Comin' Thro' the Rye (Mathers)/Summer/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
"In the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice."
At Luttrell our letters are brought up to us with our cup of early tea. Wise men tell us that our inveterate habit of tea-drinking is in reality but another form of dram-drinking, and that we are hardly less to be blamed than the poor gin-soddened wretches who reel hither and thither in our streets, a blot and a shame upon our country's manhood. They love their strong, coarse, deadly cups, and fly to them over ruined homes and women's broken hearts, and their own lost souls; and we who love our delicate, piquant, refreshing cup of tea, fly to it also, and reap our reward in shattered nerves and a hundred and one of the intangible, irritable disorders that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers never knew, or so many of them had not lived to such a full and healthy old age. It is a habit of self-indulgence, no doubt; and, perhaps, if the liquid really intoxicated us, we should have a tough battle with our inclination, and give it up. Fortunately, however, it does nothing of the sort.
I have only one letter, and it lies on the tray, staring me in the face. Letters! What a little word, and what a lot it means! Only a flimsy bit of paper to guard secrets that might set the whole world agog; only a few beaten-out rags between prying, jealous eyes, and the written down confirmation that, blared abroad would carry wreck and ruin to many a proud and unblemished home.
Milord, reading his letters with a covert smile, on one side of the shallow breakfast table, glances over to where miladi sits, reading hers, with a curious expression flitting over her features. Neither knows any more than the dead who are each other's correspondents; but if each were to make a snatch across the table and exchange notes, perhaps husband and wife would get a better idea of the real character, aims, and life of the other than they ever had before. I like this Luttrell fashion of receiving and reading one's letters alone. It must be trying to have your neighbour watching your crestfallen countenance over unpleasant news, or your satisfied smile if you receive good. The face will sometimes expound the letter as clearly as though the writing were laid before the looker on.
And now for George's epistle. I have heard that love words written down are even sweeter than love words spoken; if it be so, must not unwelcome love-making be even nastier on paper than when spoken? I break the seal and take out the sheet, which is written over in a bold bright handwriting, very like his own looks. It is not very long or particularly eloquent, but it is manly and lover-like, and not sufficiently spoony, thank heaven, to read ridiculously. I think a good long course of such letters as these would impress me very favourably as regards him. If he only would be made to understand how much better I like him when he is sensible, than when he is talking nonsense! A man should be firm, yet tender; strong to govern, yet easily led. A woman despises him when he grovels abjectly at her feet; but he chills her when he soars away into the clouds, I wonder if I shall ever have a lover who will hit the happy mean?
This first of September has come upon us in kingly state, with mantle of azure and broad level sunbeams, with soft wooing breath and dew-spangled grass and leaf, and as I lean out of my window in the still early freshness of the morning, and look abroad at the beauty of hill and valley, land and sea, I marvel to myself whether the pretty brown birds are up and about, preening themselves in the sunshine, tasting of the gleaming dew, as happy and careless and ignorant to-day as they have been all through their short, merry, pleasant young lives.
Breakfast is early this morning, to suit the sportsmen, and when I go downstairs I find it well begun. The men are eating with a healthy vigour, that nothing short of some prospective slaughter of bird or beast ever inspires in their manly breasts. They all look intensely awake, and upon their countenances is that satisfied, all-is-well expression, that nothing on earth, save the first of September, ever brings there. Shorn of their nether garments, and clad in knickerbockers, they stand confessed—stalwart men of flesh and muscle, or weakly miserable creatures, whose legs look as though a touch would break them. Fane, Charles Lovelace, Sir George Vestris, and Paul Vasher stand the test well; but the others—ah, what a falling off was there!
The conversation is not particularly interesting; it is of "covers" and "coveys," "bags" and "beats," with many other phrases that convey small meaning to our ears, and once there is an indistinct murmur of "luncheon and ladies." Yes, ladies come last of all! For this is that day of days when women, with a certain sinking of the heart, or a sore smarting of their vanity, are forced to confess that they possess but a divided empire over the hearts of men, and that fairer than all the charms of his mistress, yea, sweeter even than the breath of her lips and the music of her voice, is to a man on this day the stubble under his feet, the feel of a gun in his hand, and the sight of a flock of little, soft, plump brown birds. The knowledge is degrading, and we all have a more or less hang-dog, neglected air. Alice looks as though she were going shooting too in her deft, workmanlike Norfolk suit of grey. I wonder if, in the city of veiled women in Siam, shooting is practised by the gentler sex, as well as the calling of policeman, soldier, and blacksmith?
Breakfast is over, and we are all leaving the dining-room.
"Won't you wish me good luck?" asks Paul Vasher, standing before me, big and masterful in his cool grey clothes. (What splendid legs he has got?)
"No, for you're bound on a bad errand. On the contrary, I hope you will miss everything, and that"—I cast about flounderingly for a suitable sporting phrase—"that your neighbour will wipe your eye!"
He laughs. "Who taught you that expression?"
"I forget. Jack, I think. It was quite right, was it not?"
"Quite."
We are all at the hall door now, where are gathered together sportsmen, keepers, and dogs, and a handful of young wives and maids. Milly is bidding her lord farewell for a whole day, with a fervour that many a death-bed parting lacks; Alice is standing on tiptoe to kiss Charles. Silvia and Sir George are in the background. It is as pretty a picture to my mind as any of Mr. Frith's.
"I hope," says Paul Vasher, "that you will enjoy your afternoon by the sea, and—You never answered my question yesterday—was it an impertinent one?"
"It was," I say, looking at him steadily through the burning red of my cheeks. "What if I had asked you if you had a Dulcinea?"
"What, indeed!" he says, looking down on me with an amused laughter in his eyes.
"Are you coming, Vasher?" calls Fane; and he goes with the rest.
The girls they leave behind them stand at the door and look after them, and, when the last pair of legs has vanished, turn and look at one another with somewhat lack lustre eyes. Eight women left to each other's society for a whole day! Well may we look dull. I want to get Alice and Milly to myself for a bit, but how about these others? Silvia speaks first. No fear of her putting up with a morning with her own sex. She is going to write letters in her room, she says, if Mrs. Luttrell does not mind. Mrs. Luttrell does not mind, and she goes away. The Listers are going to spend the morning in the garden, if Mrs. Luttrell pleases, so they vanish likewise. Mesdames Fleming and Lister are still in bed, their morning toilettes being affairs of some importance, so we are free of all incumbrances, and able to follow our own devices. Having worshipped the babies on our knees for a full hour, we go into Milly's boudoir.
"Only to think," I say, executing a pirouette on the tips of my toes, "that we three should be all together again here, and that there is no one to send us to bed, or call us names, or insist on our talking!"
"Is he as bad as ever?" asks Milly.
"He is worse!" I say with conviction. "When a person has got into a habit of making himself and everybody round him miserable, he does not stand still—he goes on improving. By the time he is sixty I cannot imagine what he will be!"
"Marry!" says Alice, encouragingly; "that is the only thing a spinster can do in self-defence!"
"You have been so lucky!" I say; "but how do you know I shall be the same? Besides, where is the husband to come from?" I add, laughing.
"But you have a lover," says Alice, "only you will not tell me anything about him."
"There cannot be much to tell yet, I should think," says Milly, with some sisterly rebuke in her tone. "Why, she has only known him since the day before yesterday!"
"Who are you talking about?" asks Alice, looking puzzled. "Nell's lover is not here at all; he is at Silverbridge."
"Is he not?" says Milly, with a queer smile. "I suppose I was mistaken."
"How refreshing it is to see any one blush," says Alice, meditatively. "Now in London, or good society, you never see the ghost of a blush anywhere!"
"But this Silverbridge lover," says Milly, with interest, "who is he—what is he—where did he come from?"
"He is a travelling packman," I say gravely. "I met him in the fields, and he came from Glasgow. We won't talk about him. Tell me, Milly, do you think that while I am here you will have a ball?"
"Tell me about this young man first," says Milly," and I will tell you about the ball afterwards."
This is what I have been dreading: a long, comfortable, married women's conversation over my matrimonial prospects, with a calm and dispassionate balancing of pros and cons, in which my own heart will have no concern. For of all the strenuous advocates of two people marrying who are not particularly fitted for each other, commend me to a couple of young women who have married for love and are perfectly happy; they do not know what uncongenial wedlock means, and cannot be brought to understand its misery. I give a deep groan. With these inquisitors I know of no arts that will avail me save flight, and I do not wish to run away; for, judging by an intangible something in Milly's face just now, I have a shrewd suspicion that not only is there a ball, but that the day is fixed—so here goes.
"Alice, Milly, I won't deny it. I have got a lover, and his name is Tempest, and he lives at Silverbridge, and I don't mean to marry him if I can possibly help it; and I have told him so, and he is very good-looking, and—and that's all!" Here I stop, out of breath.
"Tempest!" says Milly; "I am sure I heard Fane talking about some Tempests the other day. Are they not very rich people?"
"I believe so!"
"And why on earth don't you marry him?" asks Alice, warmly. "You will see nobody in Silverbridge; and as to living at home with papa——— By the way, what does he say to your having a lover?"
"He does not know it, or at least he never says anything."
"Although it is all going on under his very nose!" says Milly. "Well, one of these days he will open his eyes very wide and be furious, and you will be sent to bed for a week."
"I expect he will make a great fuss," I say cheerfully. "I only hope he will lock me up altogether, for then George Tempest will not be able to get at me."
"Nell," says Alice, with a serious disbelief in her voice, "have you kept back anything?"
"What, about Mr. Tempest?"
"Of course. Now you said he was good-looking—is he short?"
"He is over six feet."
"And he has not a hump?"
"No."
"Does he talk through his nose?"
"No."
"Or wear large plaid suits?"
"No."
"Is he ignorant? Not that that signifies, for nowadays only the middle classes are well-informed; well-born people are nearly always doubtful as to their spelling."
"No," I say again.
"Is there insanity in the family?" asks Milly.
"No! No! No!?" I say, jumping up and going off into immoderate laughter. "He is nice, charming, desirable in every way; but—is it so very hard to understand?—I can't marry him, for I do not love him!"
"Then you must be in love with somebody else!" says Alice, scanning with broad-eyed candour my disturbed face, "though where you can have seen him I'm sure it is difficult to imagine."
"I am not in love!" I say, indignantly; "I never was in love! I would not do anything so silly, so—so ridiculous. If I had had any fancy that way I should have made a donkey of myself at Silverbridge long ago."
"And how long have you been sure that you do not care about Mr. Tempest? Since the day before yesterday?" asks Milly, saucy persistence in her splendid eyes.
"I have known it all along," I say, steadily. "What should the day before yesterday have to do with it?"
"Nothing," says Milly, with a baffling glance at Alice. However, I will not notice their looks.
"And now for the ball," I say, fanning my heated countenance with the tail of my pannier. "Are you really going to have one?"
"On the 17th. Shall I send Mr. Tempest an invitation?"
"How delightful!" I say, drawing a deep breath. "I have never been to a dance in my life, you know, and———"
"What are you going to wear?" asks Alice, and her literal question brings me very suddenly down from the rose-coloured clouds on which I am floating. My jaw drops, and I stare at her blankly.
"I never thought of that," I say, slowly; "I was thinking of the dancing, the fun, and———"
"Have you not a single ball dress?" asks Milly, rather cruelly, I think, for she knows as well as I do how the governor mulcts us in pin-money.
"A ball dress!" I repeat, derisively. "Indeed, you may thank your stars that I have come in a gown at all, and not a petticoat body, for there is so much trouble to get any clothes at Silverbridge, that very soon, I believe, we shall have to do with none at all."
"Of course you must have a dress," says Milly, calmly: "had you not better write to Howell and James, and order one?"
Howell and James! When even that refuge of the destitute, William Whiteley, is far, far beyond me! Clearly, Milly has forgotten the days of her youth.
"I shall not appear," I say, miserably; "I could not dance and enjoy myself with an awful bill hanging over me all the evening, and knowing what it would cost mother, so I shall be ill the night of the party, unless you think a costume à la squaw, consisting of a pearl necklace and a pair of boots, would be full dress enough."
"It would be quite full enough," says Alice, "and extremely suited to the weather, only Mrs. Grundy might object."
"If you had only been at Silverbridge at the last bill row," I say, sinking into still deeper dejection, "you would not feel inclined to laugh at the prospect of another."
"Tell us about it," says my lovely sister; "these rows were terrifying things, but very amusing to think of after."
"The last was amusing," I say, laughing heartily, in spite of the dismal business of getting a gown that unpleasantly pervades my mind; "you remember Snooks, the draper?"
"Rather."
"You know the consternation his modest handwriting ever caused in our domestic circle? Well, at midsummer he sent in his account, and of course papa, instead of paying it, danced upon it as usual. I fancy he has a notion that after dancing a pas seul over bills they are, in fact, discharged, don't you? Well, times being bad with Snooks, he plucked up a spirit, and wrote a gentle request for his dues, but when it arrived no one could be found brave enough to present it to the governor; for two days it was handed round the house, everybody, servants and all, repudiating it, and then with one consent it was decided that something must be done. The Bull of Basan proposed that we should lay it on the Prayer-book, and receive in a body his overflowing wrath, but, after some consideration, that plan was rejected. Finally it was decided that we should place it in that little study at the top of the stairs, by his bedroom, where he often sits, and the time for putting it there was fixed at immediately after dinner, when he is always sitting in the library over his wine. Dinner over, Basan fetched the fatal epistle, and we set off, full speed, for the study, clattering up the stairs like mad, he first, I following. You know how narrow the staircase is, and that the door opens abruptly to the left, so that until you are right on to the threshold you cannot see in at all; well, Basan flung the door open, and—stopped short. Alice! Milly! over his face came the most awful, indescribable, wonderful change; he looked as if he was turned to stone. Nothing short of the governor could produce that look on any of our faces, and he was down in the library.
"'What on earth is the matter?' I said, poking my grinning countenance round the corner; 'you look as if you had seen the dev—' There, within half a yard of my nose, stood the governor! The old gentleman would have been an agreeable apparition compared with that. Do you know, the grin absolutely froze on my face; for a moment I stared, then turned tail and ran, Basan after me. Half-way down the stairs I remembered the bill.
"'You must go back and give it him!' I said in an agony, and I pushed him back.
"Meanwhile papa was capering at the top of the stairs in a perfect fury, asking how we dared go to his room, what we wanted there, did we mean to break the staircase in with our confounded boots, etc. When Basan went back with the letter, he tore it out of his hand, saw what it was, and then threw it at him! Basan never stopped to pick it up that time; he ran in good earnest, so did I. To this day it was a mystery to us how he got up there, for we saw him go into the library."
"I know it all so well," says Alice, drying her eyes, "but we have had more amusing rows than that."
"Do you remember———" And here we slide off into a crowd of ludicrous reminiscences, that are very real and true, and ridiculous to us, but maybe would seem sad and unlikely enough to other people. Perhaps they would not understand how we could laugh at all over such things; but, thank God, we have ever been able to find a silver lining to our clouds, and it is better to bear our ills with a smiling countenance, is it not, than to turn bitter, and hard and cynical, and rail against heaven?