“Seen Wilfrid?” was Mr. Pole's first cheery call to his daughters, on
his return. An answer on that head did not seem to be required by him,
for he went on: “Ah the boy's improved. That place over there, Stornley,
does him as much good as the Army did, as to setting him up, you know;
common sense, and a ready way of speaking and thinking. He sees a thing
now. Well, Martha, what do you,--eh? what's your opinion?”
Mrs. Chump was addressed. “Pole,” she said, fanning her cheek with
vehement languor, “don't ask me! my heart's gone to the young fella.”
In pursuance of a determination to which the ladies of Brookfield
had come, Adela, following her sprightly fancy, now gave the lead in
affability toward Mrs. Chump.
“Has the conqueror run away with it to bury it?” she laughed.
“Och! won't he know what it is to be a widde!” cried Mrs. Chump. “A
widde's heart takes aim and flies straight as a bullet; and the hearts
o' you garls, they're like whiffs o' tobacca, curlin' and wrigglin' and
not knowin' where they're goin'. Marry 'em, Pole! marry 'em!” Mrs. Chump
gesticulated, with two dangling hands. “They're nice garls; but, lord!
they naver see a man, and they're stuputly contented, and want to
remain garls; and, don't ye see, it was naver meant to be? Says I to Mr.
Wilfrud (and he agreed with me), ye might say, nice sour grapes, as well
as nice garls, if the creatures think o' stoppin' where they are, and
what they are. It's horrud; and, upon my honour, my heart aches for 'm!”
Mr. Pole threw an uneasy side-glance of inquisition at his daughters,
to mark how they bore this unaccustomed language, and haply intercede
between the unworthy woman and their judgement of her. But the ladies
merely smiled. Placidly triumphant in its endurance, the smile said: “We
decline even to feel such a martyrdom as this.”
“Well, you know, Martha; I,” he said, “I--no father could wish--eh? if
you could manage to persuade them not to be so fond of me. They must
think of their future, of course. They won't always have a home--a
father, a father, I mean. God grant they may never want!--eh? the
dinner; boh! let's in to dinner. Ma'am!”
He bowed an arm to Mrs. Chump, who took it, with a scared look at him:
“Why, if ye haven't got a tear in your eye, Pole?”
“Nonsense, nonsense,” quoth he, bowing another arm to Adela.
“Papa, I'm not to be winked at,” said she, accepting convoy; and there
was some laughter, all about nothing, as they went in to dinner.
The ladies were studiously forbearing in their treatment of Mrs.
Chump. Women are wonderfully quick scholars under ridicule, though it
half-kills them. Wilfrid's theory had impressed the superior grace of
civility upon their minds, and, now that they practised it, they
were pleased with the contrast they presented. Not the less were they
maturing a serious resolve. The suspicion that their father had secret
vile designs in relation to Mrs. Chump, they kept in the background. It
was enough for them that she was to be a visitor, and would thus destroy
the great circle they had projected. To accept her in the circle, they
felt, was out of the question. Wilfrid's plain-speaking broke up the
air-bubble, which they had so carefully blown, and in which they had
embarked all their young hopes. They had as much as given one another a
pledge that their home likewise should be broken up.
“Are you not almost too severe a student?” Mr. Barrett happened to say
to Cornelia, the day after Wilfrid had worried her.
“Do I show the signs?” she replied.
“By no means. But last night, was it not your light that was not
extinguished till morning?”
“We soon have morning now,” said Cornelia; and her face was pale as the
first hour of the dawn. “Are you not a late foot-farer, I may ask in
return?”
“Mere restlessness. I have no appetite for study. I took the liberty to
cross the park from the wood, and saw you--at least I guessed it your
light, and then I met your brother.”
“Yes? you met him?”
Mr. Barrett gestured an affirmative.
“And he--did he speak?”
“He nodded. He was in some haste.”
“But, then, you did not go to bed at all that night? It is almost my
turn to be lecturer, if I might expect to be listened to.”
“Do you not know--or am I constitutionally different from others?” Mr.
Barrett resumed: “I can't be alone in feeling that there are certain
times and periods when what I would like to call poisonous influences
are abroad, that touch my fate in the days to come. I know I am
helpless. I can only wander up and down.”
“That sounds like a creed of fatalism.”
“It is not a creed; it is a matter of nerves. A creed has its 'kismet.'
The nerves are wild horses.”
“It is something to be fought against,” said Cornelia admonishingly.
“Is it something to be distrusted?”
“I should say, yes.”
“Then I was wrong?”
He stooped eagerly, in his temperate way, to catch sight of her
answering face. Cornelia's quick cheeks took fire. She fenced with a
question of two, and stood in a tremble, marvelling at his intuition.
For possibly, at that moment when he stood watching her window-light
(ah, poor heart!) she was half-pledging her word to her sisters (in a
whirl of wrath at Wilfrid, herself, and the world), that she would take
the lead in breaking up Brookfield.
An event occurred that hurried them on. They received a visit from
their mother's brother, John Pierson, a Colonel of Uhlans, in the
Imperial-Royal service. He had rarely been in communication with them;
his visit was unexpected. His leave of absence from his quarters in
Italy was not longer than a month, and he was on his way to Ireland, to
settle family business; but he called, as he said, to make acquaintance
with his nieces. The ladies soon discovered, in spite of his foreign-cut
chin and pronounced military habit of speech and bearing, that he was at
heart fervidly British. His age was about fifty: a man of great force of
shoulder and potent length of arm, courteous and well-bred in manner,
he was altogether what is called a model of a cavalry officer. Colonel
Pierson paid very little attention to his brother-in-law, but the ladies
were evidently much to his taste; and when he kissed Cornelia's hand,
his eyes grew soft, as at a recollection.
“You are what your mother once promised to be,” he said. To her he gave
that mother's portrait, taking it solemnly from his breast-pocket,
and attentively contemplating it before it left his hands. The ladies
pressed him for a thousand details of their mama's youthful life;
they found it a strange consolation to talk of her and image her like
Cornelia. The foreign halo about the Colonel had an effect on them that
was almost like what nobility produces; and by degrees they heated
their minds to conceive that they were consenting to an outrage on that
mother's memory, in countenancing Mrs. Chump's transparent ambition to
take her place, as they did by staying in the house with the woman.
The colonel's few expressive glances at Mrs. Chump, and Mrs. Chump's
behaviour before the colonel, touched them with intense distaste for
their present surly aspect of life. Civilized little people are moved to
fulfil their destinies and to write their histories as much by distaste
as by appetite. This fresh sentimental emotion, which led them to
glorify their mother's image in their hearts, heightened and gave an
acid edge to their distaste for the think they saw. Nor was it wonderful
that Cornelia, said to be so like that mother, should think herself
bound to accept the office of taking the initiative in a practical
protest against the desecration of the name her mother had borne. At
times, I see that sentiment approaches too near the Holy of earthly
Holies for us to laugh at it; it has too much truth in it to be
denounced--nay, if we are not alert and quick of wit, we shall be
deceived by it, and wonder in the end, as the fool does, why heaven
struck that final blow; concluding that it was but another whimsy of the
Gods. The ladies prayed to their mother. They were indeed suffering vile
torture. Ethereal eyes might pardon the unconscious jugglery which made
their hearts cry out to her that the step they were about to take was
to save her children from seeming to acquiesce in a dishonour to her
memory. Some such words Adela's tongue did not shrink from; and as it is
a common habit for us to give to the objects we mentally address just
as much brain as is wanted for the occasion, she is not to be held
singular.
Colonel Pierson promised to stay a week on his return from Ireland.
“Will that person be here?” he designated Mrs. Chump; who, among other
things, had reproached him for fighting with foreign steel and wearing
any uniform but the red.
The ladies and Colonel Pierson were soon of one mind in relation to Mrs.
Chump. Certain salient quiet remarks dropped by him were cherished after
his departure; they were half-willing to think that he had been directed
to come to them, bearer of a message from a heavenly world to urge them
to action. They had need of a spiritual exaltation, to relieve them
from the palpable depression caused by the weight of Mrs. Chump. They
encouraged one another with exclamations on the oddness of a visit from
their mother's brother, at such a time of tribulation, indecision, and
general darkness.
Mrs. Chump remained on the field. When Adela begged her papa to tell her
how long the lady was to stay, he replied: “Eh? By the way, I haven't
asked her;” and retreated from this almost too obvious piece of
simplicity, with, “I want you to know her: I want you to like her--want
you to get to understand her. Won't talk about her going just yet.”
If they could have seen a limit to that wholesale slaughter of the Nice
Feelings, they might have summoned patience to avoid the desperate step
to immediate relief: but they saw none. Their father's quaint kindness
and Wilfrid's treachery had fixed her there, perhaps for good. The
choice was, to let London come and see them dragged through the mire by
the monstrous woman, or to seek new homes. London, they contended, could
not further be put off, and would come, especially now that the season
was dying. After all, their parting from one another was the bitterest
thing to bear, and as each seemed content to endure it for the good of
all, and as, properly considered, they did not bury their ambition by
separating, they said farewell to the young delicious dawn of it.
By means of Fine Shades it was understood that Brookfield was to be
abandoned. Not one direct word was uttered. There were expressions of
regret that the village children of Ipley would miss the supervizing
eyes that had watched over them--perchance! at any rate, would lose
them. All went on in the household as before, and would have continued
so, but that they had a chief among them. This was Adela Pole, who found
her powers with the occasion.
Adela thought decisively: “People never move unless they are pushed.”
And when you have got them to move ever so little, then propel; but by
no means expect that a movement on their part means progression. Without
propulsion nothing results. Adela saw what Cornelia meant to do. It
was not to fly to Sir Twickenham, but to dismiss Mr. Barrett. Arabella
consented to write to Edward Buxley, but would not speak of old days,
and barely alluded to a misunderstanding; though if she loved one man,
this was he. Adela was disengaged. She had moreover to do penance, for a
wrong committed; and just as children will pinch themselves, pleased
up to the verge of unendurable pain, so do sentimentalists find a keen
relish in performing secret penance for self-accused offences. Thus
they become righteous to their own hearts, and evade, as they hope, the
public scourge. The wrong committed was (translated out of Fine
Shades), that she had made love to her sister's lover. In the original
tongue--she had innocently played with the sacred fire of a strange
affection; a child in the temple!--Our penitent child took a keen
pinching pleasure in dictating words for Arabella to employ toward
Edward.
And then, recurring to her interview with Wilfrid, it struck her:
“Suppose that, after all, Money!...” Yes, Mammon has acted Hymen before
now. Nothing else explained Mrs. Chump; so she thought, in one clear
glimpse. Inveterate sentimental habit smeared the picture with two
exclamations--“Impossible!” and “Papa!” I desire it to be credited that
these simple interjections absolutely obscured her judgement. Little
people think either what they are made to think, or what they choose to
think; and the education of girls is to make them believe that facts are
their enemies-a naughty spying race, upon whom the dogs of Pudeur are to
be loosed, if they surprise them without note of warning. Adela silenced
her suspicion, easily enough; but this did not prevent her taking a
measure to satisfy it. Petting her papa one evening, she suddenly asked
him for ninety pounds.
“Ninety!” said Mr. Pole, taking a sharp breath. He was as composed as
possible.
“Is that too much, papa, darling?”
“Not if you want it--not if you want it, of course not.”
“You seemed astonished.”
“The sum! it's an odd sum for a girl to want. Ten, twenty, fifty--a
hundred; but you never hear of ninety, never! unless it's to pay a debt;
and I have all the bills, or your aunt has them.”
“Well, papa, if it excites you, I will do without it. It is for a
charity, chiefly.”
Mr. Pole fumbled in his pocket, muttering, “No money here--cheque-book
in town. I'll give it you,” he said aloud, “to-morrow morning--morrow
morning, early.”
“That will do, papa;” and Adela relieved him immediately by shooting far
away from the topic.
The ladies retired early to their hall of council in the bedchamber of
Arabella, and some time after midnight Cornelia went to her room; but
she could not sleep. She affected, in her restlessness, to think that
her spirits required an intellectual sedative, so she went down to
the library for a book; where she skimmed many--a fashion that may be
recommended, for assisting us to a sense of sovereign superiority
to authors, and also of serene contempt for all mental difficulties.
Fortified in this way, Cornelia took a Plutarch and an Encyclopaedia
under her arm, to return to her room. But one volume fell, and as she
stooped to recover it, her candle shared its fate. She had to find her
way back in the dark. On the landing of the stairs, she fancied that she
heard a step and a breath. The lady was of unshaken nerves. She moved
on steadily, her hand stretched out a little before her. What it touched
was long in travelling to her brain; but when her paralyzed heart beat
again, she knew that her hand clasped another hand. Her nervous horror
calmed as the feeling came to her of the palpable weakness of the hand.
“Who are you?” she asked. Some hoarse answer struck her ear. She asked
again, making her voice distincter. The hand now returned her pressure
with force. She could feel that the person, whoever it was, stood
collecting strength to speak. Then the words came--
“What do you mean by imitating that woman's brogue?”
“Papa!” said Cornelia.
“Why do you talk Irish in the dark? There, goodnight. I've just come up
from the library; my candle dropped. I shouldn't have been frightened,
but you talked with such a twang.”
“But I have just come from the library myself,” said Cornelia.
“I mean from the dining-room,” her father corrected himself hastily. “I
can't sit in the library; shall have it altered--full of draughts. Don't
you think so, my dear? Good-night. What's this in your arm? Books! Ah,
you study! I can get a light for myself.”
The dialogue was sustained in the hard-whispered tones prescribed by
darkness. Cornelia kissed her father's forehead, and they parted.
At breakfast in the morning it was the habit of all the ladies to
assemble, partly to countenance the decency of matin-prayers, and also
to give the head of the household their dutiful society till business
called him away. Adela, in earlier days, had maintained that early
rising was not fashionable; but she soon grasped the idea that a
great rivalry with Fashion, in minor matters (where the support of the
satirist might be counted on), was the proper policy of Brookfield. Mrs.
Chump was given to be extremely fashionable in her hours, and began her
Brookfield career by coming downstairs at ten and eleven o'clock, when
she found a desolate table, well stocked indeed, but without any of the
exuberant smiles of nourishment which a morning repast should wear.
“You are a Protestant, ma'am, are you not?” Adela mildly questioned,
after informing her that she missed family prayer by her late descent.
Mrs. Chump assured her that she was a firm Protestant, and liked to see
faces at the breakfast-table. The poor woman was reduced to submit to
the rigour of the hour, coming down flustered, and endeavouring to look
devout, while many uncertainties as to the condition of the hooks of her
attire distracted her mind and fingers. On one occasion, Gainsford, the
footman, had been seen with his eye on her; and while Mr. Pole read of
sacred things, at a pace composed of slow march and amble, this unhappy
man was heard struggling to keep under and extinguish a devil of
laughter, by which his human weakness was shaken: He retired from the
room with the speed of a voyager about to pay tribute on high seas. Mr.
Pole cast a pregnant look at the servants' row as he closed the book;
but the expression of his daughters' faces positively signified that no
remark was to be made, and he contained himself. Later, the ladies told
him that Gainsford had done no worse than any uneducated man would have
been guilty of doing. Mrs. Chump had, it appeared, a mother's feeling
for one flat curl on her rugged forehead, which was often fondly
caressed by her, for the sake of ascertaining its fixity. Doubts of
the precision of outline and general welfare of this curl, apparently,
caused her to straighten her back and furtively raise her head, with an
easy upward motion, as of a cork alighted in water, above the level
of the looking-glass on her left hand--an action she repeated, with a
solemn aspect, four times; at which point Gainsford gave way. The ladies
accorded him every extenuation for the offence. They themselves, but
for the heroism of exalted natures, must have succumbed to the gross
temptation. “It is difficult, dear papa, to bring one's mind to
religious thoughts in her company, even when she is quiescent,” they
said. Thus, by the prettiest exercise of charity that can be conceived,
they pleaded for the man Gainsford, while they struck a blow at Mrs.
Chump; and in performing one of the virtues laid down by religion,
proved their enemy to be hostile to its influences.
Mrs. Chump was this morning very late. The office of morning reader was
new to Mr. Pole, who had undertaken it, when first Squire of Brookfield,
at the dictate of the ladies his daughters; so that, waiting with the
book before him and his audience expectant, he lacked composure, spoke
irritably in an under-breath of 'that woman,' and asked twice whether
she was coming or not. At last the clump of her feet was heard
approaching. Mr. Pole commenced reading the instant she opened the door.
She stood there, with a face like a petrified Irish outcry. An imploring
sound of “Pole! Pole!” issued from her. Then she caught up one hand to
her mouth, and rolled her head, in evident anguish at the necessitated
silence. A convulsion passed along the row of maids, two of whom dipped
to their aprons; but the ladies gazed with a sad consciousness of wicked
glee at the disgust she was exciting in the bosom of their father.
“Will you shut the door?” Mr. Pole sternly addressed Mrs. Chump, at the
conclusion of the first prayer.
“Pole! ye know that money ye gave me in notes? I must speak, Pole!”
“Shut the door.”
Mrs. Chump let go the door-handle with a moan. The door was closed by
Gainsford, now one of the gravest of footmen. A chair was placed for
her, and she sat down, desperately watching the reader for the fall of
his voice. The period was singularly protracted. The ladies turned to
one another, to question with an eyelid why it was that extra allowance
was given that morning. Mr. Pole was in a third prayer, stumbling on
and picking himself up, apparently unaware that he had passed the limit.
This continued until the series of ejaculations which accompanied him
waxed hotter--little muffled shrieks of: “Oh!--Deer--Oh, Lard!--When
will he stop? Oh, mercy! Och! And me burrstin' to speak!--Oh! what'll I
do? I can't keep 't in!--Pole! ye're kill'n me--Oh, deer! I'll be sayin'
somethin' to vex the prophets presently. Pole!”
If it was a race that he ran with Mrs. Chump, Mr. Pole was beaten. He
came to a sudden stop.
Mrs. Chump had become too deeply absorbed in her impatience to notice
the change in his tone; and when he said, “Now then, to breakfast,
quick!” she was pursuing her lamentable interjections. At sight of the
servants trooping forth, she jumped up and ran to the door.
“Ye don't go.--Pole, they're all here. And I've been robbed, I have.
Avery note I had from ye, Pole, all gone. And my purse left behind, like
the skin of a thing. Lord forbid I accuse annybody; but when I get up,
my first rush is to feel in my pocket. And, ask 'em!--If ye didn't keep
me so poor, Pole, they'd know I'm a generous woman, but I cann't bear to
be robbed. And pinmoney 's for spendin;' annybody'll tell you that.
And I ask ye t' examine 'em, Pole; for last night I counted my notes,
wantin' change, and I thought of a salmon I bought on the banks of the
Suir to make a present to Chump, which was our onnly visit to Waterford
together: for he naver went t' Ireland before or after--dyin' as he did!
and it's not his ingrat'tude, with his talk of a Severrn salmon-to the
deuce with 'm! that makes me soft-poor fella!--I didn't mean to the
deuce;--but since he's gone, his widde's just unfit to bargain for
a salmon at all, and averybody robs her, and she's kept poor, and
hatud!--D'ye heer, Pole? I've lost my money, my money! and I will speak,
and ye shann't interrupt me!”
During the delivery of this charge against the household, Mr. Pole had
several times waved to the servants to begone; but as they had always
the option to misunderstand authoritative gestures, they preferred
remaining, and possibly he perceived that they might claim to do so
under accusation.
“How can you bring this charge against the inmates of my house--eh?
I guarantee the honesty of all who serve me. Martha! you must be mad,
mad!--Money? why, you never have money; you waste it if you do.”
“Not money, Pole? Oh! and why? Becas ye keep me low o' purpose, till I
cringe like a slut o' the scullery, and cry out for halfpence. But, oh!
that seventy-five pounds in notes!”
Mr. Pole shook his head, as one who deals with a gross delusion: “I
remember nothing about it.”
“Not about--?” Mrs. Chump dropped her chin. “Ye don't remember the
givin' of me just that sum of seventy-five, in eight notes, Pole?”
“Eh? I daresay I have given you the amount, one time or other. Now,
let's be quiet about it.”
“Yesterday mornin', Pole! And the night I go to bed I count my money,
and, says I, I'll not lock ut up, for I'll onnly be unlockin' again
to-morrow; and doin' a thing and undoin' ut's a sign of a brain that's
addled--like yours, Pole, if ye say ye didn't go to give me the notes.”
Mr. Pole frowned at her sagaciously. “Must change your diet, Martha!”
“My dite? And what's my dite to do with my money?”
“Who went into Mrs. Chump's bedchamber this morning?” asked Mr. Pole
generally.
A pretty little housemaid replied, with an indignant flush, that she
was the person. Mrs. Chump acknowledged to being awake when the shutters
were opened, and agreed that it was not possible her pockets could have
been rifled then.
“So, you see, Martha, you're talking nonsense,” said Mr. Pole. “Do you
know the numbers of those notes?”
“The numbers at the sides, ye mean, Pole?”
“Ay, the numbers at the sides, if you like; the 21593, and so on?”
“The 21593! Oh! I can't remember such a lot as that, if ever I leave off
repeatin' it.”
“There! you see, you're not fit to have money in your possession,
Martha. Everybody who has bank-notes looks at the numbers. You have a
trick of fancying all sorts of sums in your pocket; and when you
don't find them there, of course they're lost! Now, let's have some
breakfast.”
Arabella told the maids to go out. Mr. Pole turned to the
breakfast-table, rubbing his hands. Seeing herself and her case
abandoned, Mrs. Chump gave a deplorable shout. “Ye're crool! and young
women that look on at a fellow-woman's mis'ry. Oh! how can ye do ut! But
soft hearts can be the hardest. And all my seventy-five gone, gone! and
no law out of annybody. And no frightenin' of 'em off from doin' the
like another time! Oh, I will, I will have my money!”
“Tush! Come to breakfast, Martha,” said Mr. Pole. “You shall have money,
if you want it; you have only to ask. Now, will you promise to be quiet?
and I'll give you this money--the amount you've been dreaming about last
night. I'll fetch it. Now, let us have no scenes. Dry your eyes.”
Mr. Pole went to his private room, and returned just as Mrs. Chump
had got upon a succession of quieter sobs with each one of which she
addressed a pathetic roll of her eyes to the utterly unsympathetic
ladies respectively.
“There, Martha; there's exactly the sum for you--free gift. Say thank
you, and eat a good breakfast to show your gratitude. Mind, you take
this money on condition that you let the servants know you made a
mistake.”
Mrs. Chump sighed heavily, crumpling the notes, that the crisp sweet
sound might solace her for the hard condition.
“And don't dream any more--not about money, I mean,” said Mr. Pole.
“Oh! if I dream like that I'll be living double.” Mrs. Chump put her
hand to the notes, and called him kind, and pitied him for being the
loser. The sight of a fresh sum in her possession intoxicated her. It
was but feebly that she regretted the loss to her Samuel Bolton Pole.
“Your memory's worth more than that!” she said as she filled her purse
with the notes. “Anyhow, now I can treat somebody,” and she threw a wink
of promise at Adela. Adela's eyes took refuge with her papa, who leaned
over to her, and said: “You won't mind waiting till you see me again?
She's taken all I had.” Adela nodded blankly, and the next moment, with
an angry glance toward Mrs. Chump, “Papa,” said she, “if you wish to see
servants in the house on your return, you must yourself speak to them,
and tell them that we, their master and mistresses, do not regard them
as thieves.” Out of this there came a quarrel as furious as the ladies
would permit it to be. For Mrs. Chump, though willing to condone the
offence for the sum she had received, stuck infamy upon the whole
list of them. “The Celtic nature,” murmured Cornelia. And the ladies
maintained that their servants should be respected, at any cost.
“You, ma'am,” said Arabella, with a clear look peculiar to her when
vindictive--“you may have a stain on your character, and you are not
ruined by it. But these poor creatures...”
“Ye dare to compar' me--!”
“Contrast you, ma'am.”
“It's just as imp'dent.”
“I say, our servants, ma'am...”
“Oh! to the deuce with your 'ma'am;' I hate the word. It's like fittin'
a cap on me. Ye want to make one a turbaned dow'ger, ye malicious young
woman!”
“Those are personages that are, I believe, accepted in society!”
So the contest raged, Mrs. Chump being run clean through the soul twenty
times, without touching the consciousness of that sensitive essence.
Mr. Pole appeared to take the part of his daughters, and by-and-by Mrs.
Chump, having failed to arouse Mrs. Lupin's involuntary laugh (which
always consoled her in such cases), huffed out of the room. Then Mr.
Pole, in an abruptly serious way, bashfully entreated the ladies to be
civil to Martha, who had the best heart in the world. It sounded as if
he were going to say more. After a pause, he added emphatically, “Do!”
and went. He was many days absent: nor did he speak to Adela of the
money she had asked for when he returned. Adela had not the courage to
allude to it.