While Emilia was giving Wilfrid her history in the garden, the ladies
of Brookfield were holding consultation over a matter which was well
calculated to perplex and irritate them excessively. Mr. Pole had
received a curious short epistle from Mrs. Chump, informing him of the
atrocious treatment she had met with at the hands of his daughter;
and instead of reviewing the orthography, incoherence, and deliberate
vulgarity of the said piece of writing with the contempt it deserved,
he had taken the unwonted course of telling Arabella that she had done
a thing she must necessarily repent of, or in any case make apology for.
An Eastern Queen, thus addressed by her Minister of the treasury, could
not have felt greater indignation. Arabella had never seen her father
show such perturbation of mind. He spoke violently and imperiously. The
apology was ordered to be despatched by that night's post, after having
been submitted to his inspection. Mr. Pole had uttered mysterious
phrases: “You don't know what you've been doing:--You think the ship'll
go on sailing without wind: You'll drive the horse till he drops,”
and such like; together with mutterings. The words were of no
import whatsoever to the ladies. They were writings on the wall;
untranslateable. But, as when the earth quakes our noble edifices
totter, their Palace of the Fine Shades and the Nice Feelings groaned
and creaked, and for a moment they thought: “Where are we?” Very soon
they concluded, that the speech Arabella had heard was due to their
darling papa's defective education.
In the Council of Three, with reference to the letter of apology to Mrs.
Chump, Adela proposed, if it pleased Arabella, to fight the battle of
the Republic. She was young, and wished both to fight and to lead, as
Arabella knew. She was checked. “It must be left to me,” said Arabella.
“Of course you resist, dear?” Cornelia carelessly questioned.
“Assuredly I do.”
“Better humiliation! better anything! better marriage! than to submit in
such a case,” cried Adela.
For, so united were the ladies of Brookfield, and so bent on their grand
hazy object, that they looked upon married life unfavourably: and they
had besides an idea that Wedlock, until 'late in life' (the age of
thirty, say), was the burial alive of woman intellectual.
Toward midday the ladies put on their garden hats and went into the
grounds together, for no particular purpose. Near the West copse they
beheld Mr. Pole with Wilfrid and Emilia talking to a strange gentleman.
Assuming a proper dignity, they advanced, when, to their horror, Emilia
ran up to them crying: “This is Mr. Purcell Barrett, the gentleman who
plays the organ at church. I met him in the woods before I knew you. I
played for him the other Sunday, and I want you to know him.”
She had hold of Arabella's hand and was drawing her on. There was no
opportunity for retreat. Wilfrid looked as if he had already swallowed
the dose. Almost precipitated into the arms of the ladies, Mr. Barrett
bowed. He was a tolerably youthful man, as decently attired as old black
cloth could help him to be. A sharp inspection satisfied the ladies that
his hat and boots were inoffensive: whereupon they gave him the three
shades of distance, tempered so as not to wound his susceptible poverty.
The superlative Polar degree appeared to invigorate Mr. Barrett. He
devoted his remarks mainly to Cornelia, and cheerfully received her
frozen monosyllables in exchange. The ladies talked of Organs and Art,
Emilia and Opera. He knew this and that great organ, and all the operas;
but he amazed the ladies by talking as if he knew great people likewise.
This brought out Mr. Pole, who, since he had purchased Brookfield,
had been extinguished by them and had not once thoroughly enjoyed his
money's worth. A courtly poor man was a real pleasure to him.
Giving a semicircular sweep of his arm: “Here you see my little estate,
sir,” he said. “You've seen plenty bigger in Germany, and England too.
We can't get more than this handful in our tight little island. Unless
born to it, of course. Well! we must be grateful that all our nobility
don't go to the dogs. We must preserve our great names. I speak against
my own interest.”
He lifted Adela's chin on his forefinger. She kept her eyes demurely
downward, and then gazed at her sisters with gravity. These ladies took
a view of Mr. Barrett. His features wore an admirable expression of
simple interest. “Well, sir; suppose you dine with us to-day?” Mr. Pole
bounced out. “Neighbours should be neighbourly.”
This abrupt invitation was decorously accepted.
“Plain dinner, you know. Nothing like what you get at the tables of
those Erzhogs, as you call 'em, over in Germany. Simple fare; sound
wine! At all events, it won't hurt you. You'll come?”
Mr. Barrett bowed, murmuring thanks. This was the very man Mr. Pole
wanted to have at his board occasionally: one who had known great
people, and would be thankful for a dinner. He could depreciate himself
as a mere wealthy British merchant imposingly before such a man. His
daughters had completely cut him off from his cronies; and the sense of
restriction, and compression, and that his own house was fast becoming
alien territory to him, made him pounce upon the gentlemanly organist.
His daughters wondered why he should, in the presence of this stranger,
exaggerate his peculiar style of speech. But the worthy merchant's
consciousness of his identity was vanishing under the iron social rule
of the ladies. His perishing individuality prompted the inexplicable
invitation, and the form of it.
After Mr. Barrett had departed, the ladies ventured to remonstrate with
their papa. He at once replied by asking whether the letter to Mrs.
Chump had been written; and hearing that it had not, he desired that
Arabella should go into the house and compose it straightway. The ladies
coloured. To Adela's astonishment, she found that Arabella had turned.
Joining her, she said, “Dearest, what a moment you have lost! We could
have stood firm, continually changing the theme from Chump to Barrett,
Barrett to Chump, till papa's head would have twirled. He would
have begun to think Mr. Barrett the Irish widow, and Mrs. Chump the
organist.”
Arabella rejoined: “Your wit misleads you, darling. I know what I am
about. I decline a wordy contest. To approach to a quarrel, or, say
dispute, with one's parent apropos of such a person, is something worse
than evil policy, don't you think?”
So strongly did the sisters admire this delicate way of masking a piece
of rank cowardice, that they forgave her. The craven feeling was common
to them all, which made it still more difficult to forgive her.
“Of course, we resist?” said Cornelia.
“Undoubtedly.”
“We retire and retire,” Adela remarked. “We waste the royal forces. But,
dear me, that makes us insurgents!”
She laughed, being slightly frivolous. Her elders had the proper
sentimental worship of youth and its supposed quality of innocence, and
caressed her.
At the ringing of the second dinner-bell, Mr. Pole ran to the foot of
the stairs and shouted for Arabella, who returned no answer, and was
late in her appearance at table. Grace concluded, Mr. Pole said, “Letter
gone? I wanted to see it, you know.”
“It was as well not, papa,” Arabella replied.
Mr. Pole shook his head seriously. The ladies were thankful for the
presence of Mr. Barrett. And lo! this man was in perfect evening
uniform. He looked as gentlemanly a visitor as one might wish to
see. There was no trace of the poor organist. Poverty seemed rather a
gold-edge to his tail-coat than a rebuke to it; just as, contrariwise,
great wealth is, to the imagination, really set off by a careless
costume. One need not explain how the mind acts in such cases: the
fact, as I have put it, is indisputable. And let the young men of our
generation mark the present chapter, that they may know the virtue
residing in a tail-coat, and cling to it, whether buffeted by the waves,
or burnt out by the fire, of evil angry fortune. His tail-coat safe, the
youthful Briton is always ready for any change in the mind of the moody
Goddess. And it is an almost certain thing that, presuming her to have
a damsel of condition in view for him as a compensation for the slaps he
has received, he must lose her, he cannot enter a mutual path with her,
if he shall have failed to retain this article of a black tail, his
social passport. I mean of course that he retain respect for the article
in question. Respect for it firmly seated in his mind, the tail may
be said to be always handy. It is fortune's uniform in Britain: the
candlestick, if I may dare to say so, to the candle; nor need any young
islander despair of getting to himself her best gifts, while he has her
uniform at command, as glossy as may be.
The ladies of Brookfield were really stormed by Mr. Barrett's elegant
tail. When, the first glass of wine nodded over, Mr. Pole continued the
discourse of the morning, with allusions to French cooks, and his cook,
their sympathies were taken captive by Mr. Barrett's tact: the door to
their sympathies having been opened to him as it were by his attire.
They could not guess what necessity urged Mr. Pole to assert his
locked-up self so vehemently; but it certainly made the stranger shine
with a beautiful mild lustre. Their spirits partly succumbed to him by
a process too lengthened to explain here. Indeed, I dare do no more than
hint at these mysteries of feminine emotion. I beg you to believe that
when we are dealing with that wonder, the human heart female, the part
played by a tail-coat and a composed demeanour is not insignificant.
No doubt the ladies of Brookfield would have rebutted the idea of a
tail-coat influencing them in any way as monstrous. But why was it, when
Mr. Pole again harped on his cook, in almost similar words, that they
were drawn to meet the eyes of the stranger, on whom they printed one
of the most fabulously faint fleeting looks imaginable, with a
proportionately big meaning for him that might read it? It must have
been that this uniform of a tail had laid a basis of equality for the
hour, otherwise they never would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed
the chance of showing them that he could respond to the remotest mystic
indications, with a muffled adroitness equal to their own, and so
encouraged them to commence a language leading to intimacy with a
rapidity that may well appear magical to the uninitiated. In short, the
man really had the language of the very elect of polite society. If you
are not versed in this alphabet of mute intelligence, you are in the
ranks with waiters and linen-drapers, and are, as far as ladies are
concerned, tail-coated to no purpose.
Mr. Pole's fresh allusion to his cook: “I hope you don't think I keep a
man! No; no; not in the country. Wouldn't do. Plays the deuce, you know.
My opinion is, Mrs. Mallow's as clever as any man-cook going. I'd back
her:” and Mr. Barrett's speech: “She is an excellent person!” delivered
briefly, with no obtrusion of weariness, confirmed the triumph of the
latter; a triumph all the greater, that he seemed unconscious of it.
They leaped at one bound to the conclusion that there was a romance
attached to him. Do not be startled. An attested tail-coat, clearly out
of its element, must contain a story: that story must be interesting;
until its secret is divulged, the subtle essence of it spreads an
aureole around the tail. The ladies declared, in their subsequent
midnight conference, that Mr. Barrett was fit for any society. They had
visions of a great family reduced; of a proud son choosing to earn his
bread honourably and humbly, by turning an exquisite taste to account.
Many visions of him they had, and were pleased.
Patronage of those beneath, much more than the courting of those above
them, delighted the ladies of Brookfield. They allowed Emilia to give
Mr. Barrett invitations, and he became a frequent visitor; always neat,
pathetically well-brushed, and a pleasanter pet than Emilia, because he
never shocked their niceties. He was an excellent talker, and was very
soon engaged in regular contests with the argumentative Cornelia. Their
political views were not always the same, as Cornelia sometimes had read
the paper before he arrived. Happily, on questions of religion, they
coincided. Theories of education occupied them mainly. In these contests
Mr. Barrett did not fail to acknowledge his errors, when convicted, and
his acknowledgment was hearty and ample. She had many clear triumphs.
Still, he could be positive; a very great charm in him. Women cannot
repose on a man who is not positive; nor have they much gratification in
confounding him. Wouldst thou, man, amorously inclining! attract to thee
superior women, be positive. Be stupidly positive, rather than dubious
at all. Face fearful questions with a vizor of brass. Array thyself in
dogmas. Show thy decisive judgement on the side of established power, or
thy enthusiasm in the rebel ranks, if it must be so; but be firm. Waver
not. If women could tolerate waverings and weakness, and did not rush
to the adoration of decision of mind, we should not behold them turning
contemptuously from philosophers in their agony, to find refuge in the
arms of smirking orthodoxy. I do not say that Mr. Barrett ventured to
play the intelligent Cornelia like a fish; but such a fish was best
secured by the method he adopted: that of giving her signal victory in
trifles, while on vital matters he held his own.
Very pleasant evenings now passed at Brookfield, which were not at all
disturbed by the wonder expressed from time to time by Mr. Pole, that
he had not heard from Martha, meaning Mrs. Chump. “You have Emilia,” the
ladies said; this being equivalent to “She is one of that sort;” and
Mr. Pole understood it so, and fastened Emilia in one arm, with “Now, a
kiss, my dear, and then a toon.” Emilia readily gave both. As often as
he heard instances of her want of ladylike training, he would say, “Keep
her here; we'll better her.” Mr. Barrett assisted the ladies to see that
there was more in Emilia than even Mr. Pericles had perceived. Her story
had become partially known to them; and with two friendly dependents of
the household, one a gentleman and the other a genius, they felt that
they had really attained a certain eminence, which is a thing to be
felt only when we have something under our feet. Flying about with a
desperate grip on the extreme skirts of aristocracy, the ladies knew
to be the elevation of dependency, not true eminence; and though they
admired the kite, they by no means wished to form a part of its tail.
They had brains. A circle was what they wanted, and they had not to
learn that this is to be found or made only in the liberally-educated
class, into the atmosphere of which they pressed like dungeoned plants.
The parasite completes the animal, and a dependent assures us of our
position. The ladies of Brookfield, therefore, let Emilia cling to
them, remarking, that it seemed to be their papa's settled wish that she
should reside among them for a time. Consequently, if the indulgence had
ever to be regretted, they would not be to blame. In their hearts they
were aware that it was Emilia who had obtained for them their first
invitation to Lady Gosstre's. Gratitude was not a part of their policy,
but when it assisted a recognition of material facts they did not
repress it. “And if,” they said, “we can succeed in polishing her and
toning her, she may have something to thank us for, in the event of her
ultimately making a name.” That event being of course necessary for
the development of so proper a sentiment. Thus the rides with Wilfrid
continued, and the sweet quiet evenings when she sang.