For days after the foregoing scene, Brookfield was unconscious of what
had befallen it. Wilfrid was trying his yacht, the ladies were preparing
for the great pleasure-gathering on Besworth lawn, and shaping astute
designs to exclude the presence of Mrs. Chump, for which they partly
condemned themselves; but, as they said, “Only hear her!” The excitable
woman was swelling from conjecture to certainty on a continuous public
cry of, “'Pon my hon'r!--d'ye think little Belloni's gone and marrud
Pole?”
Emilia's supposed flight had deeply grieved the ladies, when alarm and
suspicion had subsided. Fear of some wretched male baseness on the part
of their brother was happily diverted by a letter, wherein he desired
them to come to him speedily. They attributed her conduct to dread of
Mr. Pericles. That fervid devotee of Euterpe received the tidings
with an obnoxious outburst, which made them seriously ask themselves
(individually and in secret) whether he was not a moneyed brute, and
nothing more. Nor could they satisfactorily answer the question. He
raved: “You let her go. Ha! what creatures you are--hein? But you find
not anozer in fifty years, I say; and here you stop, and forty hours
pass by, and not a sing in motion. What blood you have! It is water--not
blood. Such a voice, a verve, a style, an eye, a devil, zat girl! and
all drawn up and out before ze time by a man: she is spoilt!”
He exhibited an anguish that they were not able to commiserate. Certain
expressions falling from him led them to guess that he had set some plot
in motion, which Emilia's flight had arrested; but his tragic outcries
were all on the higher ground of the loss to Art. They were glad to see
him go from the house. Soon he returned to demand Wilfrid's address.
Arabella wrote it out for him with rebuking composure. Then he insisted
upon having Captain Gambier's, whom he described as “ce nonchalant
dandy.”
“Him you will have a better opportunity of seeing by waiting here,”
said Adela; and the captain came before Mr. Pericles had retreated. “Ce
nonchalant” was not quite true to his title, when he heard that Emilia
had flown. He did not say much, but iterated “Gone!” with an elegant
frown, adding, “She must come back, you know!” and was evidently more
than commonly puzzled and vexed, pursuing the strain in a way that
satisfied Mr. Pericles more thoroughly than Adela.
“She shall come back as soon as she has a collar,” growled Mr. Pericles,
meaning captivity.
“If she'd only come back with her own maiden name,” interjected Mrs.
Chump, “I'll give her a character; but, upon my hon'r--d'ye think ut
possible, now...?”
Arabella talked over her, and rescued her father's name.
The noisy sympathy and wild speculations of the Tinleys and Copleys had
to be endured. On the whole, the feeling toward Emilia was kind, and the
hope that she would come to no harm was fervently expressed by all
the ladies; frequently enough, also, to show the opinion that it might
easily happen. On such points Mrs. Chump never failed to bring the
conversation to a block. Supported as they were by Captain Gambier,
Edward Buxley, Freshfield Sumner, and more than once by Sir Twickenham
(whom Freshfield, launching angry shafts, now called the semi-betrothed,
the statistical cripple, and other strong things that show a developing
genius for street-cries and hustings--epithets in every member of the
lists of the great Rejected, or of the jilted who can affect to be
philosophical), notwithstanding these aids, the ladies of Brookfield
were crushed by Mrs. Chump. Her main offence was, that she revived for
them so much of themselves that they had buried. “Oh! the unutterably
sordid City life!” It hung about her like a smell of London smoke. As a
mere animal, they passed her by, and had almost come to a state of mind
to pass her off. It was the phantom, or rather the embodiment of their
First Circle, that they hated in the woman. She took heroes from the
journals read by servant-maids; she thought highly of the Court of
Aldermen; she went on public knees to the aristocracy; she was proud, in
fact, of all City appetites. What, though none saw the peculiar sting?
They felt it; and one virtue in possessing an 'ideal' is that, lodging
in you as it does, it insists upon the interior being furnished by your
personal satisfaction, and not by the blindness or stupidity of the
outer world. Thus, in one direction, an ideal precludes humbug.
The ladies might desire to cloak facts, but they had no pleasure
in deception. They had the feminine power of extinguishing things
disagreeable, so long as nature or the fates did them no violence. When
these forces sent an emissary to confound them, as was clearly the case
with Mrs. Chump, they fought. The dreadful creature insisted upon shows
of maudlin affection that could not be accorded to her, so that she
existed in a condition of preternatural sensitiveness. Among ladies
pretending to dignity of life, the horror of acrid complaints
alternating with public offers of love from a gross woman, may be
pictured in the mind's eye. The absence of Mr. Pole and Wilfrid, which
caused Mrs. Chump to chafe at the restraint imposed by the presence of
males to whom she might not speak endearingly, and deprived the ladies
of proper counsel, and what good may be at times in masculine authority,
led to one fierce battle, wherein the great shot was fired on both
sides. Mrs. Chump was requested to leave the house: she declined.
Interrogated as to whether she remained as an enemy, knowing herself
to be so looked upon, she said that she remained to save them from
the dangers they invited. Those dangers she named, observing that Mrs.
Lupin, their aunt, might know them, but was as liable to be sent to
sleep by a fellow with a bag of jokes as a watchdog to be quieted by
a bone. The allusion here was to Mrs. Lupin's painful, partially
inexcusable, incurable sense of humour, especially when a gleam of it
led to the prohibited passages of life. The poor lady was afflicted
so keenly that, in instances where one of her sex and position in the
social scale is bound to perish rather than let even the shadow of a
laugh appear, or any sign of fleshly perception or sympathy peep out,
she was seen to be mutely, shockingly, penitentially convulsed: a
degrading sight. And albeit repeatedly remonstrated with, she, upon
such occasions, invariably turned imploring glances--a sort of frowning
entreaty--to the ladies, or to any of her sex present. “Did you not
see that? Oh! can you resist it?” she seemed to gasp, as she made those
fruitless efforts to drag them to her conscious level. “Sink thou, if
thou wilt,” was the phrase indicated to her. She had once thought her
propensity innocent enough, and enjoyable. Her nieces had almost cured
her, by sitting on her, until Mrs. Chump came to make her worst than
ever. It is to be feared that Mrs. Chump was beginning to abuse her
power over the little colourless lady. We cannot, when we find ourselves
possessed of the gift of sending a creature into convulsions, avoid
exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the victims of the modern feminine
'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman; devout and charitable, as her
nieces admitted; but radically--what? They did not like to think, or to
say, what;--repugnant, seemed to be the word. A woman who consented
to perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a
violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter,
was, in their judgement, righteously a victim. After signal efforts to
lift her up, the verdict was that their Aunt Lupin did no credit to
her sex. If we conceive a timorous little body of finely-strung nerves,
inclined to be gay, and shrewdly apprehensive, but depending for her
opinion of herself upon those about her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin's
life was one of sorrow and scourges in the atmosphere of the 'ideal.'
Never did nun of the cloister fight such a fight with the flesh, as this
poor little woman, that she might not give offence to the Tribunal
of the Nice Feelings which leads us to ask, “Is sentimentalism in
our modern days taking the place of monasticism to mortify our poor
humanity?” The sufferings of the Three of Brookfield under Mrs. Chump
was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin's. The good little woman's soul
withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces helped her daily.
Laughter, far from expanding her heart and invigorating her frame, was a
thing that she felt herself to be nourishing as a traitor in her bosom:
and the worst was, that it came upon her like a reckless intoxication at
times, possessing her as a devil might; and justifying itself, too, and
daring to say, “Am I not Nature?” Mrs. Lupin shrank from the remembrance
of those moments.
In another age, the scenes between Mrs. Lupin and Mrs. Chump, greatly
significant for humanity as they are, will be given without offence
on one side or martyrdom on the other. At present, and before our
sentimentalists are a concrete, it would be profitless rashness to
depict them. When the great shots were fired off (Mrs. Chump being
requested to depart, and refusing) Mrs. Lupin fluttered between the
belligerents, doing her best to be a medium for the restoration of
peace. In repeating Mrs. Chump's remarks, which were rendered purposely
strong with Irish spice by that woman, she choked; and when she conveyed
to Mrs. Chump the counter-remarks of the ladies, she provoked utterances
that almost killed her. A sadder life is not to be imagined. The
perpetual irritation of a desire to indulge in her mortal weakness,
and listening to the sleepless conscience that kept watch over it; her
certainty that it would be better for her to laugh right out, and
yet her incapacity to contest the justice of her nieces' rebuke; her
struggle to resist Mrs. Chump, which ended in a sensation of secret
shameful liking for her--all these warring influences within were seen
in her behaviour.
“I have always said,” observed Cornelia, “that she labours under a
disease.” What is more, she had always told Mrs. Lupin as much, and her
sisters had echoed her. Three to one in such a case is a severe trial to
the reason of solitary one. And Mrs. Lupin's case was peculiar, inasmuch
as the more she yielded to Chump-temptation and eased her heart of
its load of laughter, the more her heart cried out against her and
subscribed to the scorn of her nieces. Mrs. Chump acted a demon's part;
she thirsted for Mrs. Lupin that she might worry her. Hitherto she had
not known that anything peculiar lodged in her tongue, and with no other
person did she think of using it to produce a desired effect; but now
the scenes in Brookfield became hideous to the ladies, and not wanting
in their trials to the facial muscles of the gentlemen. A significant
sign of what the ladies were enduring was, that they ceased to speak of
it in their consultations. It is a blank period in the career of young
creatures when a fretting wretchedness forces them out of their dreams
to action; and it is then that they will do things that, seen from
the outside (i.e. in the conduct of others), they would hold to be
monstrous, all but impossible. Or how could Cornelia persuade herself,
as she certainly persuaded Sir Twickenham and the world about her, that
she had a contemplative pleasure in his society? Arabella drew nearer to
Edward Buxley, whom she had not treated well, and who, as she might have
guessed, had turned his thoughts toward Adela; though clearly without
encouragement. Adela indeed said openly to her sisters, with a Gallic
ejaculation, “Edward follows me, do you know; and he has adopted a sort
of Sicilian-vespers look whenever he meets me with Captain Gambier. I
could forgive him if he would draw out a dagger and be quite theatrical;
but, behold, we meet, and my bourgeois grunts and stammers, and seems to
beg us to believe that he means nothing whatever by his behaviour. Can
you convey to his City-intelligence that he is just a trifle ill-bred?”
Now, Arabella had always seen Edward as a thing that was her own, which
accounts for the treatment to which, he had been subjected. A quick
spur of jealousy--a new sensation--was the origin of her leaning toward
Edward; and the plea of saving Adela from annoyance excused and covered
it. He, for his part, scarcely concealed his irritation, until a little
scented twisted note was put in his hand, which said, “You are as
anxious as I can be about our sweet lost Emilia! We believe ourselves
to be on her traces.” This gave him wonderful comfort. It put Adela in
a beautiful fresh light as a devoted benefactress and delicious
intriguante. He threw off some of his most telling caricatures at this
period. Adela had divined that Captain Gambier suspected his cousin
Merthyr Powys of abstracting Emilia, that he might shield her from Mr.
Pericles. The Captain confessed it, calmly blushing, and that he was in
communication with Miss Georgiana Ford, Mr. Powys's half-sister;
about whom Adela was curious, until the Captain ejaculated, “A
saint!”--whereat she was satisfied, knowing by instinct that the
preference is for sinners. Their meetings usually referred to Emilia;
and it was astonishing how willingly the Captain would talk of her.
Adela repeated to herself, “This is our mask,” and thus she made it the
Captain's; for it must be said that the conquering Captain had never
felt so full of pity to any girl or woman to whom he fancied he had done
damage, as to Emilia. He enjoyed a most thorough belief that she was
growing up to perplex him with her love, and he had not consequently
attempted to precipitate the measure; but her flight had prematurely
perplexed him. In grave debate with the ends of his moustache for a
term, he concluded by accusing Merthyr Powys; and with a little feeling
of spite not unknown to masculine dignity, he wrote to Merthyr's
half-sister--“merely to inquire, being aware that whatever he does
you have been consulted on, and the friends of this Miss Belloni are
distressed by her absence.”
The ladies of Brookfield were accustomed to their father's occasional
unpremeditated absences, and neither of them had felt an apprehension
which she could not dismiss, until one morning Mr. Powys sent up his
card to Arabella, requesting permission to speak with her alone.