I GO BACK TO THE VINE--AFTER SUNSET--A TWILIGHT EXISTENCE--SALAD OF
MONK'S-HOOD--A ROYAL SUMMONS.
The few marked events of my life have generally happened on my
birthdays. It was on my fifteenth birthday that Mr. Arkwright got a
letter from one of my relations on the subject of my going to live with
my great-grandfather and grandmother.
They were now very old. My great-grandfather was becoming "childish,"
and the little dear duchess was old and frail for such a charge alone.
They had no daughter. The religious question was laid aside. My most
Protestant relatives thought my duty in the matter overwhelming, and
with all my clinging of heart to the moor home I felt myself that it was
so.
I don't know how I got over the parting. I wandered hopelessly about
familiar spots, and wished I had made sketches of them; but how could I
know I had not all life before me? The time was short, and preparations
had to be made. This kept us quiet. At the last, Jack put in all my
luggage, and did everything for me. Then he kissed me, and said, "GOD
bless you, Margery," and "linking" Eleanor by force, led her away and
comforted her like the good, dear boy he is. Clement drove me so
recklessly down the steep hill, and over the stones, that the momentary
expectation of an upset dried my tears, and I did not see much of the
villagers' kind and too touching farewells.
And so to the bleak station again, and the familiar old porter, whom
fate seems to leave long enough at _his_ post, and on through the
whirling railway panorama, by which one passes to so much joy and so
much sorrow--and then I was at The Vine once more.
I wonder if I am like my great-grandmother in her youth? Some people
(Elspeth among them) declare that it is so; and others that I am like my
poor mother. I suppose I have some Vandaleur features, from an eerie
little incident which befell me on the threshold of The Vine--an
appropriate beginning to a life that always felt like a weird, shadowy
dream.
I did not ring the bell of the outer gate on my arrival, because Adolphe
(grown up, but with the old, ruddy boy's face on the top of his man's
shoulders) was anxiously waiting for me, and devoted himself to my
luggage, telling me that Master was in the garden. Thither I ran so
hastily, that a straggling sweetbriar caught my hat and my net, and
dragged them off, sending my hair over my shoulders. My hair is not
long, however, like Eleanor's, and it curls, and I sometimes wear it
loose; so I did not stop to rearrange it, but hurried on towards my
great-grandfather, who was coming slowly to meet me from the other end
of the terrace, his hands behind his back, as of old. At least, I
thought it was to meet me; but as he came near I saw that he was
unconscious of my presence. He looked very old, his face was pale and
shrivelled, like a crumpled white kid glove; his wild blue eyes,
insensible of what was before them, seemed intently fixed on something
that no one else could see, and he was talking to himself, as we call it
when folk talk with the invisible.
It was very silly, but I really felt the colour fading from my face with
fright. My great-grandfather's back was to the west, where a few bars of
red across the sky, as it was to be seen through the Scotch firs, were
all that remained of the sunset. That strange light was on everything,
of which modern pre-Raphaelite painters are so fond. I was tired with my
long journey and previous excitement; and when I suddenly remembered
that Mr. Vandaleur was said to have in some measure lost his reason, a
shudder came over me. In a moment more he saw me. I think my crimson
cloak caught his eye, but his welcome was hardly less alarming than his
abstraction. He started, and held up his hands, and a pained, puzzled
expression troubled his face. Then a flush, which seemed to make him
look older than the whiteness; and then, with a shrill, feeble cry of
"Victoire, ma belle!" he tottered towards me so hastily that I thought
he must have fallen; but, like a vision, a little figure flitted from
the French window of the drawing-room, and in a moment my
great-grandmother was supporting him, and soothing him with gentle
words in French. I could see now how helpless he was. For a bit he
seemed still puzzled and confused; but he clung to her and kissed her
hand, and suffered himself to be led indoors. Then I followed them,
through the window, into the room where the candles were not yet lighted
for economy's sake--the glare of the red sunset bars making everything
dark to me--with a strange sense of gloom.
It would be hard to imagine a stronger contrast than that between my
life in my new home and my life in my home upon the moors. At the
Arkwrights' we lived so essentially with the times. Our politics, on the
whole, were liberal; our theology inclined to be broad; our ideas on
social subjects were reformatory, progressive, experimental. Scientific
subjects were a speciality of the household; and, living in a
manufacturing district, mere neighbourhood kept us with the great
current of mercantile interests. We argued each other into a general
unfixity of opinions; and, full of youthful dreams of golden ages, were
willing to believe this young world--where not yet we, but only our
words could fly--to be but upon the threshold of true civilization.
Above all, life seemed so short, our hands were so full, so over-full of
work, the daylight was not long enough for us, and we grudged meals and
sleep.
How different it was under the shadow of this old Vine! I am very
thankful, now, that I had grace, under the sense of "wasted time," which
was at first so irritating, to hold by my supreme child-duty towards my
aged parents against the mere modern fuss of "work," against what John
Wesley called the "lust of finishing" any labour, and to serve them in
their way rather than in my own. But the change was very great. How we
"pottered" through the days!--with what needless formalities, what
slowness, what indecision! How fatiguing is enforced idleness! How
lengthy were the evening meals, where we sat, trifling with the
vine-leaves under a single dish of fruit, till the gloaming deepened
into gloom!
At fifteen one is very susceptible of impressions; very impatient of
what one is not used to. The very four-post bed in which I slept
oppressed me, and the cracked basin held together for years by the
circular hole in the old-fashioned washstand. The execution-picture only
made me laugh now.
Then, as to the meals. No doubt a great many people eat and drink too
much, as we are beginning to discover. Whether we at the Vicarage did, I
cannot say; but the change to the unsubstantial fare on which very old
people like the Vandaleurs keep the flickering light of life aglow was
very great; and yet in this slow, vegetating existence my appetite soon
died away. The country was flat and damp too; and by and by neuralgia
kept me awake at night, as regularly as the ghost of my
great-grandfather had done in years gone by. But it is strange how
quickly unmarked time slips on. Day after day, week after week ran by,
till a lassitude crept over me in which I felt amazed at former
ambitions, and a certain facility of sympathy, which has been in many
respects an evil, and in many a good to me, seemed to mould me to the
interests of the fading household. And so I lived the life of my
great-grandparents, which was as if science made no strides, and men no
struggles; as if nothing were to be done with the days, but to wear
through them in all patient goodness, loyal to a long-fallen dynasty,
regretful of some ancient virtues and courtesies, tender towards past
beauties and passions, and patient of succeeding sunsets, till this aged
world should crumble to its close.
My great-grandfather came to know me again, though his mind was in a
disordered, dreary condition; from old age, Elspeth said, but it often
recalled what I had heard of the state of his mother's intellect before
her death. The dear little old lady's intellects were quite bright, and,
happily, not only entire, but cultivated. I do not know how people who
think babies and servants are a woman's only legitimate interests would
like to live with women who have either never met with, or long
outlived them. I know how my dear granny's educated mind and sense of
humour helped us over a dozen little domestic difficulties, and broke
the neck of fidgets that seemed almost inevitable at her great age and
in that confined sphere of interests.
I certainly faded in our twilight existence, as if there were some truth
in the strange old theory that very aged people can withdraw vital force
from young companions and live upon it. But every day and hour of my
stay made me love and reverence my great-grandmother more and more, and
be more and more glad that I had come to know her, and perhaps be of
some little service to her.
Indeed, it was my great-grandfather's condition that kept us so much
among the shadows. The old lady had a delightful youthfulness of spirit,
and took an almost wistful pleasure in hearing about our life at the
Arkwrights', as if some ambitious Scotch blood in her would fain have
kept better pace with the currents of the busy world. But when my
grandfather joined us, we had to change the subject. Modern ideas jarred
upon him. And it was seldom that he was not with us. The tender love
between the old couple was very touching.
"It must seem strange to you, my dear, to think of such long lives so
little broken by events," said my great-grandmother. "But your dear
grandfather and I have never been apart for a day since our happy
marriage."
I do not think they were apart for an hour whilst I was with them. He
followed her about the house, if she left him for many minutes, crying,
"Victoire! Victoire!" chiefly from love, but I was sometimes spiteful
enough to think also because he could not amuse himself.
"The master's calling for you again," said Elspeth, with some
impatience, one day when grandmamma was teaching me a bit of dainty
cookery in the kitchen.
"Oh, fly, petite!" she cried to me; "and say that his Majesty has
summoned the Duchess."
Much bewildered, I ran out, and met my great-grandfather on the terrace,
crying, "Victoire! Victoire!" in fretful tones.
"His Majesty has summoned the Duchess, sir," said I, dropping a slight
curtsy, as I generally did on disturbing the old gentleman.
To my astonishment, this seemed quite to content him. He drew in his
elbows, and spread the palms of his hands with a very polite bow,
saying, "Bien, bien;" and after murmuring something else in French,
which I did not catch, but which I fancy was an acknowledgment of the
prior claims of royalty, he folded his hands behind his back and
wandered away down the terrace, as I rushed off to my confectionery
again.
I found that this use of the old fable, which had calmed my
great-grandfather in past days, was no new idea. It was, in fact, a
graceful fiction which deceived nobody, and had been devised by my
great-grandmother out of deference to her husband's prejudices. In the
long years when they were very poor, their poverty was made, not only
tolerable but graceful, by Mrs. Vandaleur's untiring energy, but (though
he wouldn't, or perhaps couldn't, find any occupation by which to add to
their income) the sight of his Victoire, who should have been a duchess,
doing any menial work so distracted him, that my grandmother had to
devise some method to secure herself from his observation when she
washed certain bits of priceless lace which redeemed her old dresses
from commonness, or cooked some delicacy for Mons. le Duc's dinner, or
mended his honourable clothes. Thus Jeanette's old fable came into use;
first in jest, and then as an adopted form for getting rid of my
great-grandfather when he was in the way. It must have astonished a
practical woman like my great-grandmother to find how completely it
satisfied him. But there must have been a time when his helplessness and
impracticability tried her in many ways, before she fairly came to
realize that he never could be changed, and her love fell in with his
humours. On this point he was humoured completely, and never inquired on
what business his deceased Majesty of France required the attendance of
the Duchess that should have been!
To do him justice, if he was a helpless he was a very tender husband.
"He has never said a rude or unkind word to me since we were boy and
girl together," said the little old lady, with tears in her eyes. And
indeed, courtesy implies self-discipline; and even now the old man's
politeness checked his petulance over and over again. He never gave up
the habit of gathering flowers for my grandmother, and such exquisite
contrasts of colour I never saw combined by any other hand. Another
accomplishment of his was also connected with his love of plants.
"It's little enough a man can do about a house the best of times," said
Elspeth, "and the master's just as feckless as a bairn. But he makes a
fine sallet."
I shudder almost as I write the words. How little we thought that my
poor grandfather's one useful gift would have so fatal an ending!
But I must put it down in order. It was the end of many things. Of my
life at The Vine among them, and very nearly of my life in this world
altogether. My great-grandfather made delicious salads. I have heard him
say that he preferred our English habit of mixing ingredients to the
French one of dressing one vegetable by itself; but he said we did not
carry it far enough, we neglected so many useful herbs. And so his
salads were compounded not only of lettuce and cress, and so forth, but
of dandelion, sorrel, and half-a-dozen other field or garden plants.
Sometimes one flavour preponderated, sometimes another, and the sauce
was always good.
Now it is all over it seems to me that I must have been very stupid not
to have paid more attention to the strange flavour in the salad that
day. But I was thinking chiefly of the old lady, who was not very well
(Elspeth had an idea that she had had a very slight "stroke," but how
this was we cannot know now), whilst my grandfather was almost flightily
cheerful. I tasted the salad, and did not eat it, but I was the less
inclined to complain of it as they seemed perfectly satisfied.
Then my grandmother was taken ill. At first we thought it a development
of what we had noticed. Then Mr. Vandaleur became ill also, and we sent
Adolphe in haste for the doctor. At last we found out the truth. The
salad was full of young leaves of monk's-hood. Under what delusion my
poor grandfather had gathered them we never knew. Elspeth and I were
busy with the old lady, and he had made the salad without help from any
one.
From the first the doctor gave us little hope, and they sank rapidly.
Their priest, for whom Adolphe made a second expedition, did not arrive
in time; they were in separate rooms, and Elspeth and I flitted from one
to the other in sad attendance. The dear little old lady sank fast, and
died in the evening.
Then the doctor impressed on us the necessity of keeping her death from
my great-grandfather's knowledge.
"But supposing he asks?" said I.
"Say any soothing thing your ready wit may suggest, my dear young lady.
But the truth, in his present condition, would be a fatal shock."
It haunted me. "Supposing he asks." And late in the evening he did ask!
I was alone with him, and he called me.
"Marguerite, dear child, thou wilt tell me the truth. Why does my wife,
my Victoire, thy grandmother, not come to me?"
Pondering what lie I could tell him, and how, an irresistible impulse
seized me. I bent over him and said:
"Dear sir, the King has summoned the Duchess."
Does the mind regain power as the body fails? My great-grandfather
turned his head, and, as his blue eyes met mine, I could not persuade
myself that he was deceived.
"The will of his Majesty be done," he said faintly but firmly.
The next few moments seemed like years. Had I done wrong? Had it done
him harm? Above all, what did he mean? Were his words part of one last
graceful dream of the dynasty of the white lilies, or was his loyal
submission made now to a Majesty not of France, not even of this world?
It was an intense relief to me when he spoke again.
"Marguerite!"
I knelt by the bedside, and he laid his hand upon my head. An exquisite
smile shone on his face.
"Good child; pauvre petite! His Majesty will call me also, before long.
Is it not so? And then thou shalt rest."
His fine face clouded again with a wandering, troubled look, and his
fingers fumbled the bed-clothes. I saw that he had lost his crucifix in
moving his hand to my head. I gave it him, and he clasped his hands over
it once more, and carrying it to his lips with a smile, closed his eyes
like some good child going to sleep.
And Thou, O King of kings, didst summon him, as the dark faded into
dawn!