The Vicar's Daughter Part 48

She bought "The Street Musician," as Percivale had named the picture taken from Dr. Donne. I was more miserable than I ought to have been when I found he had parted with it, but it was a great consolation to think it was to Lady Bernard's it had gone. She was the only one, except my mother or Miss Clare, I could have borne to think of as having become its possessor.

He had asked her what I thought a very low price for it; and I judge that Lady Bernard thought the same, but, after what had pa.s.sed between them, would not venture to expostulate. With such a man as my husband, I fancy, she thought it best to let well alone. Anyhow, one day soon after this, her servant brought him a little box, containing a fine brilliant.

"The good lady's kindness is long-sighted," said my husband, as he placed it on his finger. "I shall be hard up, though, before I part with this.

Wynnie, I've actually got a finer diamond than Mr. Baddeley! It _is_ a beauty, if ever there was one!"

My husband, with all his carelessness of dress and adornment, has almost a pa.s.sion for stones. It is delightful to hear him talk about them. But he had never possessed a single gem before Lady Bernard made him this present.

I believe he is child enough to be happier for it all his life.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

RETROSPECTIVE.

Suddenly I become aware that I am drawing nigh the close of my monthly labors for a long year. Yet the year seems to have pa.s.sed more rapidly because of this addition to my anxieties. Not that I haven't enjoyed the labor while I have been actually engaged in it, but the prospect of the next month's work would often come in to damp the pleasure of the present; making me fancy, as the close of each chapter drew near, that I should not have material for another left in my head. I heard a friend once remark that it is not the cares of to-day, but the cares of to-morrow, that weigh a man down. For the day we have the corresponding strength given, for the morrow we are told to trust; it is not ours yet.

When I get my money for my work, I mean to give my husband a long holiday.

I half think of taking him to Italy,--for of course I can do what I like with my own, whether husband or money,--and so have a hand in making him a still better painter. Incapable of imitation, the sight of any real work is always of great service to him, widening his sense of art, enlarging his idea of what can be done, rousing what part of his being is most in sympathy with it,--a part possibly as yet only half awake; in a word, leading him another step towards that simplicity which is at the root of all diversity, being so simple that it needs all diversity to set it forth.

How impossible it seemed to me that I should ever write a book! Well or ill done, it is almost finished, for the next month is the twelfth. I must look back upon what I have written, to see what loose ends I may have left, and whether any allusion has not been followed up with a needful explanation; for this way of writing by portions--the only way in which I could have been persuaded to attempt the work, however--is unfavorable to artistic unity; an unnecessary remark, seeing that to such unity my work makes no pretensions. It is but a collection of portions detached from an uneventful, ordinary, and perhaps in part _therefore_ very blessed life.

Hence, perhaps, it was specially fitted for this mode of publication. At all events, I can cast upon it none of the blame of what failure I may have to confess.

A biography cannot be constructed with the art of a novel, for this reason: that a novel is constructed on the artist's scale, with swift-returning curves; a biography on the divine scale, whose circles are so large that they shoot beyond this world, sometimes even before we are able to detect in them the curve by which they will at length round themselves back towards completion. Hence, every life must look more or less fragmentary, and more or less out of drawing perhaps; not to mention the questionable effects in color and tone where the model himself will insist on taking palette and brushes, and laying childish, if not pa.s.sionate, conceited, ambitious, or even spiteful hands to the work.

I do not find that I have greatly blundered, or omitted much that I ought to have mentioned. One odd thing is, that, in the opening conversation in which they urge me to the attempt, I have not mentioned Marion. I do not mean that she was present, but that surely some one must have suggested her and her history as affording endless material for my record. A thing apparently but not really strange is, that I have never said a word about the Mrs. Cromwell mentioned in the same conversation. The fact is, that I have but just arrived at the part of my story where she first comes in.

She died about three months ago; and I can therefore with the more freedom narrate in the next chapter what I have known of her.

I find also that I have, in the fourth chapter, by some odd cerebro-mechanical freak, subst.i.tuted the name of my Aunt _Martha_ for that of my Aunt Millicent, another sister of my father, whom he has not, I believe, had occasion to mention in either of his preceding books. My Aunt Martha is Mrs. Weir, and has no children; my Aunt Millicent is Mrs.

Parsons, married to a hard-working attorney, and has twelve children, now mostly grown up.

I find also, in the thirteenth chapter, an unexplained allusion. There my husband says, "Just ask my brother his experience in regard of the word to which you object." The word was _stomach_, at the use of which I had in my ill-temper taken umbrage: however disagreeable a word in itself, surely a husband might, if need be, use it without offence. It will be proof enough that my objection arose from pure ill-temper when I state that I have since asked Roger to what Percivale referred. His reply was, that, having been requested by a certain person who had a school for young ladies--probably she called it a college--to give her pupils a few lectures on physiology, he could not go far in the course without finding it necessary to make a not unfrequent use of the word, explaining the functions of the organ to which the name belonged, as resembling those of a mill. After the lecture was over, the school-mistress took him aside, and said she really could not allow her young ladies to be made familiar with such words. Roger averred that the word was absolutely necessary to the subject upon which she had desired his lectures; and that he did not know how any instruction in physiology could be given without the free use of it. "No doubt," she returned, "you must recognize the existence of the organ in question; but, as the name of it is offensive to ears polite, could you not subst.i.tute another? You have just said that its operations resemble those of a mill: could you not, as often as you require to speak of it, refer to it in the future as _the mill_?" Roger, with great difficulty repressing his laughter, consented; but in his next lecture made far more frequent reference to _the mill_ than was necessary, using the word every time--I know exactly how--with a certain absurd solemnity that must have been irresistible. The girls went into fits of laughter at the first utterance of it, and seemed, he said, during the whole lecture, intent only on the new term, at every recurrence of which their laughter burst out afresh.

Doubtless their school-mistress had herself prepared them to fall into Roger's trap. The same night he received a note from her, enclosing his fee for the lectures given, and informing him that the rest of the course would not be required. Roger sent back the money, saying that to accept part payment would be to renounce his claim for the whole; and that, besides, he had already received an amount of amus.e.m.e.nt quite sufficient to reward him for his labor. I told him I thought he had been rather cruel; but he said such a woman wanted a lesson. He said also, that to see the sort of women who sometimes had the responsibility of training girls must make the angels weep; none but a heartless mortal like himself could laugh where conventionality and insincerity were taught in every hint as to posture and speech. It was bad enough, he said, to shape yourself into your own ideal; but to have to fashion yourself after the ideal of one whose sole object in teaching was to make money, was something wretched indeed.

I find, besides, that several intentions I had when I started have fallen out of the scheme. Somehow, the subjects would not well come in, or I felt that I was in danger of injuring the persons in the attempt to set forth their opinions.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

MRS. CROMWELL COMES.

The moment the legacy was paid, our liabilities being already nearly discharged, my husband took us all to Hastings. I had never before been to any other seacoast town where the land was worthy of the sea, except Kilkhaven. a.s.suredly, there is no place within easy reach of London to be once mentioned with Hastings. Of course we kept clear of the more fashionable and commonplace St. Leonard's End, where yet the sea is the same,--a sea such that, not even off Cornwall, have I seen so many varieties of ocean-aspect. The immediate sh.o.r.e, with its earthy cliffs, is vastly inferior to the magnificent rock about Tintagel; but there is no outlook on the sea that I know more satisfying than that from the heights of Hastings, especially the East Hill; from the west side of which also you may, when weary of the ocean, look straight down on the ancient port, with its old houses, and fine, multiform red roofs, through the gauze of blue smoke which at eve of a summer day fills the narrow valley, softening the rough goings-on of life into harmony with the gentleness of sea and sh.o.r.e, field and sky. No doubt the suburbs are as unsightly as mere boxes of brick and lime can be, with an ugliness mean because pretentious, an altogether modern ugliness; but even this cannot touch the essential beauty of the place.

On the brow of this East Hill, just where it begins to sink towards Ecclesbourne Glen, stands a small, old, rickety house in the midst of the sweet gra.s.s of the downs. This house my husband was fortunate in finding to let, and took for three months. I am not, however, going to give any history of how we spent them; my sole reason for mentioning Hastings at all being that there I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Cromwell. It was on this wise.

One bright day, about noon,--almost all the days of those months were gorgeous with sunlight,--a rather fashionable maid ran up our little garden, begging for some water for her mistress. Sending her on with the water, I followed myself with a gla.s.s of sherry.

The door in our garden-hedge opened immediately on a green hollow in the hill, sloping towards the glen. As I stepped from the little gate on to the gra.s.s, I saw, to my surprise, that a white fog was blowing in from the sea.

The heights on the opposite side of the glen, partially obscured thereby, looked more majestic than was their wont, and were mottled with patches of duller and brighter color as the drifts of the fog were heaped or parted here and there. Far down, at the foot of the cliffs, the waves of the rising tide, driven sh.o.r.e-wards with the added force of a south-west breeze, caught and threw back what sunlight reached them, and thinned with their shine the fog between. It was all so strange and fine, and had come on so suddenly,--for when I had looked out a few minutes before, sea and sky were purely resplendent,--that I stood a moment or two and gazed, almost forgetting why I was there.

When I bethought myself and looked about me, I saw, in the sheltered hollow before me, a lady seated in a curiously-shaped chair; so constructed, in fact, as to form upon occasion a kind of litter. It was plain she was an invalid, from her paleness, and the tension of the skin on her face, revealing the outline of the bones beneath. Her features were finely formed, but rather small, and her forehead low; a Greek-like face, with large, pale-blue eyes, that reminded me of little Amy Morley's. She smiled very sweetly when she saw me, and shook her head at the wine.

"I only wanted a little water," she said. "This fog seems to stifle me."

"It has come on very suddenly," I said. "Perhaps it is the cold of it that affects your breathing. You don't seem very strong, and any sudden change of temperature"--

"I am not one of the most vigorous of mortals," she answered, with a sad smile; "but the day seemed of such indubitable character, that, after my husband had brought me here in the carriage, he sent it home, and left me with my maid, while he went for a long walk across the downs. When he sees the change in the weather, though, he will turn directly."

"It won't do to wait him here," I said. "We must get you in at once. Would it be wrong to press you to take a little of this wine, just to counteract a chill?"

"I daren't touch any thing but water," she replied, "It would make me feverish at once."

"Run and tell the cook," I said to the maid, "that I want her here. You and she could carry your mistress in, could you not? I will help you."

"There's no occasion for that, ma'am: she's as light as a feather," was the whispered answer.

"I am quite ashamed of giving you so much trouble," said the lady, either hearing or guessing at our words. "My husband will be very grateful to you."

"It is only an act of common humanity," I said.

But, as I spoke, I fancied her fair brow clouded a little, as if she was not accustomed to common humanity, and the word sounded harsh in her ear.

The cloud, however, pa.s.sed so quickly that I doubted, until I knew her better, whether it had really been there.

The two maids were now ready; and, Jemima instructed by the other, they lifted her with the utmost ease, and bore her gently towards the house. The garden-gate was just wide enough to let the chair through, and in a minute more she was upon the sofa. Then a fit of coughing came on which shook her dreadfully. When it had pa.s.sed she lay quiet, with closed eyes, and a smile hovering about her sweet, thin-lipped mouth. By and by she opened them, and looked at me with a pitiful expression.

"I fear you are far from well," I said.

"I'm dying," she returned quietly.

"I hope not," was all I could answer.

"Why should you hope not?" she returned. "I am in no strait betwixt two. I desire to depart. For me to die will be all gain."

"But your friends?" I ventured to suggest, feeling my way, and not quite relishing either the form or tone of her utterance.

"I have none but my husband."

"Then your husband?" I persisted.

"Ah!" she said mournfully, "he will miss me, no doubt, for a while. But it _must_ be a weight off him, for I have been a sufferer so long!"

At this moment I heard a heavy, hasty step in the pa.s.sage; the next, the room door opened, and in came, in hot haste, wiping his red face, a burly man, clumsy and active, with an umbrella in his hand, followed by a great, lumbering Newfoundland dog.

"Down, Polyphemus!" he said to the dog, which crept under a chair; while he, taking no notice of my presence, hurried up to his wife.