MANNERS AND CUSTOMS—CLIQUE—THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE—OUT VISITING—HOUSE-PRIDE—DRESSMAKING.
Eleanor and I were not always at home. We generally went visiting somewhere, at least once a year.
I think it was good for us. Great as were the advantages of the life I now shared over an existence wasted in a petty round of ignoble gossip and social struggle, it had the drawback of being almost too self-sufficing, perhaps—I am not certain—a little too laborious. I do think, but for me, it must, at any rate, have become the latter. I am so much less industrious, energetic, clever and good in every way than Eleanor, for one thing, that my very idleness holds us back; and I think a taste for gaiety (I simply mean being gay, not balls and parties), and for social pleasure, and for pretty things, and graceful “situations” runs in my veins with my French blood, and helps to break the current of our labours.
We led lives of considerable intellectual activity, constant occupation, and engrossing interest. We were apt to “foy” at our work to the extent of grudging meal-times and sleep. Indeed, at one time a habit obtained with us of leaving the table in turn as we finished our respective meals. One member of the family after another would rise, bend his or her head for a silent “grace,” and depart to the work in hand. I have known the table gradually deserted in this fashion till Mr. Arkwright was left alone. I remember going back one day into the room, and seeing him so. My entrance partially aroused him from a brown study. (He was at all times very “absent”) He rose, said grace aloud for the benefit of the company—which had dispersed—and withdrew to his library. But we abolished this uncivilized custom in conclave, and thenceforth sat our meals out to the end.
So free were we in our isolation upon those Yorkshire moors from the trammels of conventionality (one might almost say, civilization!), that I think we should have come to begrudge the ordinary interchange of the neighbourly courtesies of life, but for occasional lectures from Mrs. Arkwright, and for going out visiting from time to time.
It was not merely that a life of running in and out of other people’s houses, and chatting the same bits of news threadbare with one acquaintance after another, as at Riflebury, would have been unendurable by us. The rare arrival of a visitor from some distant country-house to call at the Vicarage was the signal for every one, who could do so with decency, to escape from the unwelcome interruption. But as we grew older, Mrs. Arkwright would not allow this. The boys, indeed, were hard to coerce; they “bolted” still when the door-bell rang; but domestic authority, which is apt to be magnified on “the girls,” overruled Eleanor and me for our good, and her mother—who reasoned with us far more than she commanded—convinced us of how much selfishness there was in this, as in all acts of discourtesy.
But what do we not owe to her good counsels? In how many evening talks has she not warned us of the follies, affectations, or troubles to which our lives might specially be liable! Against despising interests that are not our own, or graces which we have chosen to neglect, against the danger of satire, against the love or the fear of being thought singular, and, above all, against the petty pride of clique.
“I do not know which is the worst,” I remember her saying, “a religious clique, an intellectual clique, a fashionable clique, a moneyed clique, or a family clique. And I have seen them all.”
“Come, Mother,” said Eleanor, “you cannot persuade us you would not have more sympathy with the intellectual than the moneyed clique, for instance?”
“I should have warmly declared so myself, at one time,” said Mrs. Arkwright, “but I have a vivid remembrance of a man belonging to an artistic clique, to whose house I once went with some friends. My friends were artists also, but their minds were enlarged, instead of being narrowed, by one chief pursuit. Their special art gave them sympathy with all others, as the high cultivation of one virtue is said to bring all the rest in its train. But this man talked the shibboleth of his craft over one’s head to other members of his clique with a defiance of good manners arising more from conceit than from ignorance of the ways of society; and with a transparent intention of being overheard and admired which reminded me of the little self-conscious conceits of children before visitors. He was one of a large family with the same peculiarities, joined to a devout admiration of each other. Indeed, they combined the artistic clique and the family clique in equal proportions. From the conversation at their table you would have imagined that there was but one standard of good for poor humanity, that of one ‘school’ of one art, and absolutely no one who quite came up to it but the brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, or connections by marriage of your host. Now, I honestly assure you that the only other man really like this one that I ever met, was what is called a ‘self-made’ man in a commercial clique. Money was his standard, and he seemed to be as completely unembarrassed as my artist friend by the weight of any other ideas than his own, or by any feeling short of utter satisfaction with himself. Their contempt for the conventionalities of society was about equal. My artist friend had passed a sweeping criticism for my benefit now and then (there could be no conversation where no second opinion was allowed), and it was with perhaps a shade less of condescension—a shade more of friendliness—that my commercial friend once stopped some remarks of mine with the knowing observation, ‘Look here, ma’am. Whenever I hear this, that, and the other bragged about a party, what I always say is this, I don’t want you to tell me what he his, but what he ’as.’”
Eleanor and I laughed merrily at the anecdote, even if we were not quite converted to Mrs. Arkwright’s views. And I must in justice add that every visit which has taken us from home—every fresh experience which has enlarged our knowledge of the world—has confirmed the truth of her sage and practical advice.
If at home we have still inclined to feel it almost a duty to be proud of intellectual tastes, quite a duty to be proud of orthodox opinions, and, at the worst, a very amiable weakness indeed to think that there are no boys like our boys, a wholesome experience of having other people’s tastes and views crammed down our throats has modified our ideas in this respect. A strong dose of eulogistic biography of the brothers of a gushing acquaintance made the names of Clem and Jack sacred to our domestic circle for ever; and what I have endured from a mangy, over-fed, ill-tempered Skye-terrier, who is the idol of a lady of our acquaintance, has led me sometimes to wonder if visitors at the Vicarage are ever oppressed by the dear boys.
I’m afraid it is possible—poor dear things!
I have positively heard people say that Saucebox is ugly, though he has eyes like a bull-frog, and his tongue hangs quite six inches out of his mouth, and—in warm weather or before meals—further still! However, I keep him in very good order, and never allow him to be troublesome to people who do not appreciate him. For I have observed that there are people who (having no children of their own) hold very just and severe views about spoiled boys and girls, but who (having dogs of their own) are much less clear-sighted on the subject of spoiled terriers and Pomeranians. And I do not want to be like that—dear as the dear boys are!
Certainly, seeing all sorts of people with all sorts of peculiarities is often a great help towards trying to get rid of one’s own objectionable ones. But like the sketching, one sometimes gets into despair about it, and though the process of learning an art may be even pleasanter than to feel one’s self a master in it, one cannot say as much for the process of discovering one’s follies. I should like to get rid of them in a lump.
Eleanor said so one day to her mother, but Mrs. Arkwright said: “We may hate ourselves, as you call it, when we come to realize failings we have not recognized before, and feel that there are probably others which we do not yet see as clearly as other people see them, but this kind of impatience for our perfection is not felt by those who love us, I am sure. It is one’s greatest comfort to believe that it is not even felt by God. Just as a mother would not love her child the better for its being turned into a model of perfection by one stroke of magic, but does love it the more dearly every time it tries to be good, so I do hope and believe our Great Father does not wait for us to be good and wise to love us, but loves us, and loves to help us in the very thick of our struggles with folly and sin.”
But I am becoming as discursive as ever! What I want to put down is about our going out visiting. There is really nothing much to say about our life at home. It was very happy, but there were no great events in it, and Eleanor says it will not do for us to “go off at a tangent,” and describe what happened to the boys at school and college; first, because these biographies are merely to be lives of our own selves, for nobody but us two to read when we are both old maids; and secondly, because if we put down everything we had anything to do with in these ten years, it will be so very long before our biographies are finished. We are very anxious to see them done, partly because we are getting rather tired of them, and Jack is becoming suspicious, and partly because we have got an amateur bookbinding press, and we want to bind them.
Well, as I said, we paid visits to relatives of mine, and to old friends of the Arkwrights. My friends invited Eleanor, and Eleanor’s friends invited me. People are very kind; and it was understood that we were happier together.
I was fortunate enough to find myself possessed of some charming cousins living in a cathedral town; and at their house it was a great pleasure to us to visit. The cathedral services gave us great delight; when I think of the expression of Eleanor’s face, I may almost say rapture. Then there was a certain church-bookseller’s shop in the town, which had manifold attractions for us. Every parochial want that print and paper could supply was there met, with a convenience that bordered on luxury. There was a good store, too, of sacred prints, illuminated texts, and oak frames, from which we carried back sundry additions to the garnishing of our room, besides presents for Jack, who was as fond of such things as we were. Parish matters were, naturally, of perennial interest for us in our Vicarage home; but if ever they became a fad, it was about this period.
But it was to a completely new art that this visit finally led us, which I hardly know how to describe, unless as the art of dressmaking and general ornamentation.
The neighbourhood abounded with pretty clerical and country homes, where my cousins were intimate; each one, so it seemed to Eleanor and me, prettier than the last: sunshiny and homelike, with irregular comfortable furniture, dainty with chintz, or dark with aged oak, each room more tastefully besprinkled than the rest with old china, new books, music, sketches, needlework, and flowers.
“Do you know, Eleanor,” said I, when we were dressing for dinner one evening before a toilette-table that had been tastefully adorned for our use by the daughters of the house, “I wonder if Yorkshire women are as ‘house-proud’ as they call themselves? I think our villagers are, in the important points of cleanliness and solid comfort, and of course we are at the Vicarage as to that—Keziah keeps us all like copper kettles; but don’t you think we might have a little more house-pride about tasteful pretty refinements? It perhaps is rather a waste of time arranging all these vases and baskets of flowers every day, but they are very nice to look at, and I think it civilizes one.”
“You’re not to blame,” said Eleanor decisively. “You’re south-country to the backbone, and French on the top. It is we hard north-country folk, we business people, who neglect to cultivate ‘the beautiful.’ We’re quite wrong. But I think the beautiful is revenged on us,” added she with one of her quick, bright looks, “by withdrawing itself. There’s nothing comparable for ugliness to the people of a manufacturing town.”
My mind was running on certain very ingenious and tasteful methods of hanging nosegays on the wall.
“Those baskets with ferns and flowers in, against the wall, were lovely, weren’t they?” said I. “Do you think we shall ever be able to think of such pretty things?”
“We’re not fools,” said Eleanor briefly. “We shall do it when we set our minds to it. Meantime, we must make notes of whatever strikes us.”
“There are plenty of jolly, old-fashioned flowers in the garden at home,” said I. It was a polite way of expressing my inward regret that we had no tropical orchids or strange stove-plants. And Eleanor danced round me, and improvised a song beginning:
From the better adornment of the Vicarage to the better adornment of ourselves was a short stride. Most of the young ladies in these country homes were very prettily dressed. Not à la Mrs. Perowne. Not in that milliner’s handbook style dear to “Promenades” and places of public resort; but more daintily, and with more attention to the prettiest and most convenient of the prevailing fashions than Eleanor’s and my costumes displayed.
The toilettes of one young lady in particular won our admiration; and when we learned that her pretty things were made by herself, an overwhelming ambition seized upon us to learn to do the same.
“Women ought to know about all house matters,” said Eleanor, puckering her brow to a gloomy extent. “Dressmaking, cookery, and all that sort of thing; and we know nothing about any of them. I was thinking only last night, in bed, that if I were cast away on a desert island, and had to make a dress out of an old sail, I shouldn’t have the ghost of an idea where to begin.”
“I should,” said I. “I should sew it up like a sack, make three holes for my head and arms, and tie it round my waist with ship’s rope. I could manage Robinson Crusoe dresses; it’s the civilized ones that will be too much for me, I’m afraid.”
“I believe the sail would go twice as far if we could gore it,” said Eleanor, laughing. “But there’s no waste like the wastefulness of ignorance; and oh, Margery, it’s the gores I’m afraid of! If skirts were only made the old-fashioned way, like a flannel petticoat! So many pieces all alike—run them together—hem the bottom—gather the top—and there you are, with everything straightforward but the pocket.”
To our surprise we found that our new fad was a sore subject with Mrs. Arkwright. She reproached herself bitterly with having given Eleanor so little training in domestic arts. But she had been brought up by a learned uncle, who considered needlework a waste of time, and she knew as little about gores as we did. She had also, unfortunately, known or heard of some excellent mother who had trained nine daughters to such perfection of domestic capabilities that it was boasted that they could never in after-life employ a workwoman or domestic who would know more of her business than her employer. And this good lady was a standing trouble to poor Mrs. Arkwright’s conscience.
Her self-reproaches were needless. General training is perhaps quite as good as (if not better than) special, even for special ends. In giving us a higher education, in teaching us to use our eyes, our wits, and our common-sense, she had put all meaner arts within our grasp when need should urge, and opportunity serve.
“Aunt Theresa was always dressmaking,” I said to Eleanor; “but I don’t remember anything that would help us. I was so young, you know. And when one is young one is so stupid, one really resists information.”
I was to have another chance, however, of gleaning hints from Aunt Theresa.
MATILDA—BALL DRESSES AND THE BALL—GORES—MISS LINING—THE ‘PARISHIONER’S PENNYWORTH.’
The Bullers came home again. Colonel St. Quentin had retired, and when Major Buller got the regiment, he also left the army and settled in a pleasant neighbourhood in the south of England. As soon as Aunt Theresa was fairly established in her new house she sent for Eleanor and me. There was no idea of my remaining permanently. It was only a visit.
The Major (but he was a colonel now) and his wife were very little changed. The girls, of course, had altered greatly, and so had I. Matilda was a fashionably-dressed young lady, with a slightly frail appearance at times, as if Nature were still revenging the old mismanagement and neglect.
It did not need Aunt Theresa to tell us that she was her father’s favourite daughter. But it was no capricious favouritism, I am sure. I believe Colonel Buller to have been one of those people whose hearts have depths of tenderness that are never sounded. The Bush House catastrophe had long ago been swept into the lumber-room of Aunt Theresa’s memory, but the tender self-reproach of Matilda’s father was still to be seen in all his care and indulgence of her.
“He’ll take me anywhere,” said Matilda, with affectionate pride. “He even goes shopping with me.”
We liked Matilda by far the best of the girls. Partly, no doubt, because she was our old friend, but partly, I think, because intimacy with her father had developed the qualities she inherited from him, and softened others.
To our great satisfaction we discovered that gores were no enigma to Matilda, and she and Aunt Theresa good-naturedly undertook to initiate us into the mysteries of dressmaking.
There was an excellent opportunity. Eleanor was now eighteen, and Matilda seventeen years old. Matilda was to “come out” at a county ball that was to take place whilst we were with the Bullers, and Mrs. Arkwright consented to let Eleanor go also. Hence ball dresses, and hence also our opportunity for learning how to make them. For they were to be made by a dressmaker in the house, and she did not reject our assistance.
The Bullers’ drawing-room was divided by folding-doors, and both divisions now overflowed with tarlatan and trimmings; but at every fresh inroad of callers (and they were hardly less frequent than of old) we young ones, and yards of flounces and finery with us, were swept by Aunt Theresa into the back drawing-room, like autumn leaves before a breeze.
The dresses were very successful, and so was the ball. I was so anxious to hear how Eleanor had sped, that I felt quite sure that I could not go to sleep, and that it was a farce to go to bed just when she was beginning to dance. I went, however, at last, and had had half a night’s sound sleep before rustling, and chattering, and the light from bed-candles woke me to hear the news.
Matilda was looking pale, and somewhat dishevelled, and a great deal of the costume at which we had laboured was reduced to rags. Eleanor’s dress was intact, and she herself looked perfectly fresh, partly because she had resisted, with great difficulty, the extreme length of train then fashionable, and partly from a sort of general compactness which seems a natural gift with some people. Poor Matilda had nearly fainted after one of the dances, and had brought away a violent headache; but she declared that she had enjoyed herself, and would have stayed to relate her adventures, but Colonel Buller would not allow it, and sent her to bed. Eleanor slept with me, so our gossip was unopposed, except by warnings.
I set fire to my hair in the effort to decipher the well-filled ball card, but we put it out, and the candle also, and chatted in bed.
“You must have danced every dance,” I said, admiringly.
“We sat out one or two that are down,” said Eleanor; “and No. 21 was supper, but I danced all the rest.”
“There was one man you danced several times with,” I said, “but I couldn’t make out his name. It looks as if it began with a G.”
“Oh, it’s not his real name,” said Eleanor. “It’s the one he says you used to call him by. One reason why I liked him, Margery dear, was because he said he had been so fond of you. You were such a dear little thing, he said. I told him the locket and chain were in good preservation.”
“Was it Mr. George?” I cried, with so much energy that Aunt Theresa (who slept next door) heard us, and knocked on the wall to bid us go to sleep.
“We’re just going to,” Eleanor shouted, and added in lower tones, to me, “Yes, it was Captain Abercrombie. Colonel Buller introduced him to me. He is so nice, and so delightfully fond of dogs and of you, Margery.”
“Shall I see him?” I asked. “I should like to see him again. He was very good to me when I was little.”
“Oh yes,” said Eleanor. “It was curious his being in the neighbourhood; for the 202nd is in Dublin, you know. And, Margery, he says he has an uncle in Yorkshire. He——”
“Girls! girls!” cried Aunt Theresa; and we went to sleep.
Soon after we returned from our visit to the Bullers, Eleanor and I resolved to prove the benefit we had reaped from Aunt Theresa’s instructions by making ourselves some dresses of an inexpensive stuff that we bought for the purpose.
How well I remember the pattern! A flowering creeper, which followed a light stem upwards through yard after yard of the material. We had picked to pieces certain old bodies which fitted us fairly, and our first work was to lay these patterns upon the new stuff, with weights on them, and so to cut out our new bodies as easily as Matilda (whose directions we were following) had prophesied that we should. When these and the sleeves were accomplished (and they looked most business-like), we began upon the skirts. We cut the back and the front breadths, and duly “sloped” the latter. Then came the gores. We folded the breadths into three parts; we took a third at one end, and two-thirds at the other, and folded the slope accordingly. It became quite exciting.
“Who would have thought it was so easy?” said I.
Eleanor was almost prone upon the table, cutting the gores with large scissors which made a thoroughly sempstress-like squeak.
“The higher education fades from my view with every snip,” she said, laughing. “Upon my word, Margery, I begin to believe this sort of thing is our vocation. It is great fun, and there is absolutely no brain wear and tear.”
The gores were parted as she spoke, and (to do us justice) were exactly the shape of the tarlatan ones Aunt Theresa had cut. But when we came to put them together, they wouldn’t fit without turning one of them the wrong side out. Eleanor had boasted too soon. We got headaches and backaches with stooping and puzzling. We cut up all our stuff, but the gores remained obstinate. By no ingenuity could we combine them so as to be at once in proper order, the right side out, and the right side (of the pattern) up. I really think we cried over them with weariness and disappointment.
“Algebra’s a trifle to it,” was poor Eleanor’s conclusion.
I went out to clear my brain by a walk, and happening, as I returned, to meet Jack, I confided our woes to him. One could tell Jack anything.
“You’ve got it wrong somehow,” said Jack, “linking” me. “Come to Miss Lining’s.”
Miss Lining was our village dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, but still she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of the village, and signified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She had also a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I could remonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Lining. Miss Margery has been making a dress, and she’s got into a muddle with the gores. Now, how do you manage with gores, Miss Lining?” Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off, and accepting a well-dusted chair.
There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which I did, Miss Lining saying, “Yisss, misss,” at every two or three words. When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimble thoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.
“There’s a hinside and a hout to the stuff? Yisss, misss. And a hup and a down? Yisss, misss.”
“And quite half the gores won’t fit in anywhere,” I desperately interposed.
Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said:
“In course, misss, with a patterned thing there’s as many gores to throw hout as to huse. Yisss, misss.”
“Are there?” said I. “But what a waste!”
“Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout, misss——”
“Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!” Jack broke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining’s tom-cat.
“Ho no, sir!” said Miss Lining, who couldn’t have seen a joke to save her dignity. “They cuts to good add-vantage, sir.”
The mystery was now clear to me, and Jack saw this by my face.
“You understand?” said he briefly, setting down the cat.
“Quite,” said I. “Our mistake was beginning with the bodies. But we can get some more stuff.”
“An odd bit always comes in,” said Miss Lining, speaking, I fear, from an experience of bits saved from the dresses of village patrons. “Yisss, misss.”
“Well, good-afternoon, Miss Lining,” said Jack, who never suffered, as Eleanor and I sometimes did, from a difficulty in getting away from a cottage. “Thank you very much. Have you heard from your sister at Buxton lately?”
“Last week, sir,” said Miss Lining.
“And how is she?” said Jack urbanely.
He never forgot any one, and he never grudged sympathy—two qualities which made him beloved of the village.
“Quite well, thank you, sir, and the same to you,” said Miss Lining, beaming; “except that she do suffer a deal in her inside, sir.”
“Chamomile tea is very good for the inside, I believe,” said Jack, putting on his hat with perfect gravity.
“So I’ve ’eerd—yisss, sir,” said Miss Lining; “and there’s something of the same in them pills that’s spoke so well of in your magazine, sir, I think. I sent by the carrier for a box, sir, on Saturday last, and would have done sooner, but for waiting for Mrs. Barker to pay for the pelerine I made out of her uncle’s funeral scarf. Yisss, misss.”
Jack was very seldom at a loss, but on this occasion he seemed puzzled.
“Pills recommended in our magazine?” he said, as we strolled up towards the Vicarage. “It’s those medical tracts you and Eleanor have been taking round lately.”
“There’s nothing about pills in them,” said I. “They’re about drains, and fresh air, and cleanliness. Besides, she said our magazine.”
“We don’t give them any magazine but the Parishioner’s Pennyworth and the missionary one,” said Jack. “I’m stumped, Margery.”
But in a few minutes I was startled by his seizing me by the shoulders and leaning against me in a paroxysm of laughter.
“Oh, Margery, I’ve got it! It is the Parishioner’s Pennyworth. There’s been an advertisement at the end of it for months, like a fly-leaf, of Norton’s chamomile pills.”
And as I unravelled to Eleanor the mystery of our dressmaking difficulties, we could hear Jack convulsing Mrs. Arkwright with a perfect reproduction of Miss Lining’s accent—“Them pills that’s spoke so well of in your magazine. Yisss, m’m.”
We got some more material, and finished the dresses triumphantly. By the next summer we were skilful enough to use our taste with some freedom and good success.
I was then fifteen, and in long dresses. I remember some most tasteful costumes which we produced; and as we contemplated them as they hung, flounced, furbelowed, and finished, upon pegs, Eleanor said:
“I wonder where we shall display these this year?”
How little we knew! We had made the dresses alike, to the nicety of a bow, because we thought it ladylike that the costumes of sisters should be so. How far we were from guessing that they would not be worn together after all!
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!
HOME AGAIN—HOME NEWS—THE VERY END.
Now it is past it seems like a dream, my life at The Vine, with its sad end, if indeed that can be justly called a sad end which took away together, and with little pain, those dear souls whose married life had not known the parting of a day, and who in death were not (even by a day) divided.
And so I went back to the moors. I was weak and ill when I started, but every breath of air on my northward journey seemed to bring me strength.
There are no events in that porter’s life, I am convinced. He looked just the same, and took me and my boxes quite coolly, though I felt inclined to shake hands with him in my delight. I did cry for very joy as we toiled up the old sandy hill, and the great moors welcomed me back. Then came the church, then the Vicarage, with the union-jack out of my window, and the villagers were at their doors—and I was at home. Oh, how the dear boys tore me to pieces!
There was no very special news, it seemed. Clement had been very good in taking my class at school, and had established a cricket club. Jack had positively found a new fungus, which would probably be named after him. “Boy’s luck,” as we all said! Captain Abercrombie had been staying with an old uncle at a place close by, only about twelve miles off. And he was constantly driving over. “So very good-natured to the boys,” Mr. Arkwright said. And there was to be a school-children’s tea on my birthday.
My birthday has come and gone, and I am sixteen now. Dear old Eleanor and I have gone back to our old ways. She had left my side of our room untouched. It was in talking of our recent parting, and all that has come and gone in our lives, that the fancy came upon us of writing our biographies this winter.
And here, in the dear old kitchen, round which the wild wind howls like music, with the dear boys dreaming at our feet, we bring them to an end.
* * * * * *
This dusty relic of an old fad had been lying by for more than a year, when I found it to-day, in emptying a box to send some books in to Oxford, to Jack.
Eleanor should have had it, for we are parted, after all; but her husband has more interest in hers, so we each keep our own.
She is married, to George Abercrombie, and I mean to paste the bit out of the newspaper account of their wedding on to the end of this, as a sort of last chapter. It would be as long as all the rest put together if I were to write down all the ups and downs, and ins and outs, that went before the marriage, and I suppose these things are always very much alike.
I like him very much, and I am going to stay with them. The wedding was very pretty. Jack threw shoes to such an extent, that when I went to change my white ones I couldn’t find a complete pair to put on. He says he meant to pick them up again, but Prince, our new puppy, thought they were thrown for him, and he never brought them back. Dear boy!
The old uncle helps George, who I believe is his heir, but at present he sticks to the regiment. It seems so funny that Eleanor should now be living there, and I here. In her letter to-day she says: “Fancy, Margery, my having quarrelled with Mrs. Minchin and not known it! She called on me to-day and solemnly forgave me, whereby I learned that she had been ‘cutting’ me for six weeks. When she said, ‘No doubt you thought it very strange, Mrs. Abercrombie, that I never called on your mother whilst she was with you,’ I was obliged to get over it the best way I could, for I dare not tell her I had never noticed it. I think my offence was something about calls, and I must be more particular. But George and I have been sketching at every spare moment this lovely weather. Oh, Margery dear, I do often feel so thankful to my mother for having given us plenty of rational interests. I could really imagine even our quarrelling or getting tired of each other, if we had nothing but ourselves in common. As it is, you can’t tell, till you have a husband of your own, what a double delight there is in everything we do together. As to social ups and downs, and not having much money or many fine dresses, a ‘collection’ alone makes one almost too indifferent. Do you remember Mother’s saying long ago, that intellectual pleasures have this in common with the consolations of religion, that they are such as the world can neither give nor take away?”
THE END.
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