What a change a marriage makes—what a blank it leaves in a house! Ours has been very dull since poor Lisa went away.
I know not why I call her “poor Lisa.” She seems the gayest of the gay, and the happiest of the happy; two characters which, by the way, are not always identical. Her letters from Paris are full of enjoyment. Augustus takes her everywhere, and introduces her to everybody. She was the “belle mariée” of a ball at the British Embassy, and has been presented to my old aversion, though he is really turning out a creditable individual in some things; “never too late to mend,” even for a Louis Napoleon. Of course, Lisabel now thinks him “the most charming man in the world,” except Augustus.
Strange, that she should take delight in such dissipations. She, not three weeks married. How very little she must have of her husband's society. Now, I should think the pleasantest way of spending a honeymoon would be to get out of everybody's way, and have a little peace and quiet, rambling about at liberty, and looking at pretty places together. But tastes differ; that is not Lisabel's fancy, nor was her's the sort of marriage likely to make such a honeymoon desirable. She used to say she should get tired of the angel Gabriel if she had him all to herself for four mortal weeks. Possibly; I remember once making a similar remark.
But surely that dread and weariness of two people, in being left to one another's sole society, must apply chiefly to cases of association for mere amusement or convenience; not to those who voluntarily bind their lives together, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part;” how solemn the words are! They thrilled me all through, on the morning of Lisabel's marriage.
I have never set down here anything about that day. I suppose it resembled most other wedding-days—came and went like a dream, and not a very happy dream either. There seemed a cloud over us all.
One of the reasons was, Francis did not come: at the last minute, he sent an apology; which was not behaving well, I thought. Nor did the excuse seem a valid one. But it might have been a painful day to him, and Francis is one of those sort of people—very pleasant, and not ill-meaning people either—who like to escape pain, if possible. Still, he might have considered that it was not likely to be the happiest of days to Penelope herself, nor made more so by his absence;—which she bore in perfect silence; and nobody, except Augustus, who observed, laughingly, that it was “just like cousin Charteris,” ventured any comment on the subject.
I do not join Mrs. Granton and our Lisa in their tirades against long engagements. I do not see why, when people are really fond of one another, and cannot possibly be married, they should not live contentedly betrothed for an indefinite time: it is certainly better than living wholly apart, forlorn and hopeless, neither having towards the other any open right, or claim, or duty. But then every betrothal should resemble marriage itself, in its perfect confidence, patience, and unexacting tenderness. Also, it ought never to be made so public, or allowed to be so cruelly talked over, as this engagement of Penelope's.
Well, Francis did not appear, and everybody left earlier than we had expected. On the marriage evening, we were quite alone; and the day after, Rockmount was its dull self again, except the want of poor Lisa.
I still call her so—I cannot help it. We never discover the value of things till we have lost them. Out of every corner I miss our Lisa—her light laugh that used to seem heartless, yet was the merriest sound in the house; her tall, handsome figure sailing in and about the rooms; her imperturbable good-temper, which I often tried—her careless, untidy ways, that used for ever to aggravate Penelope—down to her very follies and flirtations, carried on to the last in spite of Augustus.
My poor Lisa! The putting away of her music from the piano, her books from the shelf, and her clothes from the drawers, cost me as sharp an agony as I ever had in my life. I was not half good enough to her when I had her,—if I had her again, how different it should be. Ah, that is what we always say, as the great shadow Time keeps advancing and advancing, yet we always let it slip by, and we cannot make it go back for a single hour.
Mrs. Granton and Colin came to tea to-night. Their company was a relief; our evenings are often very dull. We sit all three together, but no one has much sympathy with what the other is doing or thinking; as not seldom happens in families, we each live in a distinct world of our own, never intruded on, save when we collectively entertain visitors. Papa asked Doctor Urquhart to dinner twice, but received an apology both times, which rather offended him, and he says he shall not invite him again until he has called. He ought to call, for an old man likes attention, and is justified in exacting it.
To-night, while Mrs. Granton gossipped with papa and Penelope, Colin talked to me. He bears Lisabel's marriage far better than I expected, probably because he has got something to do. He told me a long story about a row of labourers' cottages, which Doctor Urquhart advised him to build at the corner of the moor, each with its bit of land, convertible into a potato-field or a garden. There Colin busies himself from morning till night, superintending, planning, building, draining, “working like a horse,” he protests, “and never enjoyed anything more in his life.” He says, he has seen a great deal of Doctor Urquhart lately, and had great assistance from him in the matter of these cottages.
Then can he be so exceedingly occupied as not to have an hour or two for a visit? Shame on me for the suspicion! The idea that Doctor Urquhart would, even in a polite excuse, state a thing which was not true!
Colin is much improved. He is beginning to suspect that Colin Granton, Esq., owner of a free estate, and twenty-seven years old, has got something to do besides lounge about, shoot rabbits, and play billiards. He opened up to my sympathy a long series of schemes about these cottages: how he meant to instigate industry, cleanliness, and, indeed, all the cardinal virtues, by means of cottagers' prizes for tidy houses, well-kept gardens, and the best brought-up and largest families. He will never be clever, poor Colin! but he may be a most useful character in the county, and he has the kindest heart in the world. By the way, he told me in his ultra-simple fashion, that somebody had informed him one of the Rockmount young ladies said so! I felt myself grow hot to the ears, which exceedingly astonished Colin.
Altogether, a not unpleasant evening. But oh, moon!—whom I saw making cross-panes on the carpet, when I came in—it was not like the evenings a month ago, when Lisabel was at home.
I think women, as well as men, require something to do. I wish I had it; it would do me as much good as it has done Colin. I am beginning to fear I lead a wretchedly idle life: all young ladies at home do, it seems, except perhaps the eldest sister, if she chances to be such a woman as our Penelope. Why cannot I help Penelope? Mrs. Granton took it for granted that I do; that I shall be the greatest comfort and assistance to Miss Johnston, now Miss Lisabel is gone.
I am not, the least in the world! which I would fain have explained, only mere friends can never understand the ins and outs of a family. If I offered to assist her in the house, how Penelope would stare! Or even in her schools and parish—but that I cannot do. Teaching is to me perfectly intolerable. The moment I have to face two dozen pairs of round eyes, every particle of sense takes flight, and I become the veriest of cowards, ready to sink through the floor. The same, too, in district visiting. What business have I, because I happen to be the clergyman's daughter, to go lifting the latch, and poking about poor people's houses, obliging them to drop me curtseys, and receive civilly my tracts and advice—which they neither read nor follow; and might be none the better for it if they did?
Yet this may be only my sophistries for not doing what I so heartily dislike. Others do it—and successfully: take by storm the poor folks' hearts, and, what is better, their confidence; never enter without a welcome, and depart without a blessing; as, for instance, Dr. Urquhart. Mrs. Granton was telling about his doings among the poor families down with fever and ague, near the camp, at Moor-edge.
Why cannot I do the same good? not so much, of course, but just a little? Why can not somebody show me how to do it?
No, I am not worthy. My quarter-century of-life has been of no more use to myself or any human creature than that fly's which my fire has stirred up to a little foolish buzzing in the window-curtain, before it drops and dies. I might drop down and die in the same manner, leaving no better memorial.
There—I hear Penelope in her room fidgetting about her drawers, and scolding the housemaid—she is always taking juvenile incompetent housemaids out of her village school, teaching and lecturing them for a twelvemonth, and then grumbling because they leave her. Yet, this is doing good: sometimes, they come back and thank her for having made capital servants of them; and very seldom, indeed, does such a case happen, as pretty, silly Lydia Cartwright's, who went up to London and never came back any more.
My dear sister Penelope, who, except in company, hardly has a civil word for anybody—Francis excepted:—Penelope, who has managed the establishment ever since she was a girl of sixteen; has kept the house comfortable, and maintained the credit of the family to the world without,—truly, with all your little tempers, sneers, and crabbednesses, you are worth a dozen of your sister Theodora.
I wonder if Doctor Urquhart thinks so. He looked at her closely, more than once, when we were speaking about Francis. He and she would have many meeting points of interest, if they only knew it, and talked much together. She is not very sweet to him, but that would not matter; he only values people for what they are, and not for the manner in which they behave to himself. Perhaps, if they were better acquainted, Penelope might prove a better friend for him than the “little lady.”
“Little lady!” that is just such a name as one would give to an idle, useless butterfly-creature, of no value but as an amusement, a plaything of leisure-hours; in time of business or care to be altogether set aside and forgotten.
Does he think me that? If he does—why, let him.
A fine proof of how dull Rockmount is, and how little I have to write about when I go on scribbling such trivialities as these. If no better subjects can be found, I shall give up my journal. Meantime, I intend next week to begin a serious course of study, in history, Latin and German, for the latter, instead of desultory reading, I shall try written translations, probably from my favourite, Wallenstein.—To think that anybody should have been ignorant even of the name of Max Piccolomini! He always was my ideal of a hero,—faithful, trustful, brave, and infinitely loving; yet able to renounce love itself for the sake of conscience.—And then, once a-week I shall have a long letter to write to Lisabel—I who never had a regular correspondence in my life. It will be almost as good as Penelope's with Francis Char-teris.
At last, I hear Penelope dismiss her maiden, bolt the door, and settle for the night. When, for a wonder, she finds herself alone and quiet, with nothing to do, and nobody to lecture,—I wonder what Penelope thinks about? Is it Francis? Do people in their position always think about one another the last thing? Probably. When all the day's cares and pleasures are ended, and the rest of the world shut out, the heart would naturally turn to the only one in whom, next to Heaven, is its real rest, its best comfort, closer than either friend, or brother, or sister —less another person than half itself?
No sentiment! Go to bed, Theodora.
I had almost given up writing here. Is it wise to begin again? Yet, to-day, in the silent hut, with the east wind howling outside almost as fiercely as it used to howl last winter over the steppes of the Caucasus, one must do something, if only to kill time.
Usually, I have little need for that resource; this barrack business engrosses every leisure hour.
The commander-in-chief has at length promised a commission of inquiry, if sufficient data can be supplied to him to warrant it. I have, therefore, been collecting evidence from every barrack in the United Kingdom,—and visiting personally all within a day or two days' leave from the camp. The most important were those of the metropolis.
It is needless here to recur to details of which my head has been full all the week; till a seventh day's rest and change of ideas becomes almost priceless. Unprofessional men cannot understand this; young Granton could not, when coming down from town with me last night, he was lamenting that he should not get at his cottage-building, which he keeps up in defiance of winter weather, till Monday morning.
Mr. Granton indulged me with much conversation about some friends of his, which inclines me to believe that “the kindest heart in the world” has not suffered an incurable blow, and is already proceeding to seek consolation elsewhere. It may be so. The young are pleasant to the young: the happy delight in the happy.
To return to my poor fellows; my country bumpkins and starving mechanics, caught by the thirteen pence a-day, and after all the expensive drilling that is to make them proper food for powder, herded together like beasts in a stall, till, except under strong coercion, the beast nature is apt to get uppermost—and no wonder. I must not think of rest till I have left no stone unturned for the furtherance of this scheme concerning my poor fellows.
And yet, the older one grows, the more keenly one feels how little power one individual man has for good—whatever he may have for evil. At least, this is the suggestion of a morbid spirit, after aiming at everything and doing almost nothing—which seemed the brief catalogue of my week's labour, last night.
People are so slow to join in any reformatory schemes. They will talk enough of the need for it,—but they will not act—it is too much trouble. Most men are engrossed in their own private concerns, business, amusements, or ambitions. It is incredible, the difficulty I had in hunting up some, who were the most active agents of good in the Crimea—and of these, how few could be convinced that there was anything needed to be done at home.
At the Horse Guards, where my face must be as familiar as that of the clock on the quadrangle to those gentlemanly young clerks—no attention was wanting, but that of furthering my business. However, the time was not altogether wasted, as in various talks with former companions, whom I there by chance waylaid, ideas were thrown out that may be brought to bear in different quarters. And, as always happens, from some of the very last quarters where anything was to be expected, the warmest interest and assistance came.
Likewise—and this forms the bright spot in a season not particularly pleasant—during my brief stay in London, the first for many years, more than one familiar face has come across me out of far back times, with a welcome and remembrance, the warmth and heartiness of which both surprised and cheered me.
Among those I met on Thursday, was an old colonel, under whom I went out on my first voyage as assistant-surgeon, twelve years ago. He stopped me in the Mall, addressing me by name; I had almost forgotten his, till his cordial greeting brought it to mind. Then we fell to upon many mutual questions and reminiscences.
He said that he should have known me anywhere, though I was altered a good deal in some respects.
“All for the better, though, my boy—beg pardon, Doctor—but you were such a slip of a lad, then. Thought we should have had to throw you overboard before the voyage was half over, but you cheated us all, you see,—and, 'pon my life, hard as you must have been at it since then, you look as if you had many years more of work in you yet.”
I told him I hoped so,—which I do, for some things, and then, in answer to his friendly questions, I entered into the business which had brought me to London.
The good colonel was brimful of interest.
He has a warm heart, plenty of money, thinks that money can do everything. I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him that his cheque-book would not avail me with the commander-in-chief, or the honourable British officers whom I hoped to stir up to some little sympathy with the men they commanded.
“But can't I help you at all?—can't my son, either?—you remember Tommy, who used to dance the sailor's hornpipe on the deck. Such a dandy young fellow;—got him a place under Government—capital berth, easy hours, eleven till four, and regular work—the whole Times to read through daily. Ha! ha! you understand, eh?”
I laughed too, for it was a pretty accurate description of what I had this week seen in Government offices; indeed, in public offices of all kinds, where the labour is so largely sub-divided as to be in the responsible hands of very few, and the work and the pay generally follow in an opposite ratio of progression. In the present instance, from what I remember of him, no doubt such a situation would exactly suit Master Tommy Turton.
His father and I strolled up and down the shiny half-dried pavement till the street-lamps were lighted, and the club-windows began to brighten and glow.
“You'll dine with me, of course—not at the United Service—it's my day with Tom at his club, the New Universal, capital club too. No apologies; we'll quarter ourselves upon Tommy, he will be delighted. He's extremely proud of his club; the young rogue costs me—it's impossible to say what Tom costs me per annum, over and above his pay. Yet he is a good lad, too—as lads go—holds up his head among all the young fellows of the club, and keeps the very best of company.”
So went on the worthy old father—with more, which I forget. I had been on my feet all day, and was what women call “tired,”—when they delight to wheel out arm-chairs and push warmed slippers under wet feet—at least, so I have seen done.
London club-life was new to me; nor was I aware that in this England, this “home,”—words, which abroad we learn to think synonymous and invest with an inexpressible charm,—so large a proportion of the middle classes assume by choice the sort of life which, on foreign service, we put up with of necessity; the easy selfish life into which a male community is prone to fall. The time-honoured United Service, I was acquainted with; but the New Universal was quite a dazzle of brilliant plate, a palace of upholstery. Tom had not come in, but his father showed me over his domains with considerable pride.
“Yes; this is how we live—he at his club and I at mine. We have two tidy bedrooms, somewhere or other, hard by,—and that's all. A very jolly life, I assure you, if one hasn't the gout or the blues; we have kept to it ever since the poor mother died, and Henrietta married. I sometimes tell Tom he ought to settle; but he says it would be slow, and he can't afford it. Hollo! here's the boy.”
Tom—a “boy” six feet high, good-looking and well-dressed, after the exact pattern of a few dozen more, whom we had met strolling arm-in-arm down Pall-Mall—greeted me with great civility, and said he remembered me perfectly—though my unfortunately quick ears detected him asking his father, aside, “where on earth he had picked up that old fogie?”
We dined well—and a good dinner is not a bad thing. As a man gets old, he may be allowed some cheer—in fact, he needs it. Whether, at twenty-four, he needs five courses and half-a-dozen kinds of wine is another question. But Master Tom was my host, so silence! Perhaps I am becoming, “an old fogie.”
After dinner, the colonel opened out warmly upon my business, which his son evidently considered a bore.
“He really did not understand the matter; it was not in his department of public business; the governor always thought they must know everything that was going on, when, in truth, they knew nothing at all. He should be most happy, but had not the least notion what it was in his power to do for Doctor Urquhart.”
Doctor Urquhart laboured to make the young gentleman understand that he really did not want him to do anything, to which Tom listened with that philosophical laissez-faire, kept just within the bounds of politeness, that we of an elder generation are prone to find fault with. At last, an idea struck him.
“Why, father, there's Charteris,—knows everything and everybody—would be just the man for you. There he is.”
And he pointed eagerly to a gentleman, who, six tables off, lounged over his wine and newspaper.
That morning, as I stood talking in an anteroom, at the Horse Guards, this gentleman had caught my notice, leaning over one of the clerks, and enlivening their dullness by making a caricature. Now my phiz was quite at their service, but it seemed scarcely fair for any but that king of caricature, “Punch,” to make free with the honest, weather-beaten features of the noble old veteran who was talking with me. So I just intervened—not involuntarily—between the caricaturist and my—shall I honour myself by calling him my friend? the good old warrior, might not deny it. For Mr. Char-teris, he apparently did not wish to own my acquaintance, nor had I any desire to resume his. We passed without recognition, as I would willingly have done now, had not Colonel Turton seized upon the name.
“Tom's right. Charteris is the very man. Has enormous influence, and capital connections, though, between you and me, Doctor, calls himself as poor as a church-mouse.”
“Five hundred a-year,” said Tom, grimly. “Wish I'd as much! Still, he's a nice fellow, and jolly good company. Here, waiter, take my compliments to Mr. Charteris, and will he do us the honour of joining us?”
Mr. Charteris came.
He appeared surprised at sight of me, but we both went through the ceremony of introduction without mentioning that it was not for the first time. And during the whole conversation, which lasted until the dinner-sounds ceased, and the long, bright, splendid dining-room was all but deserted, we neither of us once adverted to the little parlour where, for a brief five minutes, Mr. Charteris and myself had met some weeks before.
I had scarcely noticed him then; now I did. He bore out Tom's encomium and the colonel's. He is a highly intelligent, agreeable person, apparently educated to the utmost point of classical refinement. The sort of man who would please most women, and who, being intimate in a family of sisters, would with them involuntarily become their standard of all that is admirable in our sex.
In Mr. Charteris was much really to be admired: a grace bordering on what in one sex we call sweetness, in the other effeminacy. Talent, too, not original or remarkable, but indicating an evenly-cultivated, elegant mind. Rather narrow, it might be—all about him was small, neat, regular; nothing in the slightest degree eccentric, or diverging from the ordinary, being apparently possible to him; a pleasure-loving temperament, disinclined for active energy in any direction—this completed my impression of Mr. Francis Charteris.
Though he gave me no information,—indeed, he seemed like my young friend Tom to make a point of knowing as little and taking as slight interest as possible, in the state machinery of which he formed a part—he contributed very considerably to the enjoyment of the evening. It was he who suggested our adjournment to the theatre..
“Unless Doctor Urquhart objects. But I dare say we can find a house where the performance trenches on none of the ten commandments, about which, I am aware, he is rather particular.”
“Oh,” cried Tom, “'Thou shalt not steal,' from the French; and 'Thou shalt do no murder' on the Queen's English, are the only commandments indispensable on the stage. Come away, father.”
“You're a sad dog,” said the father, shaking his fist at him, with a delighted grin, which reminded me of hornpipe-days.
But the sad dog knew where to find the best bones to pick, and by no means dry, either. Now, though I am not a book-man, I love my Shakspere well enough not to like him acted—his grand old flesh and blood digged up and served out to this modern taste as a painted, powdered, dressed-up skeleton. But this night I saw him “in his habit as he lived,” presented “in very form and fashion of the time.” There was a good deal of show, certainly, it being a pageant play; but you felt show was natural; that just in such a way the bells must have rung, and the people shouted, for the living Bolingbroke. The acting, too, was natural; and to me, a plain man, accustomed to hold women sacred, and to believe that a woman's arms should be kept solely for the man who loves her, I own it was a satisfaction when the stage Queen clung to the stage King Richard, in that pitiful parting, where,—
“Bad men, ye violate
A twofold marriage—'twixt my crown and me,
And then between me and my married wife,”
it was a satisfaction, I say, to know that it was her own husband the actress was kissing.
This play, which Tom and the colonel voted “slow,” gave me two hours of the keenest, most utterly oblivious, enjoyment; a desideratum not easily attainable.
Mr. Charteris considered it fine in its way; but, after all, there was nothing like the opera.
“Oh, Charteris is opera-mad,” said Tom. “Every subscription-night, there he is, wedged in the crowd at the horrid little passage leading out of the Haymarket—among a knot of his cronies, who don't mind making martyrs of themselves for a bit of tootle-te-tooing, a kick-up, and a twirl. Well, I'm not fond of music.”
“I am,” said Mr. Charteris, drily.
“And of looking at pretty women, too, eh, my dear fellow?”
“Certainly.”
And here he diverged to a passing criticism on the pretty women in the boxes round us: who were not few. I observed them, also—for I notice women's faces more than I was wont—but none were satisfactory, even to the eye. They all seemed over-conscious of themselves and their looks, except one small creature, in curls, and a red mantle—about the age of the poor wounded Russ, who might have been my own little adopted girl by this time, if she had not died.
I wish, sometimes, she had not died. My life would have been less lonely, could I have adopted that child.
There may be more beauty—I have heard there is, in the upper class of Englishwomen than in any race of women on the globe. But a step lower in rank, less smoothly cosmopolitan, more provincially and honestly Saxon; reserved, yet frank; simple, yet gay, would be the Englishwoman of one's heart. The man who dare open his eyes, fearlessly, to the beauties of such an one—seek her in a virtuous middle-class home, ask her of her proud father and mother; then win her and take her, joyfully, to sit by his happy hearth, wife—matron—mother—— I forget how that sentence was to have ended; however, it is of little consequence. It was caused partly by some reflection on this club-life, and another darker side of it, of which I caught some glimpses when I was in London.
We finished the evening at the theatre pleasantly. In the sort of atmosphere we were in, harmless enough, but glaring, unquiet, and unhome-like, I was scarcely surprised that Mr. Charteris did not once name the friends at whose house I first met him; indeed, he seemed to avoid the slightest approach to the subject. Only once, as we were pushing together, side by side, into the cool night air, he asked me, in a low hurried tone, if I had been to Rock-mount lately? He had heard I was present at the marriage.
I believe I made some remark about his absence being much regretted that day.
“Yes—-yes. Shall you be there soon?”
The question was put with an anxiety, which my answer in the negative evidently relieved.
“Oh, then—I need send no message. I thought you were very intimate. A charming family—a very charming family.”
His eyes were wandering to some ladies of fashion who had recognised him—whom he put into their carriage with that polite assiduity which seems an instinct with him, and in the crowd we lost sight of Mr. Charteris.
Twice afterwards I saw him; once, driving in the park with two ladies in a coroneted carriage: and again walking in the dusk of the afternoon down Kensington-road. This time he started, gave me the slightest recognition possible, and walked on faster than ever. He need not have feared:—I had no wish or intention of resuming our acquaintance. The more I hear of him, the more increases my surprise—nay, even not unmixed with anxiety—at his position, in the family at Rockmount.
Here I was suddenly called out to a bad accident case, some miles across the country; whence I have only returned in time for bed.
It was impossible to do anything for the poor fellow; one of Granton's labourers, who knew me by sight. I could only wait till all was over, and the widow a little composed.
At her urgent request, I sent a note to Rockmount, hard by, begging Miss Johnston would let her know if there had been heard anything of Lydia—a daughter, once in service with the Johnstons, afterwards in London—now—as the poor old mother mournfully expressed it—“gone wrong.”
To my surprise, Miss Johnston answered the message in person, and a most painful conversation ensued. She is a good woman—no doubt of that: but she is, as Treherne once said of her father, “as sharp as a needle and as hard as a rock.”
It being already dark, of course I saw her safe back to her own gate. She informed me that the family were all quite well, which was the sole conversation that passed between us, except concerning the poor dead labourer, James Cartwright, and his family, of whom, save Lydia, she spoke compassionately, saying they had gone through much trouble.
Walking along by her side, and trying to find a cause for the exceeding bitterness and harshness of spirit she had evidenced, it struck me that this lady was herself not ignorant of trouble.
I left her at the gate under the bush of ivy. Through the bars I could see, right across the wet garden, the light streaming from the hall-door.
Now to bed, and to sleep, if this heart will allow: it has been rather unmanageable lately, necessitating careful watching, as will be the case till there is nothing here but an empty skull.
If only I could bring this barrack matter to a satisfactory start, from which good results might reasonably be expected, I would at once go abroad. Anywhere—it is all the same. A rumour is afloat that we may soon get the route for the East, or China; which I could be well content with, as my next move.
Far away—far away; with thousands of miles of tossing sea between me and this old England; far away out of all sight or Remembrance. So best.
Next time I call on Widow Cartwright shall be after dark, when, without the slightest chance of meeting any one, it will be easy to take a few steps further up the village. There is a cranny in one place in the wall, whence I know one can get a very good view of the parlour-window, where they never close the shutters till quite bedtime.
And, before our regiment leaves, it will be right I should call—to omit this would hardly be civil, after all the hospitality I have received. So I will call some wet day, when they are not likely to be out,—when, probably, the younger sister will be sitting at her books upstairs in the attic, which, she told me, she makes her study, and gets out of the way of visitors. Perhaps she will not take the trouble to come down. Not even for a shake of the hand and a good-bye—good-bye for ever.
O, mother—unknown mother—who must have surely loved my father; well enough, too, to leave all friends and follow him, a poor lieutenant of a marching regiment, up and down the world—if I had but died with you when you brought me into this same troublesome world, how much it would have saved!
Just finished my long letter to Lisabel, and lingered over the direction, “Mrs. Treherne, Treherne Court.”
How strange to think of our Lisa as mistress there. Which she is in fact, for Lady Treherne, a mild elderly lady, is wholly engrossed in tending Sir William, who is very infirm. The old people's rule seems merely nominal—it is Lisabel and Augustus who reign. Their domain is a perfect palace—and what a queen Miss Lis must look therein! How well she will maintain her position, and enjoy it too! In her case, are no poetical sufferings from haughty parents, delighted to crush a poor daughter-in-law
“With the burthen of an honour
Unto which she was not born.”
Already, they both like her and are proud of her—which is not surprising. I thought I had never seen a more beautiful creature than my sister Lisa, when, on her way to Treherne Court, she came home for a day.
Home? I forget, it is not her home now. How strange this must have been to her—if she thought about it. Possibly she did not; being never given to sentiment. And, though with us she was not the least altered, it was amusing to see how, to everybody else, she appeared quite the married lady; even with Mrs. Granton, who, happening to call that day, was delighted to see her, and seems not to cherish the smallest resentment in the matter of “my Colin.” Very generous—for it is not the good old lady's first disappointment—she has been going a-wooing for her son ever since he was one-and-twenty, and has not found a daughter-in-law yet.
Colin, too, conducted himself with the utmost sangfroid'' and when Augustus, who is beaming with benevolence to the whole human race, invited him to escort his mother, Penelope and me, on our first visit to Treherne Court, he accepted the invitation as if it were the pleasantest in the world. Truly, if women's hearts are as impressionable as wax, men's are as tough as gutta-percha. Talk of breaking them—faugh!
I hope it indicates no barbarity, on my part, if I confess that it would have raised my opinion of him, and his sex in general, to have seen Colin for a month or so, at least, wholesomely miserable.
Lisabel behaved uncommonly well with regard to him, and, indeed, in every way. She was as bright as a May morning, and full of the good qualities of her Augustus—whom she really likes very much after her fashion. She will doubtless be among the many wives who become extremely attached to their husbands, after marriage. To my benighted mind, it has always seemed advisable to have a slight preference before that ceremony.
She told me, with a shudder that was altogether natural and undisguised, how glad she was that they had been married at once, and that Augustus had sold out—for there is a chance of the regiment's being soon ordered on foreign service. I had not heard of this before. It was some surprise.
Lisabel was very affectionate to me the whole day, and, in going away, said she hoped I did not miss her much, and that I should get a good husband of my own soon; I did not know what a comfort it was.
“Somebody to belong to you—to care for you—to pet you—your own personal property in short—who can't get rid of you, even when you're old and ugly. Yes, I'm glad I married poor dear Augustus. And, child, I hope to see you married also.. A good little thing like you would make a capital wife to somebody. Why, simpleton, I declare she's crying!”
It must have been the over-excitement of this day; but I felt as if, had I not cried, my temples and throat would have burst with a choking pain, that lasted long after Lisabel was gone.
They did not altogether stay more than four hours. Augustus talked of riding over to the camp, to see his friend, Doctor Urquhart, whom he has heard nothing of since the wedding-day; but Lisabel persuaded him against it. Men's friendship with one another is worth little, apparently.
Penelope here said she could answer for Doctor Urquhart's being in the land of the living, as she had met him a week before at Cartwright's cottage, the day the poor old man was killed. Why did she not tell me of this? But then she has taken such a prejudice against him, and exults so over what she calls his “rude behaviour to the family.”
It always seemed to me very foolish to be for ever defending those whose character is itself a sufficient defence. If a false word is spoken of a friend, one must of course deny it, disprove it. But to be incessantly battling with personal prejudice or animosity, I would scorn it! Ay, as utterly as I would scorn defending myself under similar attacks. I think, in every lesser affection that is worth the name—the same truth holds good—which I remember being struck with in a play, the only play I ever saw acted. The heroine is told by her sister—
“Katherine,
You love this man—defend him.”
She answers:—=.
“You have said,
I love him. That's my defence. I'll not
Assert, in words, the truth on which I've cast
The stake of life. I love him, and am silent.”
At least, I think the passage ran thus—for I cut it out of a newspaper afterwards, and long, remembered it. What an age it seems since—that one play, to which Francis took us. And what a strange, dim dream, has become the impression it left; something like that I always have in reading of Thekla and Max; of love so true and strong—so perfect in its holy strength, that neither parting, grief, nor death, have any power over it. Love, which makes you feel that once to have possessed it, must be bliss unutterable, unalienable—better than any happiness or prosperity that this world could give—better than anything in the world or out of it, except the love of God.
I sometimes think of this Katherine in this play, when she refuses to let her lover barter conscience for life, but when the test comes, says to him, herself, “No, die!” Also, of that scene in Wallenstein, when Thekla bids her lover be faithful to his honour and his country, not to her—when, just for one minute, he holds her tight, tight in his arms—Max, I mean. Death, afterwards, could not have been so very hard.
I am beginning to give up—strange, perhaps, that it should have lasted so long—my belief in the possible happiness of life. Apparently, people were never meant to be happy. Small flashes of pleasantness come and go; or, it may be that in some few lives, are ecstatic moments, such as this I have been thinking of, and then it is all over. But many people go plodding along to old age, in a dull, straight road, with little sorrow and no joy. Is my life to be such as this? Probably. Then the question arises, what am I to do with it?
It sometimes crosses my mind what Doctor Urquhart said, about his life being “owed.” All our lives are, in one sense: to ourselves, to our fellow-creatures, or to God; or, is there some point of union which includes all three? If I only could find it out!
Perhaps, according to Colin Granton's lately learned doctrine—I know whence learned—it is the having something to do. Something to be, your fine preachers of self-culture would suggest; but self-culture is often no better than idealised egotism; people sick of themselves want something to do.
Yesterday, driving with papa along the edges of the camp, where we never go now, I caught sight of the slope where the hospital is, and could even distinguish the poor fellows sitting in the sun, or lounging about in their blue hospital clothes. It made me think of Smyrna and Scutari.
No; while there is so much misery and sin in the world, a man has no right to lull himself to sleep in a paradise of self-improvement and self-enjoyment; in which there is but one supreme Adam, one perfect specimen of humanity, namely himself. He ought 'to go out and work—fight, if it must be, wherever duty calls him. Nay, even a woman has hardly any right, in these days, to sit still and dream. The life of action is nobler than the life of thought.
So I keep reasoning with myself. If I could only find a good and adequate reason for some things which perplex me sorely, about myself and—other people, it would be a great comfort.
To-day, among a heap of notes which papa gave me to make candle-lighters of, I found this note, which I kept, the handwriting being peculiar,—and I have a few crotchets about handwriting.
“Dear Sir:—
“Press of business, and other unforeseen circumstances, with which I am fettered, make it impossible for me to accept any invitations at present. I hope you will believe that I can never forget the hospitalities of Rockmount, and that I am ever most gratefully
“Your faithful servant,
“Max Urquhart.”
Can he, then, mean our acquaintance to cease? Should we be a hindrance in his busy, useful life—such a frivolous family as ours? It may be so. Yet I fear papa will be hurt.
This afternoon, though it was Sunday, I could not stay in the house or garden, but went out, far out upon the moor, and walked till I was weary. Then I sat me down upon a heather-bush, all in a heap, my arms clasped round my knees, trying to think out this hard question—what is to become of me; what am I to do with my life? It lies before me, apparently as bleak, barren and monotonous as these miles of moorland—stretching on and on in dull undulations, or dead flats, till a range of low hills ends all! Yet, sometimes, this wild region has looked quite different. I remember describing it once—how beautiful it was, how breezy and open, with the ever-changing tints of the moor, the ever-shifting and yet always steadfast arch of the sky. Today I found it all colourless, blank, and cold; its monotony almost frightened me. I could do nothing but crouch on my heather-bush and cry.
Tears do one good occasionally. When I dried mine, the hot weight on the top of my head seemed lighter. If there had been anybody to lay a cool hand there, and say, “Poor child, never mind!” it might have gone away. But there was no one: Lisa was the only one who ever “petted” me.
I thought, I would go home and write a long letter to Lisa.
Just as I was rising from my heather-bush, my favourite haunt, being as round as a mushroom, as soft as a velvet cushion, and hidden by two great furze-bushes, from the road—I heard footsteps approaching. Having no mind to be discovered in that gipsy plight, I crouched down again.
People's footsteps are so different, it is often easy to recognize them. This, I think, I should have known anywhere—quick, regular, determined; rather hasty, as if no time could be lost; as if, according to the proverb, it would never “let the grass grow under it.” Crouching lower, I listened; I heard him stop and speak to an old woman, who had been coming up the road towards the village. No words were distinguishable, but the voice—I could not have mistaken it—it is not like our English voices.
What a strange feeling it is, listening to people's steps or voices, when they do not know you are near them. Something like being a ghost, and able to watch them—perhaps watch over them—without its being unnatural or wrong.
He stood talking—I should say, Doctor Urquhart stood talking—for several minutes. The other voice, by its querulousness, I guessed to be poor Mrs. Cartwright's; but it softened by degrees, and then I heard distinctly her earnest “thank'ee, Doctor—God bless'ee, sir,” as he walked away, and vanished over the slope of the hill. She looked after him a minute, and then, turning, toddled on her way.
When I overtook her, which was not for some time, she told me the whole story of her troubles,—and how good Doctor Urquhart had been. Also, the whole story about her poor daughter—at least as much as is known about it. Mrs. Cartwright thinks she is still somewhere in London, and Doctor Urquhart has promised to find her out, if he can. I don't understand much about these sort of dreadful things—Penelope never thought it right to tell us: but I can see that what Doctor Urquhart has said has given great comfort to the mother of unfortunate Lydia.
“Miss,” said the old woman, with the tears running down, “the Doctor's been an angel of goodness to me, and there's many a one in these parts as can say the same—though he be only a stranger, here to-day and gone to-morrow, as one may say. Eh, dear, it'll be an ill day for many a poor body when he goes.”
I am glad I saw him—glad I heard all this. Somehow, hearing of things like this makes one feel quieter.
It does not much matter after all—it does not, indeed! I never wanted anybody to think about me, to care for me—half as much as somebody to look up to—to be satisfied in—to honour and reverence. I can do that—still!
Like a fool, I have been crying again, till I ought, properly, to tear this leaf out, and begin again afresh. No, I will not. Nobody will ever see it, and it does no harm to any human being.
“God bless him,” the old woman said. I might say something of the like sort, too. For he did me a deal of good: he was very kind to me.