Joanna dared not leave the faint, vital spark to smoulder down or leap out. The moor was very unfrequented at this hour; at certain periods of the day, portions of it, intersected by meandering tracks, were crossed by men labouring in the adjacent fields or quarry; but till then it was only the circumstance of alarm being excited on Harry's account, or her protracted absence giving rise to surmise and search, that could bring them companions.
As a forlorn hope Joanna raised her voice and cried for assistance; fear and distress choked the sound, and the freezing air caused it to fall on the silence with a ringing quaver. She persevered, however, every now and then varying the appeal, "Papa, Lilias, Sandy, do some of you come to me; I want you here, for God's sake! here."
She took his big hands and chafed them between her own little ones; she lifted his head on her lap, her fingers getting entangled in his curly hair, she prayed for him that he might be restored to them.
He continued to breathe dully and heavily; his eyes never unclosed; she felt tempted to raise the lashes, as she would lift up and peep under the lids of a child. Ah! but she feared to see the balls sightless and glazing over fast. The marked, lively face was placid as if it were set in death, and the slight contraction between the brows, which she had remarked the first night she saw him, was almost effaced. How dreadful it would be if he died on her knees there, in the solitude of the moor! The son at the daughter's feet, as his father at her father's. How would his mother bear it? Her father would never survive this mournful re-writing of the old letters traced in blood. It should be she rather who should die; and Joanna in her piety, her goodness, her great love for her father, her exquisite kindness for Harry Jardine, did ask God if He sought a life, in His justice and mercy, to allow hers to pay for Harry's, to substitute her in some way for Harry; and Joanna well remembered that prayer afterwards.
Joanna was beginning to cower and fail in her trial. Suddenly she shook herself up, when she was lapsing into a heap nearly as passive as that beside her; a suggestion darted across her brain; she detected in the little pocket of her dress a bottle of a strong essence and perfume, which Polly Musgrave had forced upon her the day she left.
Joanna was quick and clear in following out a notion. With trembling fingers she poured the hot, stimulating, subtle liquid into her hollow hands, and bathed his forehead. She unloosed his cravat, and sent the warm stream over his throat and chest, rubbing them with her free hand, while she supported his head on the other arm; and inspired with fresh courage and trust she called anew this time a shrill, echoing call, and Harry Jardine shivered, sobbed, and stretched himself, and slowly opened his sealed eyes, looking her first vaguely and then wonderingly in the face, and her father's and Lilias's voices rose from opposite sides of the heath, near and far in reply. "What is it, Joanna? What has kept you? What has happened? We missed you; we were getting anxious; we are coming, coming!"
IV.—MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE.
Harry Jardine was taken to the Ewes some hours before his mother, who had happily been deceived as to his return on the previous night, was even apprised of his narrow escape. He received the greatest kindness from the Crawfurds, and his mother herself found it incumbent on her to write a little note to the Ewes, thanking the family for their humanity and benevolence towards her son. It is possible, had Mrs. Jardine been awakened to her son's danger a little sooner, and before its traces were entirely blotted out, the expressions in the note might have been a few shades less general and cold.
Mr. Crawfurd excused her fully. He would not have expected Harry to come back to the Ewes, though he rejoiced, from the bottom of his heart, that Joanna had served the young fellow. How much his poor father would have been delighted in him? Mr. Crawfurd rejoiced, although he was too righteous and humble-minded to say to himself that God was appeased, or that He had permitted this atonement as a sign in answer to his life-long penance.
Harry Jardine represented a different theory; he would be a dolt, a brute, unpardonably vindictive, if he did not cherish all friendly feelings to the Crawfurds; if he did not visit them openly and frankly. He did visit at the Ewes, but he found the plainest opportunities ready made for him during one fortnight at Hurlton, to come in contact with Joanna Crawfurd. She had gone there to look after Conny, suborned by Mrs. Maxwell, and laid up with a sore throat, and forlorn and wretched if one of her sisters was not looking after her.
This intercourse could scarcely fail to have one grand climax. Joanna, the thoughtful, imaginative, true, tender woman—a fair woman besides, with that one little blot which singularly appealed to him with a harsh sweet voice—a sufficiently rare woman, to stand quite distinct from her sisters and companions in the light of the practical, active, ardent, honest heart—became the one mistress in the world for Harry Jardine, coveted and craved by him as the best gift of God, without which the others were comparatively worthless, and for which he could have been willing to sacrifice them one and all. Harry himself, in after years, confessed that since the moment he awakened from that leaden drowsiness on the moor, the image of Joanna Crawfurd, tending him as a mother her sick child, was constantly before him.
Joanna had not precisely the same experience. From the moment that, with the prescience of a woman where feelings are concerned, she saw the end, she avoided Harry Jardine with all her power. Harry's generous determination and daring, his fearlessness, confidence, and steadfastness overpowered her.
Mr. Crawfurd was dreadfully upset by Harry Jardine's application to him, his claim for forbearance, his entreaty for grace, and his candid confession that his mother was violently opposed to his suit. It was a case which could neither be considered nor rejected without remorse. Oh, bitterness, which spread like an infection through so many years, and into such different relations, and spoilt even the young man's fairness, good faith, free forgiveness, and the purity and earnestness of his passion, the pearl of his manhood, which, if lost to him, would be a loss indeed! How Harry implored Mr. Crawfurd to spare it to him, to reflect that it was the greatest benefit which he asked at his hands, to pause before he denied it to him solely because he had been the unfortunate means of depriving him of his father!
Harry had agitating scenes with his mother besides; these two had never been placed against each other before, and the contest between them was neither gracious nor good for either heart.
"Harry, I am horrified at you; it is a dishonour to your poor father's memory; it is shocking to think of it; and if you have been so lost to duty as to fall into so unnatural an entanglement, it is surely the least you owe to both parents to give it up."
"Mother! I cannot see it as you do; my father fully exonerated Mr. Crawfurd—you have told me so a hundred times. No one, not you, his widow, mourned my father as Mr. Crawfurd mourned—nay, mourns him to this day."
"Harry, do you wish to see a bloody guest present at your wedding?"
"Mother, that is a baseless, cruel horror. You would not wish me to maintain a hereditary feud on the principle of my forefathers. I cannot tell what the Christian religion teaches if it does not enjoin forgiveness of injuries."
"I hope I am a Christian, Harry, and I have tried to forgive my enemies, but it is one thing to make every allowance for them and entertain charitable feelings towards them, and another to ally myself with them, and constitute them my closest friends. Harry, the whole neighbourhood would shrink from the idea of what you contemplate."
"If my principles and my heart said Yes, not the neighbourhood, but the whole world might cry No, and I would not feel bound to listen to the clamour."
"A young man's improper boast, Harry, and since you force me to it, not the world alone—I tell you nature objects to that girl—that girl of them all; how can you look her in the face and think of love?"
"Would you have me think of hate? Since you make the allusion, I declare to you, mother, that mark appeals to you and me in another fashion. Cain's brand! do they call it? And who set the brand, and when, on Cain's brow? Sovereign clemency, after the wanderer's punishment was more than he could bear, if the reflection of my father's blood was transmitted to so innocent and noble a proxy, it must have been designed to teach such as you and me New Testament lessons of perfect charity."
"Harry, I have never been able to look that girl in the face."
"Mother, I pray never to forget that face, although it remain like an angel's face to me, because it is the fairest example of the human face divine that I ever hope to behold."
"Harry Jardine, you are mad, or worse; these are some of the sickening French and German sentimentalities against which I have been warned. There is such a thing as a wholesome sense of repulsion, an honest manly recoil, a pure instinct of loathing, a thousand times to be preferred to this morbid mixture of good and evil, friend and foe, life and death, this defiance of decency and general opinion."
"Very true, mother; but there are a thousand exceptional cases, and a million points of ruthless prejudice. 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' sounded very righteous and respectable in the ears of the Jews, yet I believe the sentence had its condemnation, and the amendment was neither French nor German."
"Harry, you are profane, and you forget what is due to yourself and me."
The last saying was a hard one; his mother could be no judge of his profanity, but he had been a good son, and it had not been without a curb upon him that the strong man had accustomed himself to leave so much of the power and authority of Whitethorn in the wilful woman's hands.
In the library at the Ewes Mr. Crawfurd was addressing Joanna very gently.
"My dear, I am very sorry it cannot be; of course Mrs. Jardine will never consent, but it goes to my heart to grieve you."
"Papa, I cannot help it."
"And to grieve Harry Jardine."
"Papa, that is worse; but do not think that anybody—that he blames you."
"We shall trust, my dear, that he will soon recover the disappointment."
"Of course—it is not a great loss."
"My dear, pray don't smile when it hurts you, for I cannot bear it; it is natural that this should be a heavy cross to you; but setting it aside as unavoidable, is there no respect in which I can lighten it to you? No indulgence which you could fancy that I could procure for you? No old wish of his Joan's that papa could by an effort gratify? Surely I cannot be so miserable, child."
"Oh, no, papa! I mean you can please in a great many things; you always could, and you always will. Women are not like men, their natures are not so concentrated. They have so many tastes and whims, you know; I possess them by the score, and I will never cease to relish their fulfilment so long as you and I keep labouring together, papa. I am not going to be a hypocrite, papa. This strange story has vexed me a good deal, but I was aware from the first of its unsubstantial character. I still want money to be charitable on my own account, like Lilias. I've a notion to revive our old greenhouse; I've a longing to see a little of the world with you, sir, in spring and summer; I've never been indifferent to silks and muslins, though I think my chief weakness in dress is the very finest of fine chintz prints, ever so dear a yard, papa, which an artist might paint, and more of a Duchess's wear than velvet. All these matters are acceptable to me, papa."
"You are sure that you are my pet and darling."
"Yes, papa; you have spoilt me."
Joanna was gone to her own room; there she laid her head on her arm, and asked her heart bitterly, "Have I succeeded in deceiving papa? Can he believe for a moment that any poor precious treasure in the wide world will make up to me for the want of Harry Jardine; that there is anything left me but Heaven instead of Harry Jardine? But then there is papa, dear papa, and I used to be papa's. What will not women do for their children? I always thought I could attain as much for papa. I was proud to prove my love to him, and I will drive out Harry's image for papa's sake, though I should die in the struggle."
Harry did not altogether admire this resolution. He was a good fellow, an excellent fellow, and he had the true, ineffable devotion to Joanna Crawfurd; but he was not free from jealousy and irritation, as well as sorrow and fear, when he was compelled to part from her for a time, and content himself with swearing fidelity on his own account, and seeing her occasionally as an ordinary acquaintance, until their relative positions should be changed, or his truth fail.
The common world rolled on its course; the seasons succeeded each other, although even they seemed to culminate in dull, monotonous vanity and vexation of spirit. The frosty wind had swept "that lustre deep from glen and brae," and the chill watery mosses alone looked green and fresh when the snow melted. It was the cold under which Joanna Crawfurd shivered and shrank; at least so she assured every friendly person who remarked that she was thin, and paler than ever. Mrs. Jardine had looked her in the face, nay, kept nervously glancing at her when she was visible at church, on the loch where the curling match was played, or in the concert-room at the county town.
Of course the girl would get over it; yet Joanna bore a suspicious likeness to Mrs. Jardine's sister Anne, who did not "get over" such a cross. Mrs. Jardine remembered well her sister Anne's parting look, and now, strive as she would, she could not resist the conviction that it was hovering over Joanna Crawfurd's face. Mrs. Jardine, like the Laird of the Ewes, could have cried, "Pray do not smile, girl; you do not know how you look; we, the initiated, have not stony enough hearts to stand that." Mrs. Jardine was surprised that Harry could be so foolish as to redden and appear displeased at Joanna Crawfurd's gaiety.
Mrs. Jardine almost complained against Providence that she was condemned to punish her only child. Then she could not help speculating whether, if by some unimaginable arrangement of events, she had been the sufferer, and Harry's father had been spared to him, he would have denied Harry his happiness in the name of her memory, and from a sense of righteous animosity, whether, if she could have looked down purified and peaceful from the spirit-world, she would have desired the sacrifice, and whether she would not have pleaded against it for love and mercy's sake?
The winter was gone, the early spring was at hand, and all around the outskirts of the moor, like an incense to spring and the Lord of the spring, rose the smoke of the whin burnings which were to clear the ground for the sweet young grass, to employ the nibbling teeth of hundreds on hundreds of sheep and lambs. Joanna Crawfurd had never so sighed for spring, never sat in such passive inertness (highly provocative to Lilias), receiving and realizing what it brought to her.
But the period of listlessness and inaction, life-long to some, was nearly ended for this pair. With the last snowdrops of the garden in February, and the first glinting gowans of the lea in March, came the news to the country-side of the bankruptcy of one of the first of the chain of banks, whose defalcations have accomplished more in causing property to change hands than the lances of the moss-troopers. The young Laird of Whitethorn held money in the shape of his father's shares in one of those unlucky banks; and so it fell upon him one morning like a clap of thunder that he was responsible for about as much as the acres of Whitethorn would retrieve, besides the trifling morsel to whet his appetite in the loss of his loose thousands. Harry Jardine was likely to know himself as "landless, landless," as ever a proscribed Macgregor.
Harry rose to the encounter. "I am sorry for you, mother, and I do not pretend that I shall not regret the old moorland acres; but I shall do very well, notwithstanding. I'm old to learn a profession; but how many volunteers and retired lieutenants had to study and serve apprenticeships after the long wars! I will stick in; I don't mind it on my own account, and I will be proud to provide for you. I say, mother, don't vex yourself; perhaps it is the best thing that can happen to me. I don't think a fellow gets well seasoned unless he is knocked about at some time: better late than never. I have been coveting change—any change and occupation, an engrossing occupation—for the last few months." He said that to reconcile her to what was an overwhelming blow to her, and his words aroused her with a sharp pang. Had Harry become so miserable and sick of his blessings that he was ready to welcome the cold-bath of labour and poverty as a relief to his oppressive languor, and a ground of hope for his fainting mind?
But Harry came in to her with a troubled face, on another day—a mild day—a subtle, penetrating, relaxing day, under whose balmy breath it is doubly difficult to contend with encircling difficulties, and reject the one clue suddenly vouchsafed to lead us out of the labyrinth.
"I must tell you, mother, though, of course, it cannot be in the circumstances—he does not see it—but there is no fatality to bind me to his views. Mr. Crawfurd of the Ewes sent for me this morning, and I went to him immediately; I could not tell what he might have to say to me."
"Without consulting your mother, Harry?"
"Yes, mother," answered Harry, with unconscious sternness, "because it might have been my own business, entirely my own affair, with which no mortal, not even you, can be entitled to interfere. But it was only to offer and urge upon me a loan of money to enable me to satisfy the bank's claims, if they come to the worst, and retain Whitethorn, paying him at my leisure. I assure you that it was delicately done; my father's ghost may rest in peace. I beg your pardon, mother; I did not mean to pain you. I am afraid I do speak queerly at times. Well, well; it was a kind, confiding, neighbourly action, though I refused it decidedly, from the man whose alliance is forbidden to us. I had no resource but to respect myself, as I respected him; and it is no great matter that it hurt me to cut up that gentle, inoffensive old man, endeavouring to show his rue for having proved, twenty years ago, what my father was to at least an equal degree, and what I have no assurance that I would not have found myself, to a far greater extent than either of them—a slave to a false code of honour."
Harry sat down, haggard, dispirited, half-desperate. His mother made no reply. All the rest of the day she walked about the house like a restless spirit; half the night she paced up and down her chamber softly, lest Harry should hear her, and come in again, and begin to caress her; for she could not endure Harry's kisses now—they were like Joanna Crawfurd's smiles.
Was Harry quarrelling with his father's memory? It was a ghastly sacrilege to her; yet might he not arrive at cursing in his heart, even while he was grasping the devil within him by the throat? What had it not cost him? First, his young love and the cream of his happiness; and now his paternal acres, and his position among the independent, influential gentlemen of his native county. He might not value the last in his present fever and rashness, but he would weigh it more justly hereafter. The moorland inheritance was not of great money purchase, but it had descended to its possessors through long generations. It was hallowed by venerable associations. The name and the property together were of some importance in this nook of the south. Harry's father had a family affection for his place, and, doubtless, Harry entertained it also, undeveloped as yet, but to grow and acquire full maturity one day, addressing him at every pensive interval with a vain craving and yearning. And, again, in the confusion and distraction of Mrs. Jardine's feelings, there was her sister Anne haunting her dreams, and reproaching her with having forgotten her; and lastly, one verse in her well-worn Bible was constantly standing out before her aching eyes in letters of fire, and shining into her rebellious but scared heart, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice."
It is one thing to have been Christians all our lives, drawn along by a current, only broken by comparatively trivial, every-day temptations, contests and sacrifices, and another thing to wrestle with a decree that all at once confronts and contradicts a master-passion, a deeply-founded verdict, a strongly-rooted opinion whose overthrow will shake the entire framework of our lives.
Mrs. Jardine descended the stairs the next morning very pale and exhausted, and for the first time (though she was a widow by a peculiarly sorrowful visitation), with a certain wistful air which Harry had observed in Mr. Crawfurd. It touched him—a fiery, dogged man—extremely, in the one case as in the other. His mother, on the announcement of his loss, had insisted on undertaking various domestic examinations with respect to general retrenchment; he had humoured her, under the impression that it diverted her mind, and broke the force of what was a great calamity to her. He believed that she had over-exerted herself, and he commenced to remonstrate in the imperious, reproachful, affectionate tone, which the mother loves in her manly son.
"Yes, Harry, I have undertaken too much, and therefore I have requested the company of two friends, who will be willing to lighten our burden."
"Strangers in the house at this time, mother?" exclaimed Harry, bewildered. "Well, if you can bring yourself to suggest it, and wish it, I need have no objection. Never mind me, mother. Besides, I shall be from home. Yes, I do believe it will be a good plan."
"I thought, Harry," said Mrs. Jardine, so tremulously that Harry felt quite alarmed for his upright, obdurate mother, "as Mr. Crawfurd had been so friendly in his intentions towards you—the only man who has come forward with such a proposal and entreaty—isn't he, Harry?—that two of the Miss Crawfurds might consent to pay us a visit at last. I believe they would waive all ceremony, and their father would like it. It would show that we were willing, at least, to be reconciled in our evil day; that we appreciated their magnanimity; that we were not mean as well as malicious, Harry."
Harry stared, "Mother," he said slowly, colouring violently, "are you prepared for the consequences of inviting the Miss Crawfurds here, or what do you mean?"
"I have counted the cost, Harry; I have written and sent away a note, asking if Miss Joanna and one of her sisters will have so much consideration for an old afflicted woman."
Harry burst away from her, that she might not read the glow which was in his eyes and searched through his whole being.
Mrs. Jardine cried a little, as a woman might say, quietly and comfortably; a strange thing for her, since she was one of those women who shed vehement tears or none at all; then she dried her eyes and folded her hands reverently, saying, "I have a strange sense of calm and of Divine favour this morning. I am sure I am not mystical, but one jogs along the beaten way, and gets stupified, and doubts whether one can be a Christian or no, there is so little conviction of the fact in what divines, from the Bible, call 'the inner man of the spirit;' but when we conquer our wills, and obey one of His everlasting decrees, then we do feel that we must belong to Him, and we have an assurance of His presence, which is a great enough reward without the gratification of earthly afflictions. Ah! I have had dear old Annie's voice ringing in my ears all the morning; and I have heard George Jardine bidding me take care of Harry, as he always did before he went from home, except the last day when he dared not face me."
The Crawfurds came to Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd sent them at once; he would not listen to a single objection or obstacle, though Lilias and Conny were with Polly Musgrave, and it was inconvenient to spare the others on a moment's warning. Susan could not understand it—why they should be bidden to Whitethorn now, when it had been so long debarred to them; but Susan liked company, even company under a cloud; and she had a curiosity to inspect Whitethorn, into which not one of them had put a foot, except papa and mamma, long ago. Joanna made no demur, though, a month before, nothing would have induced her to believe that she would be staying with Susie this March at Whitethorn. Mr. Crawfurd walked with his daughters to the great gate, and Joanna, looking back, saw him, on his return, switching the thistle-heads in the hedge, as she had never witnessed him attempt in her experience; she could almost fancy he was whistling, as Harry Jardine went piping along before he fell in love with her.
It was a trial when Harry Jardine was introduced into the Crawfurds' company; but Mrs. Jardine was very hospitable and kind, and Harry rapidly recovered or assumed his usual ease and animation, and Susan soon lost all peculiar consciousness, and Joanna fell back on the woman's armour, dinted, but not broken, of her self-control. In a few hours they did wonderfully well together. Susan was delighted with the novelties of the old-fashioned country-house, and Harry was not particularly downcast in his misfortunes; he was almost as amusing as ever, and invented fun for her as if he had never heard the name of bank, and, finally, he did not complain of the arrangement, of which Susan highly approved, that she should be Harry's companion, and Joanna should belong to Mrs. Jardine. Joanna was so sedate, and, although she was not a business-woman like Lilias (how Susan would boast of the ground she had gained when she wrote and amazed Lilias!) she was used to associating with older people, and could suit herself to their ways and be handy to them.
Harry smiled blandly on the partition for three whole days. At the close of the third day, when Susan and Joanna were brushing their hair together, Susan started the proposal that they should return to the Ewes whenever Mrs. Jardine's inventories, and settling and sorting of accounts, were brought to an end; "because, Joanna, Harry is getting cross; I am sure of it; he is not half so agreeable as he was the first night. I think he is angry because his mother keeps you to herself, and sends me to talk to him and give him music. When I come to think of it, it is a very senseless plan of hers, and perhaps she is spiteful though she is so attentive, and I am not frightened at her any longer. She is a quick woman, but as pleasant as possible; but if you please, Joanna, you can be shut up with her, and go out with her till we leave, for I should not care for it very much, and I see no call for it on my part; and I am certain we had better fix on going home again as soon as we can manage it."
"Very well, Susan; only you speak very fast; I can scarcely follow you. It strikes me you are wrong on one point. I never noticed that Harry Jardine was tired of being your host, or that he minded who sat next him."
"Not tired of me exactly, or careless of my enjoyment, because, to be sure, Harry Jardine is courting all of us. Nonsense, Joanna, you need not affect to be sage and precise and unconcerned. I am not so silly, and it is very conceited of you, and I have no patience with you. Of course I was not blind and deaf, and I have not lost my memory. Harry Jardine is continually looking after you, whatever his mother persuades herself. He never notices what I wear, and he remembered ribbons you wore months since. I put on mine, and he looked at it and said, 'That is like one of Joanna's; is it not?' Now I know very well he never calls any of us by our Christian names to other people, and only you to one or other of us, and he does it pointedly, as if to express, 'I mean to be your brother-in-law one of these days, and I want to keep you in mind of my intentions, so I take the liberty.'"
"Why don't you say, 'Mr. Jardine, Joanna does not like a liberty taken with her name'?"
"I dare say! and have him reply, 'Did Joanna tell me so herself?' I believe he would be only too glad to have you speak to him on any subject, and I put him into such a fume about your appearance, Jack! Of course, I intended no harm, the words came out somehow. You remember, last night, his showing me an engraving he had bought. 'Tell me some one that is like,' he said to me. It was the least in the world like you, or like your mode of dressing your hair, but it flattered you, as these chance likenesses always do. 'Is it a little like Joanna?' I asked trying him; and I continued, 'Our Joanna would be rather a pretty girl if it were not for the blemish;' and there I stopped short, for I recollected that I should not have mentioned it to him. I wish you had seen him, how hot and haughty he was, as if you were not my own sister, and as if I had not more business with you than he had yet. 'I wonder how any one who has any regard for Joanna can term that mark a defect: it is very sacred and beautiful, otherwise Joanna is without spot'—and there he caught himself and turned away—he was about to add, 'or wrinkle or any such thing,' and I am afraid it was a quotation from the Bible; but I fancy he felt that he was making a fool of himself, and held his tongue. We ought to speak of going home."
"Susie, dear, don't be unreasonable; you know what a claim this family has upon ours; you know what papa desires."
"I know nothing except that Harry Jardine wants me out of his way, and you in his way. It is very disagreeable to me, and a great responsibility to me. You are an interested party, you cannot be expected to see things as you should."
"Why not? I told you to correct him when he was wrong. But I thought you were great friends; and poor Mrs. Jardine, Susan, I can be of use to her in her adversity. I can do things for her as I do for—"
"As you do for papa; there is a fine confession!"
Joanna ensconced herself in silence. Susan had provocation, but Joanna took great care next day not to support Harry Jardine in his levity and discontent. All the morning she spent with Mrs. Jardine; she pinned herself to her sleeve until, after luncheon, she was taken by the old lady into her own room, with its bright fire and shining dogs, its broad, easy couch, its table, with the handsome ponderous writing-desk, flanking the handsome heavy dressing-case, and its look-out from the warmly-curtained windows quite across the moor.
"What a comfortable room, Mrs. Jardine!" Joanna could not help exclaiming; "I never saw a more fresh, inspiriting view to my taste, and such a stretch of sky,—you may sit and foretell all weathers here."
"Yes, my dear, and I have foretold all weathers here. I'll talk to you a little of my nice room, and why I am so sorry to think of leaving it."
"We hope you will not leave it," Joanna ventured, timidly.
"Ah! that rests with others now. But I came here a gay girl; I visited at Whitethorn before my marriage, Joanna; I dwelt here a thoughtless, happy young wife; and here I kept Harry, not quite so troublesome as now; and here I lay a heart-stricken widow while they were bringing home the corpse of my husband, who had left me a vigorous, determined man two hours before."
"It must have been dreadful! dreadful!" murmured Joanna faintly; but lifting up her face to Mrs. Jardine with the earnest confiding eyes, the blanched cheeks, and that seal on her brow—"Oh, how often papa and I have thought of it, and pitied you and ourselves!"
"My dear, it was one of those dispensations of Providence which one never forgets to the end of a long life. But I was a sinner, I deserved what I bore; we all deserve the sorest evil that can afflict us; and, thank God, there is mercy mingled with the greatest misery. I do not speak often of it, but I can do so to-day; and I find it is a relief to talk to you of our misfortune, because you can sympathize with me; you were a sufferer in it like myself; it cannot be to many other living persons what it is to us two. I have had that brought home to me, my love. I do not grieve or frighten you, Joanna?"
"No, Mrs. Jardine, I have lamented it all my life. I am very grateful that you should let me say that papa was very sorry; they sound very little words, Mrs. Jardine, but you understand them, and papa will never cease to be sorry in this world, and we have only wanted to comfort you."
"Poor fellow!" sighed Mrs. Jardine absently. "Crawfurd of the Ewes, an accomplished, pleasant fellow—so broken a man!"
They talked a little longer of the tragedy with composed but strong mutual interest and commiseration; and Mrs. Jardine acknowledged that such pity was not like the world's pity, but was delicate and tender as the ministry of any Barnabas or son of consolation; and when she finished, she kissed Joanna on the forehead, and said to herself, "Harry was right. If this is the sign of George Jardine's blood, it was placed there to pay her father's debt, and set her apart for us."
"Now, the sun is shining out, Joanna—'a clear shining after rain,'—don't you like the Bible words?—I know you do. You must have a walk yet. Why, the violets will be out in another ten days. Hand me my garden bonnet, and we will have a turn in the garden or shrubbery. I saw Harry and your sister take the way there. My dear, you have the look of a sister I was very fond of, and I think Mr. Jardine would have admired you. Yonder they are, Joanna. I should like that you would send Miss Crawfurd to me, and have a stroll with Harry yourself. You will injure your health, child, if you do not attend more to yourself. And, Joanna, if my son questions you as to what I said to you, for he is a curious fellow, tell him I have been reading a text for myself this morning, and for several mornings—'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.' And although I am an old woman, I have got it by heart. And bid him show you the thorn walk."
Joanna did not like to decline a commission of Mrs. Jardine's, but she could no more have asked Harry to walk with her than if he had been a duke. However, Harry was loitering and watching them, and came forward at this moment, and Mrs. Jardine herself appropriated Susan, and transferred Joanna to Harry.
"I am very much obliged to you for your kindness to my mother," said Harry formally—no Joanna this time, no name at all. "I never saw my mother take so much to any one," he continued eagerly; "she is naturally a self-reliant, reserved woman; but she has opened up to you?"
"Yes," answered Joanna softly; "and do you know, she has been talking to me of the past."
Harry started. "What did she say, Joanna? She could not offend you. Pray what did she say to you?"
"She did not offend me—far from that—she was very good, and she gave me a message to you, if you were inquisitive—she had been studying a text, 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.'"
"Ah! I am very happy to understand it."
"It seems easily understood; and she advised us to walk in the thorn walk. Is it near at hand? Shall we have time?"
"We must take time, we cannot disappoint my mother. The thorn walk is a favourite with her all the year round, although it is only in its beauty in the month of May. Shall I explain to you why she has selected it to-day?"
"Yes, if you please."
"My father lived here, when he was a young man, with his uncle the laird. They had no near female relative. It was a dull house, as dull an establishment as my mother and I maintain together."
"Much duller, I should think."
"No; for before a certain time he was not sensible of its deficiency; he had no definite wishes or hopes for an increase to their circle, a re-modelling of their housekeeping. My mother was distantly related to him; she came on a visit to my grand-uncle with an elderly lady, who was also a connexion; she was a lively young girl then. My father often told her afterwards to what an incalculable degree her presence brightened the old house and the two forlorn gentlemen; it would have been utter darkness if she had left them again to their old hazy sunlessness; so my father took the desperate step of leading her to the thorn walk. It was the month of May then, and it was covered with blossoms, sending a white shower on their bent heads from a whole line of trysting trees; but, when I think of it, March, which is lightly esteemed, is preferable to May, for March has all the promise of the year in prospect; and see, it has cloth of gold and silver to step upon, in the shape of the bright, commonplace, unjustly overlooked crocuses."
"You have been reading the seedsman's tallies, Mr. Jardine."
"Never mind; you agree with me?"
"The world and the poets choose May. And you begin to be eccentric and choose March."
"My father conducted my mother here; she has told me the circumstances a hundred times, though she is a quiet woman; and she wore such a cloth gown as you wear to-day."
"Mr. Jardine, you are talking nonsense; this is a new stuff, I assure you it has not been half-a-dozen months out of the looms; and do you suppose, sir, that I shall wear this dress in the month of May?"
"That comes of confiding those details to men. I always thought it was a gown like this one; and he asked her to abide at Whitethorn, and crown his lairdship and gladden and sweeten his entire future career; and he succeeded at last in winning her consent. And this is the thorn walk, Joanna, and I am free to re-enact the old passage in two lives, and plead with you not to desert Whitethorn if we are to retain it. I am poorer by a few thousands since I first made the same prayer to you; but your father puts no weight on the difference, or, in his rare generosity, lets it tell in my favour; and I don't think we need break our hearts about our little loss, if we look to our great gain. Here I beg you, as the humblest and most sincere of your petitioners, to put your life into my life, and cause the united life to bud and blossom into the May of the heart."
"And November and December would come to that year likewise."
"Yes, they will; but they will tread hard upon the real new-year, the veritable new year, that will
"Ring out the false, ring in the true"
of this hoary world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."
Joanna said, "Yes; God bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, God blessed them.
Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.
Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty will come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"
But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later:—"Dear Cousin Joanna,—I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding godly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and you were the woman to perform the delectable feat."
Polly had found her heart not a very lofty one, not a very sensitive one—but an honest and kind heart in the main, which was permitted to extricate itself from the slough of luxury and self-indulgence, and beat warmly and faithfully throughout the rest of its course.
ON THE STAGE AND OFF THE STAGE.
I.—THE "BEAR" AT BATH.
THE Place was old Bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of Alexander Pope and William Hogarth, and dovetailing into those of Horace Walpole and the Wesleys.
The Age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and Bath was the head-quarters of the first—the scene of the pump-room, the raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at midnight, the play, the ridotto.
The Scene was a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess large, shining, portly—a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with its throngs of beaux—veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head—wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and aprons, and abundance of velvet patches. In and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and China monsters by way of ornaments.
The Person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called a sacque, with a mob-cap. She sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women will after fatigue or in anticipation of exertion, and making occasional reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up beside her. Her attitude was studious, for days when a chapter of the Bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by Addison or Dick Steele, or a copy of verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler sex aspired; her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended a Tabitha Tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the tippets of pheasants' tails.
She was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. Had it not been that its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but never sensual mouth—you would have said this was a faded queen whom the world was mad to worship. As it was, she did look faded this spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she turned over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she looked at her repeater—not quite so common an appendage as the little Geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply, and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple, "one in each fob"—and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank, not out of one of the diminutive China cups, but out of an old battered, but very shining little silver tankard.
Anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. She looked across the noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a hoary apple-tree blossomed white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman—even in the dumps—was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on equal terms with Amelia Opie.
But hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests—country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient cupboard in the partition.
"Make haste, girls," in bass tones.
"Eat away, Fiddy," in treble, mimicking the bass.
"Uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. We'll be too late, as sure as our heads. Didn't you hear Mrs. Price say there was a power of company wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."
"What, Prissy, worse than Admiral Byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"
"Oh! Uncle Rowland, how can you joke! Now, Fiddy, there's a dear creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. What although we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at the Vicarage and Larks' Hall."
"There—Prissy, dear, then I've done. I'll just run and shake our myrtle crapes and fresh pinch our stomachers."
"Hold! no such thing, lasses. I'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? Is that your gratitude, when here have I come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and spoil your Arcadian simplicity? Don't make faces, Prissy!"
"Oh! Uncle Rowland; you are making base pretences."
"Indeed, sir, I think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."
But the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat down again, and, by the clatter of knives and forks, one could judge they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.
The lady in the Nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her neighbours. They spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively, affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the lady in the Nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure, nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in interjection and commentary. She could figure the group perfectly. Two rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in which they insisted,
"You must comb out your curls, Uncle Rowland."
"And I'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country bumpkin or a fright of a student, are we, Prissy?"
And mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.
"Now, Prissy, are we to see the famous Traveller?"
"No, sir, it is to be the Virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."
"Bronze, child, bronze."
"We're to have nobody in particular, only Lady Betty," chimed in the more girlish voice. "The company, the other gentlefolks, will be quite sufficient besides."
"And Fiddy will scream when the blunderbusses are fired. Shall we take the precaution of putting cotton in her ears beforehand?" derided the man.
Then the single lady fixed further, that Prissy (Mistress Priscilla, doubtless, in company down in Somersetshire) was the cleverest and most forward, and that Fiddy (Mistress Fidelia) was the shyest and, perhaps, the prettiest, for she was clearly Uncle Rowland's favourite. But then, for all her rosy cheeks, poor child! she was delicate, since there was a constant cry from the conductor of the party, "Fiddy, you vain doll, remember your mantle; Madam is not here to wrap you up, nor Granny."
"Oh, sir! we've lots of scarfs and shawls, all for Fiddy; and she is to tie on her Iris hood against the draughts."
"What! one of the poppies and bluebells that Will Honeycomb admired? She'll beat you, Prissy, out and out. I would sicken and bear her company."
"I wonder to hear you, sir. I can tell you, Granny would not coddle me so. Granny is always preaching of hardening weakness."
"Ah, the old mother is no milksop!"
There, was she not right? Had she not full hints of the history of the Vicarage and madam its mistress, the mother of these two little girls; and of the parish priest her husband, their father—the younger brother of the tolerably educated squire yonder, with his Larks' Hall; and of Granny, who kept house there still for her elder son, where she had once reigned queen paramount in the hearty days of her homely goodman. It was a scroll fairly unfolded, and perfectly legible to the experienced woman.
"Uncle Rowland," prefaced the soft voice, more quietly, "do you really think the gay world of the town so much more vicious than the sober world of the country?"
"Why, no, my dear," answered the manly voice, now graver, and with a little sadness in its ring, "ignorance is not innocence, and depravity is vastly more general than any mode. Nevertheless, there are customs of which I would greatly prefer Prissy and Fiddy to remain unaware, like their mother before them."
"But Granny lived in the great world, and there is not one of us like Granny."
"The risk is too great, child; the fire is wondrous strong, though the pure gold be sometimes refined in the process—as your father would preach."
"And, sir, this Mistress Lumley, or Lady Betty, as they called her downstairs, is as virtuous as she is clever."
"You may depend upon that, Miss, or you had not come to Bath to see her play. They term the poor soul Lady Betty because she has turned on her heel from the worthless London sparks, and taught them to keep their distance."
"Uncle Rowland, I don't think you heartily sympathize with charming Lady Betty."
"Tut! child, I have not seen her. You would not have me captivated ere I ever set eyes on my enslaver? But, to speak honestly, little Fiddy, I own I have no great leaning to actresses and authoresses. There are perils enough in a woman's natural course, without her challenging the extremes of a fictitious career. More than that, Fiddy, I have not much faith in the passion that is ranted to the public; even if it were always a creditable passion. Those who are sorely hurt don't bawl, child: deep streams are still."
"I will play to him," the lady of the Nankin sitting-room says to herself, her lips parting with a slight smile, and her colour rising at the same time. Your true woman is easily pained, and, the more fully furnished, the more finely skilled, she is all the more susceptible to blame as to praise, and so on that account the less qualified for public life. There was many a strong enough argument against the stage and the desk which Master Rowland might have used instead of his weak one.
Lady Betty, in that bubbling, frothing, steaming London—Mistress Lumley in the provinces—was a young actress of great repute and good character, who had compelled success, like Mrs. Siddons after her, and reigned for several seasons, and still her fame was paramount and her respectability unquestioned. In those very dissipated days of Queen Anne and the early Georges, the broad prejudices which darken the stage were light in tint and slender in force. The great world was tumultuous, giddy, reckless, with innumerable victims falling suddenly into its yawning chasms, like the figures from the bridge in Mirza's vision; and the theatre was not a more exposed sphere than many another, and that made all the difference in the world. Very few save the strictest Methodists condemned it, when Henry Brooke wrote for it, and Dr. Johnson stood with his hands behind his back in the green room.
Mrs. Betty Lumley, tall, comely, high-principled, warm-hearted, and ingenuous, was come of yeomen ancestors. She did not see a play in a barn and run away after the drama, like Caroline Inchbald; but on the death of her father and mother, she went up with an elder sister and young brother to London to seek for an employment and a livelihood. Encountering some person of dramatic pursuits—manager, stage-painter, ticket-taker, or the like, or the wife of one or other—she was recommended to the stage. She was supported in the idea by all her connections, for then no one questioned the perfect respectability of the profession. She studied hard in new, though not uncongenial fields; she ventured; she tried again and again, with the "modest but indomitable pluck" of genius, and she at last won a position and a prospect of independence. In all this nobody blamed her; on the contrary, the magnates of the hour—kings, councillors, bishops—awarded her great credit for her parts, her industry, her integrity, her honour.
Not a lady of quality in London was more respected and admired, rightly or wrongly, than Mistress Betty. At the same time it is possible that, having reached the goal, could she have turned back and begun her walk anew, she would have hesitated before following this thorny path. It was a thorny path, for all its applause and success; nay, on account of them; even with a good woman like Mistress Betty it required all her sincerity, her sobriety, and, according to the prevailing standard, her religion, to deliver her from imminent danger. Moreover, with the attainment of the object, had come the bitter drops which qualified the cup. Her plain, fond, innocent sister was in her grave; and so within the two last years was the young brother, for whom her interest had procured a post of some importance in the Colonies, whence he bequeathed to Mistress Betty, his dear distinguished sister, his little savings. She struggled to be resigned, and was not only weary, but tempted to grasp at material rewards. This was the turning-point of her life. She would be virtuous to the last. Her honest, clear character revolted at vice; but she might harden, grow greedy of power, become imperious and arrogant. For, remember, I do not say that Mistress Betty had contracted no contamination. No, no; she had suffered from her selfish fits, her vain fits, her malicious fits—she had experienced her hours of boldness and levity—she had made her own way to eminence—she had struggled with unscrupulous rivals—she had heard much which we would have wished her not to have heard—she had been a member of that wild, ultra-fine, coarse, scandalous society: but as we find saints in strange company sometimes, so the cordial, faithful, generous woman remained with only a slight coating of affectation and worldliness, thirst for praise, desire after excitement, habit of command.
"I'll play to this horrid country Justice," whispers Mistress Betty, quite roused, and looking animated and brilliant already. "I hear by the gentleness of his voice, when he speaks of the sins and sorrows of mankind, and when he addresses his little girl, that the fellow has a heart; but he gave me no quarter, and he shall receive none in return. I'll conquer him. To come within sight and sound of the boards with his muddy boots and his snarls, spoiling the enjoyment of the lasses!"
Very true, Mistress Betty, it was neither very wise nor very gallant; but you ought to remember that the most loyal prejudices are sometimes as loyally abandoned.
II.—LADY BETTY ON THE STAGE.
The principal theatre of the queen of watering-places in her palmy days was filling fast, as it had done for the last two nights. Other attractions lost their power. Ombre, basset, hazard, lansquenet, loo, spread their cards and counters in vain for crafty or foolhardy fingers. The master of the ceremonies found his services at a discount; no troops of maidens, no hosts of squires, answered to his appeal; no double sets were forming to the inspiring strains of "Nancy Dawson." The worthy, charming, gifted Lady Betty had come down for three nights to improve, entertain, and enrapture, and this being her last night the theatre constituted the only orbit in which the planets would revolve.
The world was here in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they were impugning their sobriety by attending a play; and above all, fine ladies armed with their fans and their essences. As a whole, the audience was in a vastly respectful attitude—the gentlemen tapping their snuff-boxes meditatively, and desisting in a great measure from their loud laughter, their bets, their cursing and swearing; the ladies only whispering behind their handkerchiefs, and moving to cause their diamonds to sparkle, all in acknowledgment of the vicinity of the fair and potent Lady Betty.
The play was Venice Preserved, and Lady Betty entered in an early scene. Truly a fine woman—not so lovely as Anne Oldfield, not so superb as Sarah Siddons; but with a frank, fair, womanly presence—bright, genial, quick, passionate through the distress of Belvidera, the repudiated daughter and beggared wife.
Dressed in the English fashion under the Georges, walked the maiden reared in the air blowing off the lagoons within the shadow of the grim lion of St. Mark, to such sentimental accompaniments as the dipping oar and the gondolier, and finished off with the peculiar whims of Betty Lumley. She wore a fair, flowered brocade, for which William Hogarth might have designed the pattern and afterwards prosecuted for payment the unconscionable weaver; a snow-white lace kerchief was crossed over her bosom and reached even to her shapely chin, where it met the little black velvet collar with its pearl sprig; her brown hair (which had shown rather thin, rolled up beneath her mob-cap) was shaken out and gathered in rich bows with other pearl sprigs on the top of her head; her cheeks showed slightly hollow, but were so fresh, so modest, so cool in their unpainted paleness, and on the smallest provocation acquired the purest sea-shell pink which it would have been a sin and a shame to eclipse with staring paint; the contour, a little sharper than it had once been, was only rendered more delicate by the defect, and so sweet yet—so very sweet; her beautiful arms were bare to the elbow, but shaded with falls of cobweb lace; and in one hand, poised daintily between two fingers, she held a natural flower, a bunch of common rural cowslips. At this period of the year such an appendage under any other touch would have been formal as the Miss Flamborough's oranges, but it was graceful in this woman's slight clasp.
"Enchanting creature!" "Fine woman!" "Otway's devoted wife to the life!" murmured the company, in a flutter of genuine admiration—forgetting themselves, these Sir Plumes and Belindas, once in a way.
"I do hope the poor soul will not be deserted and undone—she's so easy to serve—and all Bath, and, for that matter, Lon'on too, as I believe, at her feet!" says Mrs. Price, emphatically, to young Medlicot, whom she is patronizing for one night, because he knows somewhat of plays and players; and who, in spite of his allegiance to swimming, simpering Clarissa, would give a fortune to paint that pose. Belvidera need fear no lolling, no sneering, no snapping at her little peculiarities this night.
As she came on, "kind, good, and tender," telling poor distracted, misguided Jaffier, in his humiliation, that she joyed more in him than did his mother, Lady Betty darted a sharp, searching glance through the boxes. Ah! yonder they were! The little girls the parson's daughters, with their uncle the squire, fault-finding, but honourable. Two round-faced, eager, happy girls, intent upon the play, and the great London star, beautiful, bewitching Lady Betty, who is now looking at them—yes, actually staring them full in the face with her deep, melting, blue eyes, while she reassures her cowardly husband. How dared uncle Rowland disparage her?
There was uncle Rowland, younger than Lady Betty had taken him for—not more than five-and-forty—his coat trimmed with silver lace, a little old-fashioned, and even a little shabby in such company, his Mechlin tie rather out of date and already disordered, and his cocked-hat crushed below his arm. His face is bluff and ruddy among his pinched and sallow brethren: that of a big English gentleman, who hunted, shot, or fished, or walked after his whistling ploughman every morning, and on occasions daringly dashed in amongst the poachers by the palings of his park or paddock on summer evenings; yet whose hands were reasonably white and flexible, as if they handled other things than guns and fishing-rods, and whose eyes, at once clear and meditative, had studied more than the spire of his brother's church and the village street, more than quiet country towns, and loud watering-places, and deep metropolises.
Master Rowland had no family ties beyond the Vicarage; and was in no hurry to marry or settle, as the phrase went; though he was settled long ago, and might have married once a year without any impediment from old madam, as Mistress Betty would have been swift to suppose. He perfectly approved of Mr. Spectator's standard of virtue—"Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise a pasty, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid;" but then, it only made him yawn. The man was sinking down into an active-bodied, half-learned, half-facetious bachelor. He was mentally cropping dry and solid food contentedly, and, at the same time, he was a bit of a humourist. He loved his little Prissy and Fiddy, as dear god-daughters, whom he had spoilt as children, and whom he was determined to present with portions when he presided at their wedding dinners; but he had no mind to take any of their fellows, for better for worse, as his companion, till death did them part.
Then Lady Betty stepped upon the stage at Bath, and before a multitude of frivolous and simple, or gross and depraved spectators, incapable of comprehending her, she played to the manly, modestly intellectual squire.
Master Rowland woke up, looked his fill, as open-mouthed as the rest, and while he did so, his system received a shock. Lady Betty was revenged to an extent she had not foreseen.
The noble woman went with her whole soul into the sorrows of the dark-eyed, brown-faced sister whom Titian might have painted, and made them accord with her fair English love of justice, her blue-eyed devotion to her husband, her Saxon fearlessness and faith in the hour of danger: only she did look strange and foreign when, in place of lying prostrate in submission and rising in chaste, meek patience to rear her orphan son, she writhed, like a Constance in agony, and died more speedily from her despair than Jaffier by the dagger which on the scaffold freed Pierre. The assembly rose in whole rows, and sobbed and swooned. Mrs. Prissy and Mrs. Fiddy cried in delicious abandonment; Master Rowland sat motionless.
"I declare I had forgotten the Justice," reflects Lady Betty, resting behind the scenes. "I do believe I am that poor Belvidera for the last half-hour. I meant to bring the man to tears. His blooming face was as white as a sheet;—poor, dear, good man, I hope he's none the worse of it."
Master Rowland knows full well that she is Mistress Betty Lumley the great London actress, not Belvidera the Venetian senator's daughter; but he will never again turn from the chill of his stone-arched hall, where his fingers have grown benumbed riveting a piece of armour or copying an epitaph or an epigram, or linger under his mighty oak-tree, or advise with his poor tenants, or worship in church, without the sickening sense of a dull blank in his heart and home.
III.—MISTRESS BETTY BECOMES NURSE.
Bath was sleeping as soundly as if it had been a quaker town: any sounds of riot were scattered and subdued. The dowager did not count her gains as she clutched them, while borne along the street by the glare of the dropping flambeaux. Her son, who, like the young Duke of Marlborough and his brother peer, carried no meaner change than golden guineas, did not clink them as he tossed them to the chairmen fighting for the prize. The "Bear" was reasonably still for a great public-house with twos and threes of travellers departing at all hours, as waiters and ostlers stirred on their behalf, horses trotted out from adjoining stables, and circles of chariots suffered displacement—all in addition to the distinct and fervent sensation of the night coach.
Suddenly a noise and a flurry arose in the grey light and its general repose. Accents of terror and anxiety are heard, and a movement of pity and distress arises and grows in the establishment. A young girl is attacked by violent illness—a life in its spring-time is threatened with sudden extinction; friends at hand are seeking remedies and bewailing the calamity—friends at a distance, all unconscious, are mentioned with subdued voices and averted eyes.
Mrs. Price was wiping her eyes and carrying up restoratives with her own hands. "'Twas Mistress Fiddy, whom she had known from a child; the niece of Master Rowland, who had always supported the house; and madam, her mother, away at the Vicarage, and the dear child, so good and quiet."
"I will come, my good Mrs. Price. My sister had these fainting fits; I'm used to them. I'll revive the child: the poor child, I am sure she'll not be offended at the liberty. Pooh! I can sit up as well as sleep after playing. Dear! dear! Many a night I was happy to sit up with Deb," pleaded an urgent, benevolent voice, waxing plaintive towards the conclusion of the speech.
"Indeed you are too gracious, my lady—I mean madam," protested the perplexed, overwhelmed Mrs. Price; "but I dare not venture without Master Rowland's consent: he will do everything himself, issue his orders even, although Dr. Fulford's been upstairs lending his advice these ten minutes."