"My dear, you never mean to tell me Richard Halling's son and daughter are here for an indefinite period." It was Mrs. Werner who, dressed in a light summer muslin, which trailed behind her over the grass, addressed this remark to Mrs. Mortomley attired in deep mourning—barathea and crape trailing behind her likewise.
"Yes, they are," said Dolly indifferently. "For how long a time they are to be here I have not the faintest idea. It makes no difference to me. They go their way and I go mine. Antonia dresses herself to receive her fiancé and goes to stay with his sister. Rupert lounges about, plays the piano, bribes Lenore to sit still like an angel. They do not interfere with me and I do not interfere with them. There is nothing to make a song about in the matter."
"Dolly," said her friend, "You will go your own way once too often."
Dolly opened her eyes as wide as she could, and asked, "Whose way would you have me go."
"I would have you take a woman's place and assume a wife's responsibilities."
"Good gracious!" and Dolly plumped down on the grass.
"Leonora, you utter dark sayings, be kind enough to explain your words of wisdom in plain English."
There was a garden chair close at hand, and Mrs. Werner took advantage of it to lessen the distance between herself and her friend. Being a small, short, slight, lithe woman, Dolly could pose her person anywhere. Being tall, stately, a lady "with a presence," Mrs. Werner would as soon have thought of dropping on the grass as of climbing a tree.
"Do you remember Dassell?" she asked softly.
"Do I remember Dassell," repeated Dolly, and her brown eyes had a far-away look in them as she answered, "You might have shaped your singular question better, Nora; ask me if I shall ever forget it, and then I shall answer you in the words of Moultrie's, 'Forget Thee,' which really does go admirably to the air of Lucy Neal; I wish you would try how well."
"Dolly do be serious for five minutes, if you can. Do you never long for the old quiet life again."
"No I do not," answered Mrs. Mortomley promptly. "It was very well while it lasted; good, nice, peaceful, what you will, but I could no more go back to that than I could to a rattle and coral and bells. I have gone forward—I have passed that stage. We must go forward, we must travel from stage to stage till the end, whether we like the journey or not. My journey has been very pleasant, so far."
"Has it been satisfactory?" asked Mrs. Werner.
"Has yours?" retorted Dolly; then, without waiting for a reply, went on:
"We have all our ideal life, and the real must differ from it. We have our ideal husbands, as our husbands have had their ideal wives, and the real are never like the ideal. Well, what does it matter? We would not marry our ideals now if we could, so what is the use of thinking about them. Has my life been satisfactory? you ask. Yes, I think so. I am not very old now. I am five-and-twenty, Leonora, four years younger than you, and yet I think if the whole thing were stopped this minute, if God himself said to me now, you have had your share of happiness, you have eaten all the feasts set out for you too fast, you must walk out of the sunshine and make way for some one else, I could not grumble even mentally; I have had my innings, Nora, let the future bring what it will."
"You little heathen!"
"Perhaps you are right," said Dolly philosophically, "Perhaps it is heathenish to love ease and pleasure and luxury, as I love them all; but, Lenny, you know I never had high aims; I should detest working for my living, or being a clergyman's wife and having to visit all sorts of miserable people, or going about as a Sister of Charity, or setting-up for a philanthropist, or a social reformer, 'Chacun à son goüt,' and it certainly would not be my goût to make myself less happy than I am."
"But, Dolly, do not you think you owe a duty to your husband?"
"Of course I do, if you like to word your sentence in so disagreeable a manner, but I am not aware that I fail in my duty towards him. You do not think it necessary, I suppose, that I should make his shirts, or darn his socks so long as there are people to be found glad to earn a little money by drudging at such things. He has a comfortable home, and everything in it that he wants so far as I know. I never nag him as I hear many excellent wives nag their husbands. We never exchange an angry word. If I want anything, he says 'Very well, get it.' If he wants anything, I say 'Very well, do it.' Upon my word, Leonora, I cannot imagine what it is you wish, unless that I should begin to make myself disagreeable."
"That is exactly what I do wish," said Mrs. Werner. "Instead of treating your husband like a spoiled child whose way is on no account to be crossed, I would have you talk with him, reason, advise, consult."
"Good gracious!" interrupted Dolly "what is there to consult about; what we shall have for dinner, or the shape of his next new hat? There, don't be cross, Nora," she added, penitently as Mrs. Werner turned her head away with an impatient gesture. "Tell me what it is you want me to do, condescend to particulars, and don't generalize as is your habit, and I will be as attentive as even you could desire."
"You ought never to have allowed those people to come here," said Mrs. Werner emphatically.
"Archibald brought them home with him, and it would surely not have been pretty manners for me to tell them to go back again."
"If you had ever been in any useful sense a helpmeet to Mr. Mortomley he would not have thought of billeting them at Homewood. Any other woman than you, Dolly, would have taught him prudence and carefulness and wisdom. I wonder your long experience of the miseries of a small income has resulted in nothing except perfect indifference to pecuniary affairs."
"You mistake," answered Dolly; "it has taught me to feel unspeakably thankful for a large income."
"Then why do you not take care of it?" asked her friend.
"I do not think I spend so much money as you," retorted Mrs. Mortomley.
"Perhaps not; but Mr. Werner's business is a much better one than your husband's, and we spend the greater part of our income in trying to increase his influence and extend his connexion."
"Oh!" said Dolly, and no form of words could do justice to the contempt she managed to convey by her rendering of that simple ejaculation.
"It is quite true," persisted Mrs. Werner, answering her tone, not her words.
"No doubt you think so," retorted Dolly, "but I do not. For instance, how should you know whether Mr. Werner's business is a better one than ours or not?"
It was not often Mrs. Mortomley claimed the colour manufactory for her own, but when it was attacked she flung personal feeling into the defence.
"Henry says so," was the convincing reply.
"Henry," with a momentary pause on the name intended to mark the word as a quotation, "Henry may know what he makes himself, but I cannot understand how he can tell what we make," and Dolly folded her hands together in her lap and waited for the next aggressive move.
"I think, my dear, City men have ways and means of ascertaining these things."
"Very likely," said Mrs. Mortomley, "for I think, my dear, City men are usually a set of ill-natured gossiping old women."
"Do not be cross, Dolly," suggested her friend.
"I shall be cross if I choose, Leonora," said Mrs. Mortomley. "It is enough to make any one cross. What right has Mr. Werner—for it is Mr. Werner, I know, who has really spoken to me through your mouth—what right has he, I repeat, to dictate to us how we shall spend our money. If he likes to have horrid, tiresome, vulgar, prosy people at his house—when he might get pleasant people—that is his affair. I do not interfere with him—(only I will not go to your parties)—but he has no sort of claim to dictate to us, and I will not bear it, Nora, I will not."
"Dolly, dear, I was only speaking for your good—"
"I do not want good spoken to me," interrupted Mrs. Mortomley.
"And it is not for your good," went on Mrs. Werner calmly, "that you should have Antonia and Rupert quartered here. If your husband had given them say a couple of hundred pounds a year, they would have thought far more of his generosity, and it would have cost you less than half what it will do now, besides being wiser in every way."
"Had not you better lay that statement before him yourself?" asked Dolly.
"If I were his wife I should unhesitatingly," was the reply.
"Well, I am his wife and I will not," declared Dolly. "If he likes to have them in the house I cannot see why he should not, so long as they do not make their proximity disagreeable to me; and I am not likely to let them do that, am I, Nora?"
"So long as you have your house filled with company, and are out at parties continually, perhaps not."
"Leonora," began Mrs. Mortomley, "you are the only friend I ever had in my life. I am never likely to have another; but sooner than submit to this eternal lecturing I would rather kiss and say good-bye now, than go on to an open quarrel. Why can we not agree to differ; why cannot Mr. Werner leave my husband to manage his own affairs, and you leave me to order my way of life as seems most satisfactory to me? You think you are doing great things for your husband because, at his desire, you invite City notables and their wives to dinner, and perhaps you may be. All I can say is, I should not be doing Archie any service by inviting them here. I do not know whether rich City snobs and snobesses hate you—perhaps not as there is a real live lord, not a Lord Mayor, amongst your relatives—but they hate me. If I had never come in contact with one of them it might have spared us some enemies; and I never mean so long as I live to come in contact with another, except those who are unavoidable, such as Antonia's elderly young man, for instance. There is nothing I can do or wear or say right in their eyes. I feel this. I know it. They detest me because I am different from them, and they do not think, as I was not a lady of fortune or a lord's niece, I have any right to be different. I do not know why oil should impute it as a sin to water, that it is water and not oil, but these people who cannot mix with me and with whom I cannot mix, do impute it to me as a sin that I am myself and not them. There is the case in a nutshell, Mrs. Werner, and I fail to see why you and I should quarrel over it."
"But, Dolly, do you think it prudent to have so many guests here in whom it is impossible for your husband to take an interest?"
"If they do not interest they amuse him," was the reply. "And I think anything which brings him out of his laboratory even for a few hours must be advantageous to him mentally and physically. I do not believe," continued Dolly, warming with her subject, "in men living their lives in the City, or else amongst colours and chemicals. When we come to compare notes in our old age, Leonora, I wonder which faith, yours or mine, will be found to have contained temporal salvation."
Mrs. Werner looked down on the slight figure, at the eager upturned face, and then speaking her thoughts and that of many another person aloud, said,
"I cannot fancy you old, Dolly. I think if you live to be elderly you will be like the Countess of Desmond, who was killed by a fall from a cherry-tree in her hundred and fortieth year."
Mrs. Mortomley's laugh rang out through the clear summer air.
"Do you know," she said, "the same thought has perplexed me; only it was different. I can imagine myself old; a garrulous great-grandmother, good to Lenore's grandchildren, a white-haired, lively, pleasant old lady, fond of the society of young people; but, oh! Nora, I cannot picture myself as middle-aged. I fail to imagine the ten years passage between thirty-five and forty-five, between forty-five and fifty-five. If I could go to sleep for twenty years like Rip van Winkle, and reappear on the scene with grey hair and a nice lace cap, I should understand the rôle perfectly; but the middle passage, I tell you fairly, the prospect of that fills me with dismay."
"And yet I also am only six years distant from the point which you kindly mark as the entrance to middle age, and can contemplate the prospect with equanimity."
"Queens never age," observed Dolly, "they only acquire dignity; ordinary mortals get crooked and battered and wrinkled and—ugly. I am afraid I shall get very ugly; grow fat, probably; fond of good living, and drink porter for luncheon."
"How can you be so absurd?" exclaimed Mrs. Werner.
"Nora," said Dolly solemnly, "I have, little as you may think it, very serious thoughts at times about my future. I would give really and truly ten pounds—and you know if I had the income of a Rothschild I should still be in want of that particular ten pounds—but I would, indeed, give that amount if any one could tell me how I should spend the twenty years stretching between thirty-five and fifty-five."
"I do not imagine the most daring gipsy could say the line of your life would be cut short."
"Oh! no, I shall reach the white hair and the lace cap and the great grandmother stage; but how? that is the question."
"My dear, leave these matters to God."
"I must, I suppose," said Dolly resignedly.
When Mrs. Mortomley stated that the rich men's wives—the carriage-and-pair and moderate-single-brougham ladies, who had duly called at Homewood and made acquaintance with the colour-maker's bride—hated her, her statement was probably too sweeping.
Hatred is a big word, and conveys the idea of an overwhelming amount of detestation, and I do not think really there was a woman amongst the whole number included in Dolly's mental and verbal condemnation who was not far too much occupied with the grandeur of her own surroundings—the wish to eclipse her neighbours—the perfections of her children and the shortcomings of her servants, to have time to cultivate any feeling stronger than very sufficient dislike for the new mistress of Homewood.
So far as dislike went, Mrs. Mortomley was right. The ladies who called upon her, and who, in their own way—which was not her way—were wiser, better, happier women than Dolly, disliked her as nation dislikes nation, as class dislikes class, as sect dislikes sect, as diverging politicians dislike each other.
There was no blame attaching to any one in the matter. It could not be said that anything Dolly did repulsed these worthy matrons. What God and circumstances had made her was the cause of their antipathy.
A cat is a nice domestic animal in the eyes of many people, and a dog has many qualities which endear him to an appreciative master; but we do not blame either because they cannot agree—we say they are better separate than together. Mrs. Mortomley and the worthy, kindly, prim, straight-laced female pharisees who had been disposed to look amiably upon her, were better apart.
Mrs. Werner, with her stately manner, with her—by them—unapproachable heart, with her high-bred courtesy and innate knowledge of the world, delighted them. Though in her presence they felt much the same sort of restraint as a subject, no matter how well-born and delicately nurtured, if unaccustomed to courts, might feel during an audience with her Majesty, still they went away praising her gifts of person, her graces of bearing, her suitable conversation.
She was all the mind of woman could desire, while Dolly was all that the imagination of woman held undesirable.
But the precious gift of charity was amongst these ladies. They were glad to smooth their ruffled feathers with a flattering platitude, "Poor dear Mrs. Mortomley! Yes; so untiring a hostess! so hospitable! so unselfish! but," this in a stage whisper, "odd, no doubt a little flighty and uncertain, like all clever people!"
For these people, with a quicker intuition than obtained among the residents of Great Dassell, had discovered Dolly was clever. Though her light, hidden under a bushel, could have never been discovered save by the eye of faith,—by them.
With men the case was different. With all the veins of their hearts, the men whose good-will it seemed most desirable she should conciliate, hated Dolly.
They began with liking her—there was the misfortune—that which their wives, daughters, and sisters were sharp enough to detect at a glance, they only found out by a slow and painful and degrading process of disillusion.
Intuitively women understood that the moment after Mrs. Mortomley had in her best manner bid the last of them "good night," coming herself to the outer door to speak the words, she flung her arms over her head, thanked Heaven they were gone, and delightedly mocked them for the benefit of any appreciative guest belonging to the clique she affected; but men could not be lectured, scolded, or inducted into a comprehension of Mrs. Mortomley's hypocrisy till their vanity had been raised to a point from whence the fall proved hurtful.
Men accustomed to society would have taken Dolly's little careful attentions, her conventional flatteries, her recollection of special likings, her remembrance of physical delicacy, and mental peculiarities for just the trifle they were worth, the laudable desire of a woman to make all her guests feel Homewood for the nonce their home, and the natural and essentially feminine wish to induce each male of the company—even if he were deaf, bald, prosy—to carry away a special and particular remembrance of their hostess Mrs. Mortomley.
But this is a game which if all very well for a short period, palls after frequent playing. Dolly grew sick of the liking she herself had striven to excite.
She might have managed to continue to associate with the wives and produce no stronger feeling of antipathy than she managed to excite during the course of a first interview, but with husbands the case was different. Let her try as she would, and at the suggestion of various well meaning if short-sighted friends she did occasionally try, with all her heart, to retain the good opinion that many worthy and wealthy gentlemen had been kind enough in the early days of acquaintanceship to express concerning her—her efforts proved utterly futile.
Mortomley had made a mistake, and he was the only person who failed to understand the fact. His wife was quick enough to know she ought never to have responded to the offers of intimacy and hospitality "people most desirable for a man to stand well with" had been so unhappily prompt to offer.
That which Lamb wrote of himself might, merely altering the pronoun, have been said about Dolly:
"Those who did not like him hated him, and some who once liked him afterwards became his bitterest haters."
I have said before that this was scarcely Mr. Mortomley's fault; but most assuredly it was Mr. Mortomley's misfortune. The very dislike his wife inspired gave a factitious importance to him and his affairs which they certainly never possessed before.
The modest home his progenitors had, in the good old days when that which belonged to everybody could be appropriated by any-body, made for themselves on the outskirts of Epping Forest, became a centre of interest to an extent the owner never could have conceived possible. He did not trouble himself about the affairs of his neighbours. That they should concern themselves about his, never entered his mind.
It may be safe enough, if not altogether pleasant, for a great millionaire or a great lady to be subject to the curious gaze of the multitude; but for a business man doing a moderate trade, or for a wife in the middle rank of society, it proves a trying and often dangerous ordeal.
All unconsciously Mortomley pursued his way, with many a scrutinizing eye marking his progress. Not quite so unconsciously Mrs. Mortomley pursued her way, making fresh enemies as she moved along.
Even her child grew to be a source of offence. "It's not her fault poor little thing!" the mothers of pert, snub-nosed, inquisitive, precocious snoblings would complacently remark, "properly brought up she might be something very different."
Which, indeed, to say truth, was not desirable. Let the mother's deficiencies be what they might, it would have been difficult, I think, to suggest improvement in the child.
She had all the Mortomley regularity of features, light brown hair, flecked with gold, that came likewise from her father's family; but her eyes were the eyes of Dolly—only darker, larger, more liquid; and her vivacity, her peals of delighted laughter, her happy ability to amuse herself for hours together, came from some forgotten Gerace. There are families in which few traditions are preserved, who have left no memory behind them, but still lived long enough to bequeath the great gift of contentment to some who were to come after.
Why then was Lenore accounted an offence? A sentence from "Imperfect Sympathies," may, perhaps, explain this better than I can.
Elia says, "I have been trying all my life to like—" For the present purpose it is not needful to extract more closely,—"And am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me, and in truth I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it."
In a foot note to the same essay, he puts his idea even more clearly:
"There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw one another before), and instantly fighting."
Custom, association, family prejudices, the objects upon which the eye has been in the habit of perpetually dwelling, these things go to make the something, which in at once a wider and a narrower sense than that artists and literati understand the word, is called taste.
I mean this: matters such as those indicated, educate for good or for evil, the outward senses, and at the same time form an actual, if unconscious, mental standard to which, as it may be high or low, the estimate of those with whom we are thrown in contact is dwarfed or raised.
If it were true, as is generally supposed, that maternity makes women appreciative of, and tender-hearted to, the children of other women, Lenore might have spanned the gulf which stretched between her mother and the admirable matrons who contemned without understanding her; but it is not true.
So long as infants are in arms, so long as their talk is unintelligible, their limbs unavailable for active service, their idiosyncracies undeveloped and their features unformed, they occupy a platform on which mothers can meet on neutral ground and survey and discuss the beauties of alien babies without a feeling of envy, or rivalry.
In that stage, even Lenore was viewed with kindly and appreciative eyes, but not long subsequently to the period when she found the use of her tongue which, of course, after the manner of her sex, she began to ply in vague utterances before a boy would have thought of exercising it, the little creature began to fall out of favour with those ladies who looked upon Mrs. Mortomley as an error in creation.
And as Lenore passed as such as she do pass, rapidly from infancy to childhood, she became more obnoxious to those who had a theory as to what little girls and boys should be, founded it may be remarked on the reality of what their own boys and girls had been, or were.
Dolly's child, though an only one, was no spoiled brat, always rubbing up against its mother and asking for this, that and the other. Let Dolly be as foolish in all else as she liked, she was wise as regarded Lenore.
When with lavish hand the father would have poured toys into her lap, filled her little hands to overflowing, given her every pretty present his eye lit upon, Dolly interfered. Her own childhood, bare of toys and gifts, yet full of an exceeding happiness all self-made, was not, God help her, hid so far away back in the mists of time, but she could understand even in that land of plenty how to bring up the one child given to her.
Lenore was a healthy little girl, healthily brought up. As a baby she rolled on the grass or over the carpets, as a tiny little girl she could make herself as happy stringing daisy chains and dandelion flowers, as though each flower had been a pearl of price, and the threads with which she linked them together spun out of gold; no lack of living companions had she either; cats and dogs, kittens and puppies, composed part of the retinue of that tiny queen.
But the queen and the retinue gave offence; as, being all natural, how could they avoid doing?
Her name in the first instance stank in the nostrils of many worthy women. "Named after some dreadful creature in Lord Byron's poems," they remarked.
And if a person favourably inclined to Mrs. Mortomley explained he believed the child was called after Mrs. Werner, and that secondly the name was that of a heroine in one of Edgar Poe's poems, they answered,
"The name is suitable enough when given to a Lord's daughter, but Mr. Mortomley is not a Lord, and I hope, Mr.——" this severely, "you do not advocate having the heroines of French and German poets introduced into English homes."
At which crass ignorance Mr.——bowed his head and confessed himself conquered.
Whilst Lenore, unconscious of disapprobation and offence, grew and was happy, a very impersonation of childish beauty and grace, and all the time trouble was coming. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand hovered in the horizon during the first happy years of her life, betokening a hurricane which ultimately broke over Homewood, and swept it away from her father's possession.
By reason of favourable winds and propitious currents Mrs. Mortomley had almost sailed out of sight of those heavily-freighted merchant ships which hold on one accustomed course too calmly to suit the vagaries of such craft as she, when the death of Richard Halling and arrival of his son and daughter at Homewood threw her once again amongst people who were never likely to take kindly to or be desired by her.
Miss Halling was engaged to a middle-aged, or, indeed, elderly gentleman, who stood high in the estimation of City folks, and who himself had the highest opinion possible of individuals who, after making fortunes on Change, in Mincing Lane, or any other typical London Eldorado, did not turn their backs on the place where they gained their money as if ashamed of it, but were content to associate with their equals, and felt as much "honoured by an invitation to the Mansion House as dukes and duchesses might to an invitation to the Court of St. James's."
This was literally Mr. Dean's style of conversation, and the reader who has been good enough to follow this story so far may comprehend the favour it found with Mrs. Mortomley. He had a comfortable old-fashioned house situated in the midst of good grounds. His gardens were well kept up; but were a weariness, if not to him, at least to Dolly, by reason of his being unable to find honest men to till the ground and his perpetual lamentations concerning the shortcomings of those he did employ.
There was not a picture hanging on his walls, not a horse in his stables, not a cow in his meadows, not a tree about his place that Dolly did not hate with the detestation born of utter weariness and mental exhaustion.
And in this case she had no choice but to suffer patiently. Antonia Halling had not been at Homewood three months before Mrs. Mortomley would have given her entire fortune to see her depart. Her friends filled the house. She herself simply deposed Dolly; and Dolly, though no saint, loved peace far too well to fight for the possession of a throne she knew she must ultimately re-ascend.
When Mr. Dean married Antonia, but not before. Judge, therefore, how anxious Dolly was to stand well with Mr. Dean; but she failed in her endeavour.
Mr. Dean "could not see anything in her." "She was not his style." "Her manners might please some people, apparently they did, but they did not recommend themselves to him." "Of course the fortune she had left her was one not be despised by a man in Mr. Mortomley's position, but he was doubtful whether a managing, steady, careful, sensible woman might not have proved a better-dowered wife than the one he had chosen."
For all of which remarks—that sooner or later reached her ears—Dolly cared not a groat. Slowly, however, it dawned upon her by degrees she never could recall—by a process as gradual as that which is effected when night is changed to day—that Mr. Dean and men like him not merely disapproved of her, which was nothing and to be expected, but looked down upon her husband, which was much and astounding.
By imperceptible degrees she arrived at the knowledge of the fact. More rapidly she grasped the reason, and came at the same time to a vague comprehension of the cause why between her soul and the souls of Mr. Dean and men and women like him, there lay an antagonism which should for ever prevent their knitting into one.
All Christianity, all genius, all talent, all cleverness, all striving after an ideal, all industry; all patience, all bearing and forbearing, they held not as things in themselves intrinsically good, but as good only so far as they were available for money getting.
Unless the sermon, or the book, or the invention, or the philanthropy or the hard work, or the vague yet passionate yearnings after a higher life which shy and self-contained natures possess and keep silence concerning—produced money, and a large amount of it, too—they despised those products of the human mind.
They had made their money or their fathers had done so before them, and having made it they were to speak justly as they themselves could state their case, willing to subscribe to charities and missions, and put down their fifties, their hundreds, and their thousands at public meetings, and even to send anonymous donations when they thought such a style of giving might approve itself to God.
But of that swift untarrying generosity which gives and forgets itself has given—of that Christian feeling which seeing a brother in need relieves him and omits to debit the Almighty with a dole—Mr. Dean and his fellows having no knowledge, they accounted Mortomley foolish because he had not considered himself first and the man who had need second.
The world had gone on and the Mortomleys had stood still; but though they had not compassed their fair share of earthly prosperity, who shall say they were not "nearer the Kingdom" for that very reason.
Those traits in Mortomley's character which had won for him golden opinions from Mrs. Trebasson, and something more from her daughter, and which unconsciously to herself knit Dolly's heart to her husband firmer and closer as the years went by, would simply have been accounted foolishness by those who had done so remarkably well for themselves and their families. Their ideal of a good man was Henry Werner, who, upon a small business inherited from his father, had built himself a great commercial edifice; who was a "shrewd fellow" according to his admirers, and who, if he ever lapsed into generosity, took care to be generous wisely and profitably. No man would have caught that clever gentleman dispensing alms with only his left hand for audience. If there was a famine in the East, or a bad ship-wreck, or an hospital in want of funds, or any other calamity on sufficiently large a scale to justify the Lord Mayor in convening a public meeting on the subject, I warrant that Mr. Werner would be present on the occasion and put down his name for a sum calculated to prove that business with him was flourishing. But all the private almsgiving which was done in his family was done by Mrs. Werner, and to "remember the poor and forget not" she had to manage her allowance with prudence. Unlike Dolly she had no private fortune; unlike Dolly she could not go to her husband and say she wanted money to give to that widow or this orphan, or some poor old man laid up with cold and rheumatism and the burden of years superadded.
Mr. Werner was in the world's eyes a prosperous man, but although his wife did her duty by, she did not grow to love, him. Mortomley, on the contrary, was a man who did not prosper as he might have done; and Dolly did not do her duty by him; but then she loved him, not perhaps as Leonora Trebasson might have done, but still according to her different nature wholly and increasingly.
Was there nothing to be put to the credit side of the last account, do you suppose? nothing of which the world with its befrilled and bejewelled wife failed to take notice.
Although, however, Mrs. Mortomley came to understand that in the opinion of his acquaintances her husband had made nothing of the opportunities offered him by fortune, she did not comprehend that what they thought was literally true.
She did not know that in business as in everything else it is simply impossible for a man to remain stationary. If he is not advancing he must be retrograding, if he is not increasing his returns his profits must be decreasing, if he is not extending his connexion he must be losing it, if he is not keeping ahead of the times he must be lagging behind the footsteps of progress.
Of all these matters Mrs. Mortomley was profoundly ignorant. From Mrs. Werner she knew that Richard Halling's death had embarrassed her husband; but she attached little importance to this information, first because it came from a source she had always distrusted, and second because she had only the vaguest idea of what embarrassment meant in trade. Her notion, if she had any, was that her husband would have to put off some payment—as she sometimes deferred paying her milliner—that was all.
The first hint of things being at all "difficult" came to her in this wise.
She had not been very well. Perhaps, Miss Halling's friends, or Mr. Dean's instructive remarks on the subject of his business had proved exhausting. Let that be as it may, one evening when a few guests were present she had just walked into the drawing-room after dinner when, without the slightest premonitory warning, she fell back in a dead faint.
She soon recovered, however, and not without a certain spice of malice laid her illness at the door of a scent which Miss Dean thought an appropriate odour to carry about with her everywhere—musk.
"I never can remain in a room with musk," said Dolly defiantly, "without feeling faint. Out of politeness to Miss Dean, I have latterly ceased speaking of a weakness she considers mere affectation, but now I suppose I may feel myself at liberty to do so."
And without further apology Dolly, still looking very white and terrified, for that inexplicable transition from consciousness to insensibility was a new sensation to her, walked through into the conservatory followed by Mrs. Werner and another lady who chanced to be present.
"I never could forgive the first Napoleon for divorcing Josephine until I read that she liked—musk," said Dolly leaning against the open door and looking out over the lawns, from which already came the sad perfume of the fallen Autumn leaves. "Fancy a man whose family traditions were interwoven with violets having that horrible odour greet him every time he entered her apartments."
"But it never made you faint before," remarked Mrs. Werner, ignoring Josephine's peculiarities, and reverting to her friend's sudden illness.
"I never had so large a dose at one time before," retorted Mrs. Mortomley; "Miss Dean must have taken a bath of it I should think, this afternoon."
"Hush! dear," expostulated Mrs. Werner, and she put her arm round Dolly's waist and kissed her. Not even in the pages of old romance was there ever anything truer, purer, more perfect, than the love Lord Dassell's niece bore for Archibald Mortomley's wife.
Meantime, within the drawing-room, Miss Dean remarked to Antonia penitently,
"I really did think it was—not affectation exactly you know, but her way; I am so sorry."
Miss Halling raised her white shoulders with a significant gesture.
"She attributes it to the musk, but it was not really that, though I do think, remember, many perfumes are disagreeable to her. For instance, I have often known her order hyacinths, lily of the valley, lilac and syringa to be taken out of a room where she wished to sit, and I remember once when we were going to London together by train, her getting into another compartment at Stratford, merely because a fat old lady who was our fellow-traveller had thought fit to deluge her handkerchief with patchouli. But it was not the musk which made her faint. She takes too much out of herself. She is never still, she visits and talks enough for a dozen people. She was at a wedding yesterday morning, at a kettledrum in the afternoon, and then she came home and we all dined with the Morrisons. No constitution could endure such treatment," finished Miss Halling.
"The constitutions of fashionable ladies endure more than that," replied Miss Dean, who might perhaps have liked Antonia better than was the case had that young person not assumed the shape of a future sister-in-law.
"Yes," agreed the other, "but then they do nothing else, and Dolly—excuse me for calling her by that ridiculous name, but we have got into the habit of it—is never at rest from morning till night, she rises early and she goes to bed late, and she is here there and everywhere at all hours of the day."
This was true at any rate. It was precisely what a solemn old doctor told her when by Mr. Mortomley's request she sent next day for "some one to give her something."
He said she had better go out of town to some quiet place, and accordingly Dolly accompanied by Lenore and her maid left Homewood before the week was over.
It was when Mortomley was saying his last words of farewell that the first drop of rain indicating foul weather to come, fell on her upturned face.
"Dolly dear, you won't spend more money than you can help," said her husband in the tone of a man who would just have liked about as well to cut his throat as utter the words.
Dolly opened her eyes. It had been a childish habit of hers, and time failed to cure her of it.
"Do I spend too much?" she asked.
"Not half enough, if we had it to spend," was the answer; then he added hurriedly, "you are not vexed, you do not mind my speaking." At that moment, 'Take your seats. Now, sir, if you please,' was shouted out, and Dolly could only reply from her corner in the carriage,
"I will tell you when you come down," but there was not a shade on her face. Her look was bright as ever, while she put her hand in his.
A whole chapter of assurances could not have lightened her husband's heart one half so effectually.
Even if the words he had uttered bore no immediate fruit, what did it matter? The ice was broken. Hereafter he could talk to her again and explain his meaning more fully. All the way to the station he had felt miserable. He had treated her always like a child, and now when he was forced to tell her she must do without any fresh toy to which she took a fancy, he imagined himself little better than a brute.
But Dolly had been told and was not vexed. Why, oh! why, had he not spoken to her before!
By the sad sea waves Mrs. Mortomley thought those last words over and over and over. She put two and two together. She estimated the amount the interest her own modest fortune brought back to the common fund, and then she reckoned as well as a woman who never professed to keep any accounts could reckon, the total of their annual expenditure.
The result was that when her husband did come down and ask her in his usual fashion, if she wanted money, (for indeed he was as much gratified as surprised at having heard no mention of that one thing needful in her short notes), she opened her purse and turned out its contents gleefully.
"Haven't I been good?" she asked; and then went on to ask,
"Archie, have you really and truly been troubled about these things?"
"A little," he answered.
"Then why did you not tell me sooner?"
"Why should I trouble you about such matters, love?"
"Because till I married you, the want of money and I were close acquaintances; perhaps that is the reason why I have always hated considering money since, but I can consider for all that, and I intend to make what you hold in your hand last until I get home again."
He put the notes and gold back into her purse slowly and thoughtfully, folding each note by itself, with nervous absent carefulness, dropping each sovereign singly into the little netted bag she kept, with her childish love for pretty things, for them.
"My poor Dolly," he said at last. Was it a prevision? Knowledge could not have come to him then, and it must have been a prevision that made the souls of both husband and wife grow for some reason, inexplicable to themselves, sad and sorrowful for a moment.
As for Dolly, his three words had sent her eyes out seaward with tears welling in them; but she was the first to recover herself.
"We will spoil our pleasure by talking of horrid money matters at the sea side," she remarked, "but when I go home again you must give me a full, true, and particular account of all that is troubling you. Do you hear, sir."
"Yes; I hear," he answered, "and I can give you an account of what is troubling me, at once. I have been foolish and I am suffering for my folly. I did not consider the crop I was planting and I am among stinging nettles in consequence; but we shall 'win through it yet,' to quote an old saying, dear, 'we shall win through it yet,' please God."
"I wish I was at home again," she said.
"So do I love, but you must not think of returning till you are quite strong and well again."
"No," she answered; "I think a sick wife is as bad in a house as a scolding wife, or worse, because at least the latter cannot excite anxiety, although it was only Miss Dean made me ill."
Mortomley shook his head, "Never mind what made you ill, dear, so as you only get well," he answered, and then, for the twilight had closed upon them and the place was empty of visitors, they paced slowly back along that walk by the sea hand clasped in hand.
If—nine years husband though he was—he had known more of Dolly, possessed much insight into the windings and subtleties of any woman's nature, it would have struck him as curious that after the confidence given, his wife did not at once pack up her dresses and return to Homewood. Happily for him he did not understand her, did not comprehend the light words she had spoken apparently in jest were uttered in real earnest.
"A sick wife,"—Dolly's imagination could present even to itself few more terrible pictures than that, and she knew and some one else knew it was needful for her to take practical measures to avert so fearful a misfortune.
With the solemn old doctor Dolly had jested about her illness, had laughed at advice, had grudgingly consented to take his medicine. It was all very pleasant, very easy, very non-alarming. Even Mortomley was satisfied when the old simpleton with a wise face assured him all his wife wanted was a month at the sea-side and entire repose.
Dolly knew better. With no flourish of trumpets, saying nothing to any-body, she went off quietly by herself to a celebrated physician and told him about that little swoon.
He did not say much, indeed he did not say anything at first; then he asked carelessly, almost indifferently, as was his fashion,
"And what do you suppose made you faint." Mrs. Mortomley did not answer, she looked him straight in the face, as women sometimes can look, evil and danger.
There ensued a dead silence, then she said,
"I came here expecting you to tell me the cause."
"I will answer your question hereafter, and write you a prescription meantime," he answered confusedly.
"Neither is necessary at present," she replied, and laying down her guinea left the room before he could recover from his astonishment.
"Now I should like to know the future of that woman," he said, "She understands all about it as well as I do."
Perhaps she did, but then she possessed a marvellous buoyancy of temper, and disbelief in the infallibility of doctors.
Fortunately for her, and somebody else.
"Dear Aunt,—(thus Mrs. Mortomley to Miss Gerace)—I have been a little ill, and I am here by the doctor's advice for change of air and scene; but I find that the moaning of the sea and the howling of the wind depress me at night, and I think I should get well quicker if I were at Dassell in my own old room.
"May I go to you—will you have me? Lenore is with me at present, but I will not trouble you with her. She shall go back to her papa at Homewood, if you say you have a corner still in your house for your affectionate niece,
"Dolly."
It is no exaggeration to say Mrs. Mortomley waited with a sickening impatience for the answer which should justify her in starting forthwith for Dassell. She believed she should get well there at once. She longed to hear the solemn silence of the woods; to behold once more the familiar landscape; to run over to the Court, and talk to Mrs. Trebasson; in her matronhood, to stop for a moment and rehabilitate the beauty of her girlish life—where it had once been a breathing presence.
Perhaps in the new notion of economy which possessed her, she desired to be strengthened in her purpose by a glimpse of the land where she had been content with so little of the world's wealth. Anyhow, let the reason be what it might, Dolly wanted to go back home—as she mentally phrased it—and waited anxiously for Miss Gerace's letter. It came: it ran as follows:—
"My dear Niece,—I grieve to hear of your ill-health, although I cannot marvel you have broken down at last; you know my opinions. They may be old fashioned; but, at all events, they carry with them the weight of an experience longer and wiser than my own.
"Health and undue excitement are incompatible. You left me blessed with a strong constitution; you have ruined it. You were a robust girl; you are a delicate woman. But I refrain, aware that my remarks now must be as distasteful as my previous advice has proved.
"When you were married I told you my home, so long as I had one, should always be yours. Though you have changed, I have not—and therefore, if you really think this air and place likely to benefit so fashionable a lady as yourself—pray come to me at once.
"Do not send your little girl back to Homewood, because you fear her giving trouble to a fidgety old maid. If you remember, I was not in my first youth when I took sole charge of you; and if I failed to train you into a perfect character, I do not think the blame could be laid altogether at my door. But I will have none of your fly-away, fine-lady servants, remember that. You and the child are welcome; but there is no place in my small house for London maids or nurses.
"I hope you will take what I have written in the spirit in which it is meant, and
"Believe me,
"Your affectionate Aunt,
"M. Gerace."
To which epistle, Dolly, in an ecstasy of indignation, replied:—
"My dear Aunt,—(from which commencement Miss Gerace anticipated stormy weather to follow; 'my' as a prefix to 'dear,' having always with Dolly been a declaration of hostility)—Of course I cannot tell in what spirit your letter was written, but I should say in a very bad one. At all events, I cannot go to Dassell now, and I regret asking you to have me. I will not visit any one who gives me a grudging welcome.
"I am not a fashionable lady. I am not a delicate woman. If being 'perfect' includes the power of saying disagreeable things to unoffending people, I am very thankful to admit I am, spite of your judicious training, an imperfect character. I suppose you have been waiting your opportunity to say something unpleasant to me, because Mrs. Edward Gerace spent a week with us in the Summer. I do not like her or her husband; but when they offered to visit us, we could not very well say there were plenty of Hotels within their means in London.
"And when they did come, I admit we tried to make them comfortable, which, no doubt assumes in your eyes the proportions of a sin. I daresay Edward Gerace's father did not treat my father well; but Edward is not responsible for that. For my part, I think in family feuds there ought to be a statute of limitations, as I believe there is for debt; nothing more fatiguing can be imagined, than to go on acting the Montague and Capulet business through all the days of one's life. If you had written to propose visiting me, I should have returned a very different answer; but I suppose people cannot help their dispositions. More is the pity!
"Your affectionate Niece,
"Dollabella Mortomley."
Which signature was adding insult to injury. 'Dollabella' had always been an offence in the nostrils of Miss Gerace. 'Dolly' was absurd; still, between the name and the owner, there was a certain fitness and unity.
With 'Dollabella' there was none. The "Minerva Press" twang about it had ever seemed intolerable to the practical spinster, nor did the fact of Mrs. Mortomley having been left the best part of her Godmother's money, tend to reconcile Miss Gerace to the polysyllabic appellation, all of which Mrs. Mortomley knew, and for that very reason she signed it in full.
"There," she thought to herself as she directed, sealed, and stamped the letter. "I hope Miss Gerace will like that."
For after the manner of her sex, she was petulant and little in unimportant matters.
It is the most purely womanly women who are given to similar outbursts.
Mrs. Werner could never so far have forgotten her own dignity as to indite such an epistle; but then, on the other hand, neither could she have repented for having done so, as Dolly did.
Barely was the letter posted before that repentance began. First, Mrs. Mortomley, her anger not yet assuaged, mentally pictured her aunt's horror and astonishment when she read. She saw the postman come up to the door. She saw the prim servant receive the letter. She saw her carry it into the breakfast-parlour. She saw Miss Gerace put on her spectacles. And at that point Dolly's anger began to ebb, and her regret to flow; after all, her aunt's innings out of life had been few and her own many; and she had her opinions just as Dolly had hers; and she had taken her nephew's child home when he died, and shared her small income with her, and done her duty faithfully, if not always pleasantly, and by way of return, Mrs. Mortomley had penned that letter, which by this time she herself styled nasty and detestable.
She could not send the antidote with the bane, for the early post had already gone out, taking her letter with it. But she could write by the night mail, and Miss Gerace would then receive her apology on the afternoon of the same day, which witnessed her offence.
One of the servants from the Court always went over for the letter bag twice a day, and it was understood Miss Gerace's correspondence went and came at the same time.
She need not therefore sleep upon the first letter; Dolly decided she would not sleep either till the second was written.
"Dear Aunt,—(so began number two of the same date)—I am so sorry for the ill-tempered things I said this morning. I did not really mean one of them. Your letter made me angry for the minute, and I wrote without stopping to think, indeed I did.
"Dear auntie, forgive me. When I remember all the years during which you stinted yourself to provide for me, I feel a monster of ingratitude. I will go to you now if you will have me, and take Lenore; but no servant; and Archie shall fetch me back when I have made my peace, and you are quite tired of me. I love you better than a thousand Edward Geraces, and their wives into the bargain, and their is not a stone in your house, or a plant in your garden that is not dear to me.
"Your ever affectionate,
"Dolly."
After which came a postscript.
"A message from home has just arrived. My husband is ill, so I cannot go to Dassell. Direct to Homewood."
Which Miss Gerace did.
With a good grace she said she was sorry to hear of Mr. Mortomley's illness and trusted he would soon be restored to health. With a bad grace she sent Mrs. Mortomley her forgiveness, and regretted Dolly's tendency to ill-temper was the besetting sin even her course of education had been unable to rectify. The one thing—she added with her own peculiar grace—she lamented to find was so strong a taint of vulgarity in her brother's child. The letter for which she so properly apologized would not have disgraced a Billingsgate fishwife. For that trait in her character she must have gone back to some alien blood.
"Poor aunt!" remarked Dolly, putting the letter aside, "she will never be good friends with me again. If she knew how ill Archie is, I do not think she would be so hard upon me."
Certainly Mr. Mortomley was very ill. For no light cause would Antonia Halling have summoned Mrs. Mortomley back as she did, but when she sent her telegram she really was afraid of the owner of Homewood dying in her hands.
To Dolly sickness was nothing new. As a clergyman's daughter she had been with it more or less all her life; less certainly since her marriage than before that event.
But one strong experience is perhaps enough. She had helped nurse her father; nay, she had tended him more unweariedly than any one else, and by reason of those vigils knew how to watch by the sick.
Beside her husband she took her post, and through the valley of the shadow brought him back to health, or at least what the doctors were pleased to call health.
They did not understand, though perhaps Dolly might instinctively, that the man who has once sickened through mental distress will never really even begin to recover until the mental pressure be removed.
Hot and fast Richard Halling's bills were pouring in. Mr. Mortomley was beginning fully to understand what "lending a name" means. Unfortunately he believed he could, as he said to Dolly, "win through"; and in that belief he was encouraged by the holders of every bill which had his name on the back of it.
"We will renew, of course," they said, and Mortomley instead of facing the question put it off; just as you would do, reader, were you similarly situated and had a great deal to lose.
So Mr. Mortomley, according to the doctors, was once again strong and able to attend to business. Nevertheless, his wife noticed he stayed a good deal in his laboratory after his attack, whilst his nephew went to town to look after affairs there. Indeed, the man's nerves were so shaken, his organization being delicate, that Dolly felt very glad to see any one, even Rupert, take his place in the City.
The doctors had their own way at last, and Homewood was quiet. In the face of her husband's illness, Dolly could not prove a gadabout. With unusual embarrassments surrounding him, Mortomley could not entertain as his fathers had done before he was thought of.
Nevertheless, there were occasional dinner-parties, and at one of these Dolly first saw Mr. Forde.
In deference to a suggestion of Mr. Werner's, who now interested and busied himself not a little with the concerns of his old friend, he had been asked to the house.
When he came no one knew exactly what to do with him. A stranger amongst strange people is rarely to be envied his lot; but perhaps the position of strange people when a stranger ventures amongst them is more unenviable still.
Mrs. Mortomley felt their modest establishment must seem poor in the eyes of a man who talked so glibly of the fine seats possessed by this alderman and that retired tallow-chandler. Although affably anxious to descend to the position, Mr. Forde lost no opportunity of letting the Mortomleys know Homewood seemed a mere doll's-house in comparison with the mansions to which he was daily invited. He and Mr. Werner had the bulk of the talk to themselves, and it related principally to City incidents and City men, to the fortune left by this merchant and the fiasco made by his neighbour, with other pleasing incidents of a like nature interspersed with political observations that made Dolly yawn frightfully behind her handkerchief.
Notwithstanding which pretences of under-rating Homewood and its occupiers, Mr. Forde was impressed by both. The unities of decent society always do impress men who have lived during the whole of their earlier years on the edge of society or below it.
After that first visit Mr. Forde came frequently to Homewood, but of this Mrs. Mortomley took little notice until one day when having, for reasons of her own, suggested putting off his proposed visit, Rupert remarked,
"I am afraid that would scarcely be a safe move. At any inconvenience to ourselves, we must be civil to him."
"Why?" asked Dolly.
"Well; for various reasons. If a man gets into Queer Street, he can scarcely afford to quarrel with the people who live there."
"Do you mean that Archie is in Queer Street?" Mrs. Mortomley inquired.
"In something very like it, at any rate," was the reply.
"How does it happen?"
"I cannot tell," he answered in all sincerity.
"When will he be out of it?"
"That is what puzzles me. We ought to have been out of it long ago."
Misfortune, like age, comes differently upon different people. There are those whose hair turns white in a single night, and those again to whom grey hairs come almost one by one, and in similar fashion ruin overwhelms some in an hour, whilst others are reduced to beggary by a slow and almost imperceptible process, the beginning and progress of which it seems impossible to trace.
The end every one understands, the commencement is usually unintelligible to those who ought to know most about it.
In the February of that year in which this story opens, came the first thunderclap heralding very bad weather to come.
For reasons best known to himself, Rupert had neglected to meet a somewhat important acceptance and had failed to take sufficient notice of a writ of which he, in Mr. Mortomley's absence, accepted service. The option had lain with the holder of proceeding against his debtor in Essex, or The City, and he selected the former as being likely to give the greatest annoyance.
To do him justice, Rupert was only vaguely acquainted with the nature of writs, and the spectacle of a sheriff's officer appearing at Homewood, proved as great a shock to him as it did to Miss Halling and Mortomley and Dolly and the servants.
They were all so perfectly new to business of the kind that they did not even try to keep the matter secret. From the cook to the page boy, from the lady's-maid to the groom, from the foreman manager in the works to the youngest lad employed about the place, every creature knew that a "man in possession" had taken up his residence in Homewood.
It was then the principal of Dolly's fortune proved of service. Within twenty-four hours the money was raised, the debt paid, and the man despatched to herald ruin to some other family, but the evil was wrought. Mortomley's credit had gone; and not all the sops thrown to fate out of Mrs. Mortomley's dot could pacify the wolves which now came howling round that doomed estate.
For a time, however, Mrs. Mortomley entertained no fear that their ship was sinking.
So far as she saw, beyond a certain gravity in her husband's face, a certain discontent in that of Miss Halling, and a retrenchment which she accepted as just and necessary in her own expenditure, there was no cause to anticipate danger. Things went on much as usual, the waters over which they floated seemed calm enough, and the winds fair and favourable.
She did not know, neither did her husband, neither did Rupert, that there was a leak in their vessel which it would have required very different hands from theirs to stop.
Had Mr. Werner stood in Mr. Mortomley's shoes, he could have done it, and would have made matters remarkably unpleasant for any one who tried to prevent his doing so.
When the evil day came, Mr. Werner said Mortomley was a fool, with an extremely strong adjective prefixed to this flattering appellation; but he did not call him a rogue.
Neither did any-body else for the matter of that, except Mr. Forde.
Which was of the less consequence, because as a wag remarked, speaking of his violent vituperations against the colour-maker,
"Poor Forde's experience has as yet been too one-sided to enable him to distinguish good from evil."
Indeed, after all, when a man is down it makes very little difference what the world thinks of him, unless in this way: the world always helps a rogue, because it has a justifiable faith in his helping himself, whereas a fool or a fool's equivalent in the opinion of society—an honest man—though weak may, if once thrown, lie for ever like a sheep on the broad of his back, unless some Samaritan help him to his feet again.
And Samaritans are scarce now-a-days; and when they do appear are generally as scarce of pennies as rich people are of inclination to give them.
One evening in the early summer time, Dolly, putting aside the muslin curtains which draped one of the French windows leading on the lawn, entered that cool and pleasant drawing-room of which, under her régime, many a man and woman had carried away happy memories.
As she stood with the light muslin parted above her head, she saw that her husband and Rupert sat with chairs close together, the latter talking earnestly; and she would have retreated by the way she came, for Dolly never cared to intrude on the tête-à-tête of any two persons, but Mortomley said, "You had better stay, dear. It is only right you should hear what we are saying."