Girlhood and Womanhood Part 5

"Ah! I am very happy to understand it."

"It seems easily understood; and she advised us to walk in the thorn walk. Is it near at hand? Shall we have time?"

"We must take time, we cannot disappoint my mother. The thorn walk is a favourite with her all the year round, although it is only in its beauty in the month of May. Shall I explain to you why she has selected it to-day?"

"Yes, if you please."

"My father lived here, when he was a young man, with his uncle the laird. They had no near female relative. It was a dull house, as dull an establishment as my mother and I maintain together."

"Much duller, I should think."

"No; for before a certain time he was not sensible of its deficiency; he had no definite wishes or hopes for an increase to their circle, a re-modelling of their housekeeping. My mother was distantly related to him; she came on a visit to my grand-uncle with an elderly lady, who was also a connexion; she was a lively young girl then. My father often told her afterwards to what an incalculable degree her presence brightened the old house and the two forlorn gentlemen; it would have been utter darkness if she had left them again to their old hazy sunlessness; so my father took the desperate step of leading her to the thorn walk. It was the month of May then, and it was covered with blossoms, sending a white shower on their bent heads from a whole line of trysting trees; but, when I think of it, March, which is lightly esteemed, is preferable to May, for March has all the promise of the year in prospect; and see, it has cloth of gold and silver to step upon, in the shape of the bright, commonplace, unjustly overlooked crocuses."

"You have been reading the seedsman's tallies, Mr. Jardine."

"Never mind; you agree with me?"

"The world and the poets choose May. And you begin to be eccentric and choose March."

"My father conducted my mother here; she has told me the circ.u.mstances a hundred times, though she is a quiet woman; and she wore such a cloth gown as you wear to-day."

"Mr. Jardine, you are talking nonsense; this is a new stuff, I a.s.sure you it has not been half-a-dozen months out of the looms; and do you suppose, sir, that I shall wear this dress in the month of May?"

"That comes of confiding those details to men. I always thought it was a gown like this one; and he asked her to abide at Whitethorn, and crown his lairdship and gladden and sweeten his entire future career; and he succeeded at last in winning her consent. And this is the thorn walk, Joanna, and I am free to re-enact the old pa.s.sage in two lives, and plead with you not to desert Whitethorn if we are to retain it. I am poorer by a few thousands since I first made the same prayer to you; but your father puts no weight on the difference, or, in his rare generosity, lets it tell in my favour; and I don't think we need break our hearts about our little loss, if we look to our great gain. Here I beg you, as the humblest and most sincere of your pet.i.tioners, to put your life into my life, and cause the united life to bud and blossom into the May of the heart."

"And November and December would come to that year likewise."

"Yes, they will; but they will tread hard upon the real new-year, the veritable new year, that will

"Ring out the false, ring in the true"

of this h.o.a.ry world. Will you travel to it with me, Joanna? Shall we strive and pray, and help each other to reach it together? Shall we begin it even here? Your father will bestow you solemnly and gladly; my mother will accept you with a blessing."

Joanna said, "Yes; G.o.d bless us, Harry," reverently; and, reverently, G.o.d blessed them.

Harry was energetic, and Joanna was prudent, and old Mrs. Jardine was proud of the spirit with which they saved the swamped estate of Whitethorn even from Mr. Crawfurd's bond; and having helped themselves, they helped others, then and ever afterwards.

Polly Musgrave applied to them in time. Polly had written on Joanna Crawfurd's marriage a jeering, jibing letter. "So you have gone and done as I prophesied, after all your wrath on the moor, and preciseness at Hurlton. But, first, you were as silly as possible, and wanted to revive the Middle Ages, which was quite in Don Quixote's tone; you to pine and die, and he to shoot himself (as violent deaths are hereditary), or addict himself to loose living and destruction. Then, when he loses his money, and in common sense you may both think better of it, shake hands and go your several ways; you make all up, post haste, and come together with a flourish of trumpets, and poverty _will_ come in at the door, and love fly out at the window. Fie! I am ashamed of you, after all!"

But Polly wrote in a different strain a year or two later:--"DEAR COUSIN JOANNA,--I am not so healthy and heartless as I used to be, and I have been teased with a desire to come to Whitethorn, and perhaps profit by your carriage in this world, as I never dreamt of once upon a time. But I will say this for myself, I only wrote and crowed over you when you were quite able to afford it. I was very glad of your happiness, child (as our grandmother wrote, and one of our grandmothers was the same person! think of that, Harry Jardine!). Is Harry Jardine as promising as he used to be before you took him in hand; or is the promise fulfilled in an upright, generous, gladsome (and because of that last word you would insist on adding G.o.dly) man? He was a man of whom to make a spoon or spoil a horn, and you were the woman to perform the delectable feat."

Polly had found her heart not a very lofty one, not a very sensitive one--but an honest and kind heart in the main, which was permitted to extricate itself from the slough of luxury and self-indulgence, and beat warmly and faithfully throughout the rest of its course.

ON THE STAGE AND OFF THE STAGE.

I.--THE "BEAR" AT BATH.

The Place was old Bath, in the days immediately succeeding those of Alexander Pope and William Hogarth, and dovetailing into those of Horace Walpole and the Wesleys.

The Age was one of rackets and reaction from morning till night, and Bath was the head-quarters of the first--the scene of the pump-room, the raffle, the public breakfast, the junketing at mid-day, the ball at midnight, the play, the ridotto.

The Scene was a private room in the "Bear," when it was crowded with peers, bullies, rooks, highwaymen, leaders of fashion, waiting-women, and stage stars. The "Bear" was held by great Mrs. Price, a hostess large, shining, portly--a friendly great woman, too magnificent to be fussy, or mean, or spiteful. The "Bear" looked out on the Parade, with its throngs of beaux--veritable beaux, with Beau Nash at their head--wigged, caned, and snuff-boxed, and belles with trains borne by black boys, cambric caps and ap.r.o.ns, and abundance of velvet patches. In and out of its yawning doorway strutted fine gentlemen, chaplains, and wits, while grooms, public and private, swarmed round the house. Its broad stairs and low wide corridors, traversed by the more private company, led to sitting rooms of all degrees, panelled with oak or lined with cedar, with worked worsted wonders in the shape of chairs, and China monsters by way of ornaments.

The Person was a handsome woman, attired negligently in what was called a sacque, with a mob-cap. She sat sipping a dish of tea, as sober women will after fatigue or in antic.i.p.ation of exertion, and making occasional reference to some shabby, well-worn volumes and printed sheets piled up beside her. Her att.i.tude was studious, for days when a chapter of the Bible, a cookery recipe, a paper by Addison or d.i.c.k Steele, or a copy of verses, included all the knowledge after which the gentler s.e.x aspired; her retirement was remarkable at that gay era, and in that gadding neighbourhood; and her morning dress, though it would not have offended a Tabitha Tidy, looked plain among the silvered mazarines and the tippets of pheasants' tails.

She was a woman of about five-and-twenty; but her beauty, though still in its prime, showed the wear and tear of years. Had it not been that its chief power lay in the intellect and goodness which sat on the capacious but not cloudy brow, and gleamed out of the cordial dark blue eyes, and hovered round the somewhat wide and somewhat lined but never sensual mouth--you would have said this was a faded queen whom the world was mad to worship. As it was, she did look faded this spring afternoon, and occasionally fretted audibly enough as she turned over the leaves of her volumes, and sighed "heigho!" as she looked at her repeater--not quite so common an appendage as the little Geneva story-tellers, though a footpad carried always a goodly supply, and a gentleman's gentleman of very fine prestige would wear a couple, "one in each fob"--and sipped her tea; which, by the way, she drank, not out of one of the diminutive China cups, but out of an old battered, but very shining little silver tankard.

Anon my lady rose and strolled to a back window. She looked across the noisy, crowded stable-yard into the corner of a garden, where a lilac bush was budding into dusty dim purple and a h.o.a.ry apple-tree blossomed white and pink like a blushing child, away over the green fields to a farmhouse upon a hill, where russet and yellow stacks proved the farmer's command of ready money, or caution in selling. From just such another farmhouse as that on which our bright benevolent woman--even in the dumps--was gazing wistfully, issued Caroline Inchbald, a beauty, and a generous, virtuous woman under great temptations, a friend and rival on equal terms with Amelia Opie.

But hark! an arrival in the next room: fresh guests--country people of consequence, for they were ushered in by Mrs. Price herself, who received in person their orders for an incongruous meal, neither dinner nor supper, to recruit them for some gala in which they had the prospect of figuring, to judge from a torrent of exclamations which pierced through a convenient cupboard in the part.i.tion.

"Make haste, girls," in ba.s.s tones.

"Eat away, Fiddy," in treble, mimicking the ba.s.s.

"Uncle, don't attempt the game-pie. We'll be too late, as sure as our heads. Didn't you hear Mrs. Price say there was a power of company wanting seats; it would be too bad if we lost the sight after all."

"What, Prissy, worse than Admiral Byng's defeat, or my spoilt medal?"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland, how can you joke! Now, Fiddy, there's a dear creature, don't have anything to say to the cream-tart. What although we're as hungry as hawks, if we only get a good view to talk about at the Vicarage and Larks' Hall."

"There--Prissy, dear, then I've done. I'll just run and shake our myrtle c.r.a.pes and fresh pinch our stomachers."

"Hold! no such thing, la.s.ses. I'm not to be left here to feed in solitude, and without e'er a portfolio or picture. You little geese, it is two good hours to the exhibition. Are you to be frizzing, and painting, and lacing, and mincing, and capering for two mortal hours, and your poor country uncle left to spoil his digestion for want of something else to do than eat? Is that your grat.i.tude, when here have I come against my will to introduce you to the wicked, gay world, and spoil your Arcadian simplicity? Don't make faces, Prissy!"

"Oh! Uncle Rowland; you are making base pretences."

"Indeed, sir, I think you are as wild to see the wonders as we are."

But the remonstrance had its effect, for the young ladies evidently sat down again, and, by the clatter of knives and forks, one could judge they condescended to do some justice to the good things provided for their solace, while the conversation went on in more regular order.

The lady in the Nankin sitting-room had decidedly the advantage in this situation, as she did not soliloquize in private, and she heard through the cupboard and the locked door of communication the chat of her neighbours. They spoke no treason, and they ought to be more prudent if they told secrets: it was a real benefit to a lonely wight, a little irritated in nerve and temper, to be a party to their lively, affectionate, simple intercourse; and, as the truth must be told, the lady in the Nankin sitting-room crossed her hands with a motion of indolent interest and turned her head with an air of listless pleasure, nodding and beating her foot lightly on the floor now and then, in interjection and commentary. She could figure the group perfectly. Two rosy little girls brought into the town for a day and a night's shopping and gadding, as they would call it, under the escort of an indulgent uncle: a bachelor probably, else madam, his wife, would have been there to keep them in order; and not so very elderly, for the good man was of what is styled a sprightly turn, and though his nieces submitted to his authority, there was a decidedly modified amount of reverence in the way in which they insisted,

"You must comb out your curls, Uncle Rowland."

"And I'll tie your cravat for you, sir, and make you quite smart. We are not to appear abroad with a country b.u.mpkin or a fright of a student, are we, Prissy?"

And mutual jokes were bandied pretty freely.

"Now, Prissy, are we to see the famous Traveller?"

"No, sir, it is to be the Virtuoso, with the mock copper coins."

"Bronze, child, bronze."