its novelty surprised her with all sorts of vague terrors. She turned
from side to side anxiously while midnight sounded, but she was young,
and in ten minutes afterwards she was dreaming. She was mistaken in
supposing that she was the only person awake in Abchurch that night. Mrs.
Cardew heard the chimes, and over her their soothing melody had no power.
When she and her husband left the Limes he broke out at once, with all
the eagerness with which a man begins when he has been repeating to
himself for some time every word of his grievance--
"I don't know how it is, Jane, but whenever I say anything I feel you are
just the one person on whom it seems to make an impression. You have a
trick of repetition, and you manage to turn everything into a platitude.
If you cannot do better than that, you might be silent."
He was right so far, that it is possible by just a touch to convert the
noblest sentiment into commonplace. No more than a touch is necessary.
The parabolic mirror will reflect the star to a perfect focus. The
elliptical mirror, varying from the parabola by less than the breadth of
a hair, throws an image which is useless. But Mr. Cardew was far more
wrong than he was right. He did not take into account that what his wife
said and what she felt might not be the same; that persons, who have no
great command over language, are obliged to make one word do duty for a
dozen, and that, if his wife was defective at one point, there were in
her whole regions of unexplored excellence, of faculties never
encouraged, and an affection to which he offered no response. He had not
learned the art of being happy with her: he did not know that happiness
is an art: he rather did everything he could do to make the relationship
intolerable. He demanded payment in coin stamped from his own mint, and
if bullion and jewels had been poured before him he would have taken no
heed of them.
She said nothing. She never answered him when he was angry with her. It
was growing dark as they went home, and the tears came into her eyes and
the ball rose in her throat, and her lips quivered. She went back--does
a woman ever forget them?--to the hours of passionate protestation before
marriage, to the walks together when he caught up her poor phrases and
refined them, and helped her to see herself, and tried also to learn what
few things she had to teach. It was all the worse because she still
loved him so dearly, and felt that behind the veil was the same face, but
she could not tear the veil away. Perhaps, as they grew older, matters
might become worse, and they might have to travel together estranged down
the long, weary path to death. Death! She did not desire to leave him,
but she would have lain down in peace to die that moment if he could be
made to see her afterwards as she knew she was--at least in her love for
him. But then she thought what suffering the remembrance of herself
would cost him, and she wished to live. He felt that she moved her hand
to her pocket, and he knew why it went there. He pitied her, but he
pitied himself more, and though her tears wrought on him sufficiently to
prevent any further cruelty, he did not repent.