immutable; laws. It was an American in this our Quaker City who reduced the wind to a commonplace effect of a most ordinary cause. Franklin, one winter’s day passing with a lighted candle out of a warm room into a cold one, saw that as he held it above his head the flame was blown outward before him: when he held it near the floor, the flame was blown into the room. The shrewd observer stood in the doorway, instead of hurrying out, as most of us would have done, to save the wasting candle. The warm air in the heated room, he conjectured, was expanded by the heat, consequently it rose as high as it could, and made a way for itself out of the room at the upper part of the doorway, while the heavier cold air from without rushed in below to fill the vacated space. What if he took the equatorial regions or great tracts of arid desert for the heated room? The air over them, subjected by the heat to constant rarefaction, must rise, must overflow above, and must force the colder air from the surrounding regions in below. Two sheets of air will thus set in vertically on both sides, rise, and again separate above. Here was an explanation of the great, steady, uninterrupted aerial currents which, at the rate of from fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, sweep the surface of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The candle, no doubt, was wasted, but the secret of the trade-winds was discovered.
The idea was correct as far as it went. It did not go very far, it is true. It had not taken into account the earth’s rotation, whose force, according to Herschel, “gives at least one-half of their average momentum to all the winds which occur over the whole world;” nor the infinite variation in the movements of the atmosphere which we call winds, caused by the change in the sun’s motion, by the differing amounts of vapor held in them, by the physical configuration of the earth below, by the vicinity of the sea or arid deserts, and by the passage of storms or electric currents.
The science of meteorology, especially as regards wind, is as yet searching for general principles, which can only be deduced from countless facts. We do not now, like Saint Paul, talk of the wind Euroclydon as of a special agent of God, but describe it by stating that it is an aerial ascending current over the Mediterranean, produced by the heated sands of Africa and Arabia. We can even measure its heat at 200 deg. Fahrenheit, and its velocity at fifty-four miles per hour. But it attacks us just as unexpectedly as it did the apostle, and brings disease and death to Naples or Palermo to-day just as surely as it did to Cambyses. The popular verdict on the matter would no doubt be that when meteorologists can not only describe the sirocco, but give warning of its coming, their science will justify its claim to consideration. The common sense of mankind always demands as a royalty from every science daily practical benefits to the mass of men and women. It is not enough for meteorologists to have proved that the atmosphere varies in weight, in temperature or velocity of motion according to fixed rules, or to be able to explain why no rain falls on a certain portion of the coast of Portugal, while a like coast-exposure in England is incessantly drenched; or to have determined beyond a doubt that precisely as the ocean of water, under the influence of the moon and wind, ebbs and flows and has its succession of storms or calms, the ocean of air in which we are enveloped answers to the influence of the sun in great tidal movements, and has also its vast steadily moving waves of cold or heat or moisture. These discoveries of general truths must be brought to bear directly on men’s daily life before they will have fulfilled their true purpose. It would seem as if nothing were more easy than to bring them so to bear. Meteorology, more intimately perhaps than any other science, concerns our ordinary affairs. The health of mankind, navigation, agriculture, commerce, the hourly business and needs of every man, from the merchant sending out his cargo and the consumptive waiting for death in the east wind, to the laundress hanging out the family wash, are ruled by that most mysterious, most uncurbed of powers, the weather. We may rub along through life with scanty knowledge of the history of dead nations or the philosophy of living ones, but heat and cold, the climate of the coming winter, yesterday’s rainfall or to-morrow’s frost, are matters which take hold of every one of us and affect us every hour of the day. Now, to bring the known general truths of this science to practical rules, or to base upon them predictions of storms or changes in the weather during any future period, requires, as Sir John Herschel stated twelve years ago, “patient, incessant and laborious observations, carried on in every region of the globe.” One reason why this is required is the perpetually shifting conditions of heat, wind and storm. A man who sat down to work a mathematical problem in the days of Job, if there was such a man, found its result just the same as the school-boy does to-day: figures not only never lie, but never alter. But the man who solves an equation of which the winds and waters are members finds that the sum to be added varies with every hour. There are, so far as is yet known, no regularly recurring cycles of weather on which to base predictions: the conditions of heat and wind and moisture are never precisely the same at any given point. Hence the necessity, if we would give the science stability and bring it to bear on our daily life, of educated, skilled observers at different points to collect and report simultaneously the daily details of the present conditions.
It is this daily detail of fact which the United States government supplies through the little stations of observation one of which we have stumbled into on the Jersey beach. Americans, indeed, have from the first taken hold of this science with a most characteristic effort to reduce it to practical uses, to bring it at once to bear on the well-being at least of farmers and navigators. Dove had no sooner published his chart of isothermal lines and charts, showing the temperature throughout the world of each month, and also of abnormal temperatures, than our government issued the _Army Meteorological Register_ for the United States, which for accuracy and fullness had never been equaled. In these the temperature and rainfall for each month of the year were shown. The forecasts of the weather now published daily in this country, and which come so directly home to every man’s business that Old Probabilities is a real personage to us all, have been given in England for several years under the supervision of Admiral Fitzroy.
But it is high time now that we should come back to our little wooden house on the beach, and tell what we know of its occupants and uses. The courteous gentleman (in a blue flannel suit for “roughing it”) who sits at the telegraphic wires is Sergeant G—-, belonging to the Signal Service Department of the army. Instruction in this department is given at Fort Whipple, Va. One hundred officers besides Sergeant G—- are now in charge of stations, with 139 privates as assistants. The average force at Fort Whipple is 140 men. These men are, in point of fact, soldiers liable to be called into active service in the field: their duty there, however, is not fighting, but signaling and telegraphy–a duty quite as dangerous as the bearing of arms. Fresh recruits for this service are divided into those capable of receiving instruction only in field duty and those for “full service,” which includes, with military signaling and telegraphy, the taking of meteoric observations, the collating and publication of such observations, and the deduction from them of correct results. Passing two examinations successfully in the latter course, the signal-service soldier is detailed for duty at a post as assistant, and after six months’ satisfactory service is returned to Fort Whipple for the special instruction given to observer-sergeants. When qualified for this work he is detailed, as a vacancy occurs, for actual service.
Having thus discovered how our friend the sergeant came into his post, we looked about to see what he had to do there. The brilliantly-colored flags overhead drew the eye first. These flags serve the purpose of an international language on the high seas, where no other language is practicable. Twenty thousand distinct messages can be sent by them. Rogers’s system has been, adopted by the United States Navy, the Lighthouse Board, the United States Coast Survey and the principal lines of steamers. Each flag represents a number, and four flags can be hoisted at once on the staff. With the flags there is given a book containing the meaning of each number. Thus, a wrecked ship cries silently to the shore, “Send a lifeboat” by flags 3, 8, 9, or says that she is sinking by 6, 3, 2; or a vessel under full sail hails another by 8, 6, 0, or bids her “_bon voyage_” with 8, 9, 7. Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing colors in cloudy days or when the flags will not fly, other systems of signaling are used: that of cones similar to umbrellas being considered in the English service one of the most efficient, a different arrangement of cones on the staff representing the nine numerals. Men may convert themselves into cones in an emergency by raising or letting fall their arms, and two men thus give any signal necessary. As the flags, however, belong more especially to Sergeant G—- ‘s duty on the field of battle or to exceptional cases of storm and danger, we pass them by to examine into his daily round of duty. Outside, a queer little house of lattice-work perched on a headland shelters the thermometers and barometers: on a still higher point directly over the foaming breakers is the anemometer, the little instrument which measures the swiftness of the fiercest cyclone as easily as the lightest spring breeze. It consists of four brass cups shaped to catch the wind, and attached to the ends of two horizontal iron rods, which cross each other and are supported in the middle by a long pole on which they turn freely. The cups revolve with just one-third of the wind’s velocity, and make five hundred revolutions whilst a mile of wind passes over them. A register of these revolutions is made by machinery similar to a gas-meter. The popular idea, by the way, of the speed of the wind runs very far beyond the truth: we are apt to say of a racer that he goes like the wind, when the fact is the horse of a good strain of blood leaves the laggard tempest far behind; the ordinary winds of every day travel only five miles an hour, a breeze of sixteen and a quarter miles an hour being strong enough to cause great discomfort in town or field: thirty-three miles is dangerous at sea, and sixty-five miles a violent hurricane, sweeping all before it.
Our friend the sergeant examines seven times a day at stated periods the condition of the atmosphere as to heat, weight and moisture, the velocity of the wind, the kind, amount and speed of the clouds, and measures the rainfall and the ocean swell: all these observations are recorded, and three are daily reported to headquarters at Washington. In these telegrams a cipher is used–as much, we presume, to ensure accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every housewife consults before the day’s work begins. Thus, when the telegraph operator receives the mysterious message, “Francisco Emily alone barge churning did frosty guarding hungry,” how is he to know that it means “San Francisco Evening. Rep. Barom. 29.40, Ther. 61, Humidity 18 per cent., Velocity of wind 41 miles per hour, 840 pounds pressure, Cirro-stratus. N.W. 1/4 to 2/4, Cumulo-stratus East, Rainfall 2.80 inch.”?
Besides these simultaneous reports from the one hundred and eight United States stations which are telegraphed to the central office at Washington, there are received there daily three hundred and eighty-three volunteer reports from every part of the country, these being the system of meteorological observations under control of the Smithsonian Institution for twenty-four years, and given in charge to the Signal Service Bureau in 1874. In addition to these, again, are simultaneous reports from Russia, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, England, Algiers, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Canada–in all two hundred and fourteen. When we add together, therefore, the
United States Signal Service reports 108 Volunteer reports 383
International reports 214
Reports of medical corps of army 123
we have a grand total of eight hundred and twenty-eight daily simultaneous reports received at the central office, where Brigadier-General Albert J. Myer and his brevet aide, Captain H.W. Howgate (or, if you choose, Old Probabilities himself), wait to scan through these many watchful eyes the heavens around the world and utter incessant prophecies and warnings. Besides the regular observations, report is also made of casual phenomena–lightning, auroras, time of first and last frosts, etc., etc.
The history of the Signal Service Bureau and the establishment of these stations and telegraph-lines, bringing the whole country under the instant oversight of one intelligent observer, would, if it were briefly written, be full of points of dramatic interest. As yet it must be gathered out of acts of Congress and official reports. The service has now existed for fourteen years, but is still without that full recognition by Congress which would ensure its permanency. “With interests depending on its daily work as great as can by any possibility rest upon any other branch of the service, it is yet regarded as an experiment, an offshoot of regular army service existing on sufferance, liable at any moment to be hindered in its operations, if not totally abolished.” The benefit of this daily work, however, affects too nearly and constantly the mass of the people to allow much danger of its final extinction. What the real value of this practical work is can be gathered not only from the dry statistics of annual reports, but from the increased confidence placed in it by the people, the unscientific working majority.
The help given to farmers should rank perhaps first in estimating the value of this work. At midnight of each day the midnight forecast is telegraphed to twenty centres of distribution, located strictly with regard to the agricultural population. The telegrams, as soon as received, are printed by signal-service men, rapidly enveloped in wrappers already stamped and addressed, and sent by the swiftest conveyance to every post-office which can be reached before 2 P.M. of the same day, and when received are displayed on bulletin-boards. The average time elapsing from the moment when the bulletin leaves the central office until it reaches every post-office from Maine to Florida is ten hours. In 1874, 6286 of these farmers’ bulletins were issued, and when we consider that by each one of them reliable information as to the chances of success or failure in planting or reaping was given, we gain some idea of the directness and force of the work of this bureau.
The river reports of the office include not only regular daily observations of the changing depths of the great water-highways, but forecasts of coming floods or sudden rises and falls of the river-levels. Before the great floods in the Mississippi Valley in 1874 the warnings given by this means, and which could have been given by no other, saved an incalculable amount of property and human life. Bulletins are also issued regarding approaching freezing of our canals in the winter months, and have enabled shippers to avoid the accidents common heretofore when enormous quantities of grain, etc. in transit have been detained by this means, to the serious disturbance of the market.
Cautionary day and night signals are displayed at the principal ports and harbors when dangerous winds or storms are anticipated. In one year 762 of these warning signals were displayed, and 561 were verified by storms of destructive winds which otherwise would not have been foreseen. In not a single instance during the last two years has a great storm reached, without warning from the office, the lakes or seaports of the country. The amount of shipping, property and life thus saved to the country is simply incalculable.
Tri-daily deductions or probabilities of the weather, wind and storms, with part of the data on which they rest, are published in all the principal papers of the country, and each man and woman can testify as to their use of them. Who now goes to be married or to bury his dead or to begin a journey without consulting the two oracular lines in italics at the head of the leading column? They have come to take part in our domestic lives. The people would miss politics or the markets or literature out of the paper with less regret than Probabilities should the service be discontinued.
Besides this practical labor, there is the publication of nine daily charts on which are inscribed 2160 readings of different instruments, giving an accurate view of the general meteoric condition; monthly charts and charts condensing the results of years of observation; records furnished for the study of scientific men more comprehensive and regular than can be offered by any similar institution in any country.
A special bit of history comes to light respecting our little wooden shed at the head of Barnegat Bay. An act of Congress approved March, 1873, authorized the establishment of signal stations at lighthouses or life-saving stations along dangerous coasts, and the connection of the same by telegraphs, thirty thousand dollars being appropriated for that end. In consequence, signal stations were established on the Massachusetts coast, from Norfolk, Va., to Cape Hatteras, and more closely along this dangerous lee-shore of New Jersey, and telegraph-lines were laid connecting them with each other and also with the central office. The plan for the future is to net the whole coast–the lake, Atlantic and Pacific shores–with these stations and telegraph-wires. By this means information of coming storms can be conveyed by signal to vessels, or of wrecks, by telegraph, to other life-saving stations: the close watch kept upon the ocean-swell and currents will give warning inland of approaching changes in the weather; for it is a singular fact that the ocean-swell communicates this intelligence more quickly than the barometer, in quite another sense than the poet’s
Every wave has tales to tell
Of storms far out at sea.
Our little station belongs to the advanced guard of this proposed line which is to encircle the coast, the whole work of establishing these stations and telegraph-lines having been, done by Sergeant G—- and his comrades. Indeed, when we look at all the work done by our blue-coated friend, his steady, unintermitting attention to duty by day and night year after year, his comfortless quarters in the wooden shed on the lonely beach, and the almost absolute solitude for an educated man during many months of the year, we begin to think his station not the least honorable among the soldiers of the republic. Almost any man, set down on the battle-field, one army to meet and another to back him, with the crash of music and arms, the magnetic fury of combat blazing in the air, would rise to the height of the moment and prove himself manly. But to be faithful to petty tasks hour after hour, through all kinds of privation and weather, for years, is quite a different matter.
The reports of the chief officer give us a hint of some of the privations borne by the observer-sergeants, educated young fellows like our friend. In 1872 the chief ordered one of these men to establish a station on the western coast of Alaska and on the island of St. Paul in Behring Sea, which was done, the observer continuing for a year in that farthest outpost. His record of frozen fogs which wrap the island like a pall, of cyclones from the Asian seas that lash its rocky coast, of vast masses of electric clouds seen nowhere else which sweep incessantly over it toward the Pole, reads more like the story of a nightmare dream than a scientific statement.
In the next spring the chief ordered another sergeant to found a station on Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain-peak east of the Mississippi. Professor Mitchell discovered and measured this mountain about twenty years ago. While taking meteorological observations upon it he was overtaken by a storm, lost his way, and was dashed to pieces over one of its terrible precipices. Several years after his death the government, suddenly recognizing his right to some acknowledgment from science, ordered his body to be disinterred and buried on the topmost peak of the mountain. It was a work of weeks, the body in its coffin being carried by the hardy mountaineers up almost impassable heights. But it reached the top at last, and lies there in the sky above all human life, with the mountain for a monument. One is startled by such a pathetic whim of poetic justice in a government. It was to this peak that the sergeant was ordered to carry his instruments and to make an abiding-place for himself. And here, after two days’ journey from the base, he arrived at night in a storm of snow and hail–the guides having cleared the way with axes–set up his instruments, and took observations above the clouds while trees and rocks were sheeted with ice, and there was no shelter for himself or his companions from the furious tempests. A hut was built after a few days, and here the observer remained with the lonely grave as companion, taking hourly observations during several months.
Another officer was sent to the top of Pike’s Peak, where he lived in a rudely-constructed cabin until his health broke down; he was then replaced by another, who after a year was obliged to yield also. As soon as one soldier succumbs in these perilous outposts another goes forward. The rarity of the air at this great altitude (nearly thirteen thousand feet) produces nausea, fever and dizziness: added to this were the intense cold and exposure to terrific storms. Sergeant Seyboth records several nights when he with his companions were forced, in a driving tempest, to leave the shelter of their hut and work all night heaping rocks upon its roof to keep it from being blown away; beneath them, many thousand feet, was the rolling sea of clouds. Again and again these men were lost in the drifted snow of the canons while passing from station to station, and barely escaped with their lives. So imminent, indeed, was their danger during the winter of 1873 that prayers for their safety were offered continually in the churches below.
Frederick Meyer, another of these signal-service soldiers, was sent on the North Polar expedition with Captain Hall. No such marvelous tale as that contained in his formal report was ever found in fiction. Sergeant Meyer made observations every three hours on the voyage north, and hourly when coming south, during a year and two months. At the end of that time, as is well known to our readers, he, with part of the crew of the Polaris, was deserted by the ship, and left on a floe of ice in 79 deg. north latitude, the steamer going southward without attempting their relief. Even in that moment of extremity he made an effort to secure the case containing his observations, but it was washed away from him by heavy seas. For six months these nineteen human beings drifted on the mass of ice over the polar seas, through all the darkness and horrors of an Arctic winter, without fire except such as was made by burning one of their boats–a feeble blaze daily, enough to warm a quart of water in which to soak their pemmican–without shelter save such as the heaped ice and snow afforded, and on starvation diet. After four months the floe began to melt so rapidly that it was but twenty yards wide. “We dared not sleep,” says Sergeant Meyer, “fearing the ice would break under us and we should find our grave in the Arctic Sea.” Several times the ice did break beneath them, and they were washed into the flood, but scrambled up again on the fast-melting floe. During the whole of this time the signal-service soldier continued faithful to his work, taking such observations as were possible with the instruments left to him. The boat had been burned long before, and they warmed their water with an Esquimaux lamp. On April 22d their provisions consisted of but ten biscuits. Starvation was before them when a bear was shot, and they lived on its raw meat for two weeks. At the end of that time a steamer passed within sight. The poor wretches on the ice hoisted a flag and shouted, but the vessel passed out of sight. Another ship a few days later came within the horizon and disappeared. The next day was foggy: again a steamer was sighted, and for hours the shipwrecked crew strove to make themselves seen and heard through the fog, firing shots, hoisting their torn flag and shouting at the tops of their voices. They were seen at last, and taken aboard the Tigress, “more like ghastly spectres who had come up through hell,” says one of the narrators, “than living men.”
The pay of the signal-service soldiers is small, and it is hardly to be supposed that they are all enthusiasts in science, or so in love with meteorology that they cheerfully brave danger and hardships such as these for its sake. We must look for the secret of their loyalty to their steady, tedious work in that quiet devotion to duty which we find in the majority of honest men–the feeling that they must go through with what they have once undertaken. And, after all, the majority of men are honest, and loyalty to irksome work is so commonplace a matter that it is only when we see it carry a man steadily through great and sudden peril, or consider how in its great total the work of obscure individuals has lifted humanity to higher levels in the last three centuries, that we can understand how good a thing it is.
At some future time we shall ransack the lower floor of the little house on the beach and discover what is to be found there.
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
A DEAD LOVE.
O Rose! within my bloomy croft,
Where hidden sweets compacted dwell, The wanton wind with breathings soft,
To perfect flower thy bud shall swell, Then steal thy rich perfume,
Tarnish both grace and bloom,
Until, thy pearly prime being past, Withered and dead thou’lt lie at last.
O gleaming Night! whose cloudy hair
Waves dark amid its woven light,
Bestudded thick with jewels rare,
Than royal diadem more bright,
Lo! the white hands of Day
Shall strip thy gauds away,
And in the twilight of the morn
Mock thy estate with cold-eyed scorn.
My love, O Rose! hath had a day
As fair, a fate as quick, as thine: All wrapped in perfumed sleep I lay
Till my fond fancies grew divine, And sweet Elysium seemed
Around me as I dreamed.
The rose is dead, the dawn comes fast: Joy dies, but grief awakes at last.
F.A. HILLARD.
GENTILHOMME AND GENTLEMAN.
“Le dernier gentilhomme de France vient de mourir!” exclaimed the _Figaro_ a short time ago when recording the death of the Count de Cambis. But the announcement has been made so often during the last century that we are led to hope that the race may not be extinct yet. Every generation of Frenchmen has boasted the possession of its “first” and lamented the loss of its “last” “gentilhomme de France,” and on each occasion have hasty English journalists of the day joined both in the glorification and the lamentation over the individuals thus commemorated by their own countrymen. The term “gentilhomme” is so liable to be confounded with “gentleman” that it needs explaining, for, despite the similarity of derivation, no two words can be more distinct. The French gentilhomme must be of noble blood: he must be of ancient and distinguished race, for no _nouveau parvenu_ can ever aspire to be cited as a _vrai gentilhomme_, while the qualifications necessary for sustaining the character seem to be wholly confined to the one virtue of generosity. Whenever you hear it said of a man, “Il s’est conduit en vrai gentilhomme,” be sure that it means no more than that he performed a simple act of justice in a courteous and graceful manner. The sacred and self-imposed qualities which make up the significance of the English word “gentleman” no Frenchman, nor indeed any foreigner, can understand, and the word itself is never translated, but always left in its original English. Bulwer defines the appellation more clearly than any other author when he says, “The word _gentleman_ has become a title peculiar to us–not, as in other countries, resting on pedigree and coats-of-arms, but embracing all who unite gentleness with manhood.”
Now the gentilhomme of France is an entirely different type. He _must_ rely on pedigree and coats-of-arms; he must be sudden and quick in quarrel; he must fling away his money freely amongst the _roture_; he must be what is called a _beau joueur_–that is to say, he may lose at the gaming-table the dowry of his mother, the marriage-portion of his sister, everything, in short, save his temper; he may defraud a creditor, and be the first to laugh at the fraud. “One God, one love, one king!” is the cry of the good old English gentleman. But in religion the gentilhomme Francais may declare with Henri Quatre that “Paris vaut bien une messe;” in love he may pledge his faith to as many mistresses as that same valiant sovereign; and in politics he may cry, “Vive le Roi! vive la Ligue!” and yet remain a _parfait gentilhomme_ in spite of all.
Every generation seems to have furnished its _parfait gentilhomme par excellence_. The court of Louis Quatorze boasted of its Chevalier de Grammont, from whose own confession we learn that he gloried in the skill with which he cheated the poor Count de Camma at Lyons and the cunning with which he eluded payment of his bill at the inn.
Then came M. de Montrond, and he again was _premier gentilhomme de France_ while he lived and _le dernier des gentilhommes Francais_ when he died. M. de Montrond belonged to two generations, two strongly-contrasted epochs. At his first ball at court he wore a powdered _cadogan_ and danced in _talons rouges_: at his last he lolled with bald head against a doorway, in varnished boots and starched cravat. His existence has remained an enigma to this hour. Although solicited to accept office by every party that rose to power during his life, he steadfastly refused, and yet, by virtue of his quality of premier gentilhomme de France, possessed unbounded influence with them all. The explanation he gave of his system was cynical enough: “A man must march straight to the cash-box and secure the money, without waiting in the ante-room or the bureau: the power is sure to follow.” He chatted politics sometimes, but never “talked” them, and seldom failed to introduce the names of one or more of the forty-three duchesses, countesses and marquises whose peace of mind he boasted of having wrecked for ever. Is it not strange that such frothy frivolity could have obtained dominion for more than fifty years over the most critical people in the world? But Montrond always declared that no man in France would ever take the trouble to read a book if once he had taken the trouble to read the preface. Even by the capricious and pedantic yet ignorant society of fashionable London his fantastical dominion was acknowledged; and the reason of this will be understood at once in the fearlessness with which he uttered his rule of conduct: “Every man of distinction should settle his income at ten thousand pounds a year, and never trouble himself whether or not he possesses as much for the capital.” This premier gentilhomme de France was proud of his want of reading, and used often to declare that the only two books he had ever skimmed were the wearisome _Henriade_ of Voltaire and the frivolous _Liaisons Dangereuses_ of Laclos. No research, no analysis of character, can be found to explain the strange inconsistency by which M. de Montrond was, notwithstanding, entrusted by every government under which he lived with the most important secrets, the most serious negotiations–sent abroad to stay revolutions, summoned home to remodel constitutions, and consulted on every point as though he had spent his whole life in the study of Montesquieu or Colbert. Such was the moral life of the man pronounced the premier gentilhomme de France by the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation.
Let us glance at the physical side of his existence–the outward and visible sign of the distinctive title with which he was honored. M. de Montrond began his career by the study of arms, wine, women and dice–which constituted the accomplishments necessary for a gentleman of the period–in the regiment of Royal Flanders. Theodore Lamette was his first colonel, Douai his first garrison-town. Soon after his arrival there every man in the place became his devoted friend, every woman his willing slave, and every tradesman his ready creditor. It so happened that a detachment of Royal Cravattes had sought temporary quarters in the same town; and among the officers was a certain Comte de Champagne, a great duelist and gamester. From this man, by some good fortune, over which a veil has always been thrown by Montrond’s friends, he won a considerable sum, and on finding, after suffering a considerable time to elapse, that no sign of payment was made, he proclaimed his intention of taking steps–not according, but in opposition, to the law–in order to obtain his due. Montrond knew himself to be a wretched swordsman, and therefore resolved at once to replace his want of skill by audacity. He sent his servant to the stable where four-and-twenty goodly steeds belonging to the Count de Champagne were champing their oats in all security, with orders to carry them off and leave in lieu of the magnificent animals a message to the effect that M. de Montrond would sell the stud to pay himself, and hand over the balance to the Count de Champagne. In a few hours, as he had expected, he was called to the field, and presented himself before the great duelist with a phlegmatic humor which completely upset the count’s own self-possession. Montrond was hit hard at the first lunge. He had intended to be; and the result has become historical in the annals of dueling. He had been pierced in the breast by his adversary’s sword, and was evidently thought by the latter to have received his death-wound. In token of this belief the Count de Champagne lowered his weapon, and then M. de Montrond, making one desperate thrust, drove his sword right through his adversary’s heart. The Count de Champagne fell dead without a cry, without a struggle. Then M. de Montrond rose covered with glory and with honor, for in such adventures lay the fame of the gentilhommes of that time.
It would be impossible to recount the long catalogue of M. de Montrond’s triumphs after this. He became the idol of fashion–as much with the Directoire as he had been with the old court–and under the patronage of Madame Tallien he was permitted to carry amongst the stern republicans the habits and morals of the Regence. It was at this moment of his life that the one act of expiation of the past took place. He worked with right good-will for the benefit of the exiled nobles, many of whom were recalled through his influence, which was so great that he found means to persuade the unkempt rulers of the Republic to invite to their banquets the pardoned emigres, and to show that they felt no rancor and experienced no dread.
We were about to follow the example of Montrond himself, and forget that he was married–“just as little as possible,” as he was wont to say, but legally, notwithstanding. He married during the Revolutionary movement a _grande dame_, a divorced lady, a certain Duchesse de Fleury, who had sought in this union nothing more than the protection of her property against the name of her first husband, through which it would have been infallibly condemned to confiscation. Many of the great ladies of that time had done likewise, thus defrauding the Republic. But the Duchesse de Fleury neglected the most important precaution of all–that of securing protection against the protector she had chosen, who at once seized the property–more gayly perhaps, but quite as effectually as the Republic would have done. The terms of the marriage-contract may be quoted as a specimen of the motives by which the premier gentilhomme de France was governed in the transaction. After the declaration that the Duchesse de Fleury had brought to the _communaute_ certain houses and lands, besides an income of forty thousand livres, we find added by way of set-off to this fortune that the count engaged himself to bring yearly the sum of a hundred thousand francs–the produce of his wits. After a little while, the premier gentilhomme having exercised the said wits in spending the produce of the houses and lands of Madame de Fleury, and Madame de Fleury not being able to return the compliment by selling the wits of the Count de Montrond, the two went on their respective ways, leaving to Providence the task of redeeming the lands which the wits had sold and the income which the wits had scattered to the four winds of heaven.
Space is wanting to recount the struggles of the different parties which succeeded each other with such frightful rapidity in France to obtain possession of the Count de Montrond’s influence. But he remained true to one principle, the one with which he started–“to make straight for the cash-box.” Yet with all this prosaic prudence, amid the poetry of his position, the moral of this man’s life was fulfilled to the very letter. The Count de Montrond managed to outlive every pecuniary resource save the one afforded by the remembrance of “auld lang syne” and the unforgotten days of bygone love. He died in the house of Madame Hamelin, after having been soothed and sheltered by this friend and protectress through the revolutionary storm of 1848. He died dependent, subject to the same changes and caprice he had so long inflicted upon others.
Montrond’s successor, the Count de Cambis, the man who has represented the premier gentilhomme de France in our day, died lately at as good an old age as the Count de Montrond. _Autres tems, autres moeurs_: no more cheating at cards, no more beating the watch, as in the case of the Chevalier de Grammont; no more dueling and killing the adversary by surprise, as in that of the Count de Montrond. When the bourgeois king, Louis Philippe, succeeded to the elder branch, the gentilhomme Francais entirely lost his prestige, and the necessity of his existence was ignored. Everything bourgeois had become the fashion at court: the court itself was denominated a _basse-cour_ (farm-yard) by the Faubourg St. Germain, and all who frequented it “les oies de Frere Philippe” or “les canards d’Orleans.” The Count de Cambis appeared at that moment at the Tuileries in search of office. His name stood high in the annals of the French noblesse: society had, however, ceased to confound the gentilhomme with the roue. The conditions necessary to fulfill the character were changed, and it was now the bourgeois gentilhomme and not the gentilhomme roue whose claim to the vacant place was more likely to be accepted. The Count de Cambis had held the place of honorary equerry to the Duc d’Angouleme, having obtained it less on account of his patent of nobility than by reason of his unblemished character. He was now in search of some place about the court, and soon found favor in the eyes of the citizen-king, to whom the quiet virtues of the Tiers-Etat were of more value than the flash and tinsel of the Regence. The count was of fine, commanding person and handsome countenance: moreover, he was “the man with a story,” and a painful one it was, creative of the greatest interest in the tender bosoms of the Orleans princesses. Although poor, belonging to a ruined family, his prospects had been good at the court of Charles Dix, and one of the greatest ladies of the court had cast her eyes upon him as a suitable _parti_ for her daughter. The young lady, nothing loath, had accepted with alacrity the proposition of marriage, seconded as it was by the Duchesse d’Angouleme, and backed by the promise of high office on its realization. A marriage is easy to arrange in France; not so the execution of the marriage-contract, which is rendered as wearisome by delays as the still more dilatory proceedings of the law; and therefore it was deemed advisable, in order to pass this dismal period, to despatch the Count de Cambis to Holland for the purchase of horses for the royal stable. Arrived at The Hague, he was seized with an attack of smallpox, which laid him prostrate on the low flock bed of the miserable little inn to which he had been conveyed on landing from the boat. Here he lay for some time incognito, his identity unknown to any save the faithful valet who attended him, until he had perfectly recovered from the disease, which, however, was found to have left the most frightful traces of its passage in scar and seam and furrow from forehead to chin. The handsome young cavalier who landed so full of hope and spirits on the quay at The Hague rose from his bed with a face bloated and discolored, seamed and scarred and pockmarked, his once luxuriant locks grown thin and dank, his eyelashes gone, his whole appearance so changed that as he gazed at himself for the first time in the looking-glass he was overwhelmed with such despair that, as he owned afterward to his friends, he would have thrown himself from the window at which he stood into the canal below had he not been prevented by the strong arm of his servant, Dulac. A terrible period of anguish and depression followed on this first excitement, but he awoke from it and returned to life once more, a sadder and a wiser man. When the first impression of horror and dismay had passed away his resolution was taken at once. He resolved to disengage the lady from her vow, and sat down to write the words which were to rend his heart in twain. At that moment Dulac entered the room with a packet of letters just arrived from Paris by estafette. Amongst them was one from the young lady’s mother, full of sweet pleasantry and graceful mirth, describing the gay doings at the Tuileries, and the delight her daughter had experienced at the idea of being allowed to attend the Duchesse d’Angouleme to the ball about to be given in honor of the visit to Paris of some one or other of the Spanish princes. She described with the greatest vivacity all the details of the toilet to be worn by her chere petite Adele and the kindness of the royal princess, and ended with the most affectionate expressions of regret at the absence from the fete of her daughter’s affianced lover, writing in playful terms of the danger in which Adele’s heart would have been placed at the accession of so many new and handsome cavaliers in attendance on the Spanish prince had it not been for the precaution of wearing, as the safest shield against all attacks, the locket which contained the portrait of her brave and beautiful lover–the miniature he had given her on his departure. He turned from the perusal of the letter with a deadly chill at his heart: he crushed it in his hand, and threw it on the blazing logs upon the hearth, holding it down with the tongs until every fiery spark had disappeared, then watched the blackened flakes as they flew one by one up the chimney; and when the last had disappeared he dashed the tears from his eyes, and, to the great surprise and consternation of Dulac, ordered him to pack up and prepare for their immediate return to France.
That very evening he set out by the passage-boat, and arrived in Paris on the very night of the ball at the Tuileries. With the strange self-immolation which is generated in some characters by despair he caused himself to be driven by the quay round to the Place Louis Quinze, and made the driver stop so that he might torture himself with the sight of the lights and the shadows of the dancers. He then alighted at his own door beneath the gateway in the Rue de Rivoli, which at that hour was silent and deserted, for the line of carriages were all setting down in the courtyard of the Place du Carrousel. The gaping valets merely nodded acquiescence to the password he muttered as, muffled up to the chin, he glided noiselessly over the polished floor of the vestibule and hurried up the stairs. Dulac was well pleased to be home again, anticipating with delight the enjoyment of that repose which after such a long arid rapid journey he had well earned. What, therefore, was his consternation when _Monsieur le Comte_ announced his intention of attending the ball, ordering him to prepare in all haste his court-costume for the purpose! Dulac was accustomed to obey without opposition, and, although wondering at this sudden vagary on the part of his master, usually so reasonable in all things, hastened to do his bidding. The toilet was completed in silence. A few tears were shed by Dulac over the thin lank locks he was called upon to friz, and when all was completed and he held aloft the girandole to light him down the back stairs used by members of the royal household to gain admission to the state apartments of the royal palace without passing through the crowd in the ante-room, the faithful fellow turned heartbroken to his master’s chamber.
The Count de Cambis entered the ballroom at the moment when a quadrille was being made up, and the very instinct of his love–for it could not be mere chance–led him at once to the room and the place where Mademoiselle de B—- was seated beside her mother. The count has often told his friends that he trembled so violently that for a few minutes he could neither speak nor move, but stood gazing upon the young lady silent, motionless, as if rooted to the spot. The whole seemed as if passing before him in a magic-lantern, and when at length, recalled to himself by the amazement expressed upon the countenances of both ladies, he ventured to ask his beautiful fiancee for her hand in the dance, it was no wonder that she did not recognize his voice, so choked and husky was it with emotion. But the young lady turned abruptly away with an impatient gesture, and looked imploringly at her mother for help against the intrusion of the repulsive gallant she had secured. At a signal from the matron, which did not escape the count, she bent her head, and the count, stooping also, caught the whisper, “Nay, mon enfant, ugly as he is, he must not be refused, or you cannot dance with any other partners all night.” With pouting lips and tearful eyes the young lady extended her hand, but by the time she had raised her eyes again the suppliant had vanished through the doorway, his disappearance as mysterious as his first apparition, and, strange to say, was seen no more. He had caught sight of the locket, the miniature of himself, with the bright eyes and flowing hair, the long black eyelashes and glossy moustache. It seemed to reproach him with the fraud he was premeditating against the lovely girl to whom, if he listened to the dictates of honor, he must henceforth be as one dead–as one, indeed, who had died many years before.
His anguish was intense. The test of love had been deceptive, the ordeal had failed, the verdict had been given against him. He went back to his chamber, where Dulac was still busily engaged in unpacking his valise, bade the astounded valet replace everything he had already taken out, and hurry at once to the Poste aux Chevaux to command horses for the return journey to The Hague. As soon as he arrived at that place he wrote a long letter to the young lady’s mother releasing her daughter from all obligation toward himself, and announcing his determination never to intrude himself upon her notice again. The Duchesse d’Angouleme, whose experience of life was of its bitterness alone, is said to have interfered to prevent the affair from becoming public, and to have assisted in finding another _parti_ for the deserted fair one.
Meanwhile, the Restoration with its disappointments and broken vows was replaced by the government of Louis Philippe with its hopes and promises. The Count de Cambis, whose official position was annihilated by the storm which swept over the kingdom, found himself immediately, with the whole army of officials, compelled to choose between poverty and obscurity or treachery to his former benefactors. When this combat is allowed to take place between the heart and the stomach, the latter generally carries the day; and so it did in this case. The Count de Cambis did but follow the majority in binding himself at once to the interests of the Orleans family. Louis Philippe, who, like all French sovereigns, displayed undue eagerness to make use of the old servants of the preceding dynasty, was not slow to avail himself of the offer of service made by the Count de Cambis. A place was found for him as superintendent of the royal stud, and here he really displayed that disinterestedness in his dealings which entitled him to the highest consideration. The Duke of Orleans, whose aristocratic tastes always inclined him to favor distinction of birth, treated the Count de Cambis with especial preference; and on his side the count was careful to flatter the instincts of His Royal Highness by assuming the manners and gait of the ancient raffines of the Garde Royale. One of the duke’s chief delights consisted in fashioning his household regulations after the model set by the Due d’Angouleme, and the count became his chief counsel and adviser in every matter concerning the etiquette to be observed in a well-ordered court. The tradition preserved to the latest hour of the existence of the royal stables tells of the fatality which rendered the Count de Cambis the avenger of the Restoration he had denied through his share in the catastrophe which deprived the throne of July of its heir.
It was the 13th of July, 1842. The day was fine. The duke appeared at a window which looked into the courtyard where the Count de Cambis was giving orders concerning the day’s service. “The victoria to-day,” called out His Royal Highness from the balcony.–“And Tom?” was the question sent upward to the duke.–“No, let me have Kent: he goes best with Ridge,” returned the duke.–“But Kent has been much worked lately, monseigneur, and–.”–“Well, well, Cambis, as you like: you know best,” was the final reply as the duke turned away from the window and retreated into the chamber. Just then one of the grooms, who had been standing at a respectful distance and had overheard the words, came forward and in a voice full of mystery begged to inform M. le Comte that something was wrong with Tom, who had been observed to be restless and irritable the whole morning, and inquired whether it would not be well to have him doctored. “Pooh! pooh!” exclaimed the count. “You are all chicken-hearted in _your_ stable–always complaining of Tom, whose only fault lies in his spirit. He only shows his thorough breeding, and the duke wishes to make a gallant display on starting. There is a crowd already gathered round the gate to see him drive off.” So Tom was harnessed, and the postilion who rode Piedefer declares that from the very first he argued ill of Tom’s temper, for he observed a vicious expression in his eye, and a distension of the nostrils which never boded good.
The Duke of Orleans was driven from the palace-gate full of health and spirits. He was to proceed to Neuilly to bid farewell to his mother, Queen Amelie, at the little summer chateau there. Detractors of the duke’s character will tell you that on the way he stopped and prolonged to undue length a visit he should not have made at all, and that consequently he was compelled to urge the postilion to greater speed. Whatever the cause, just at the entrance of the Route de la Revolte the dreaded outburst of temper on the part of the irascible Tom took place. At first merely fidgety, and managed with the greatest delicacy by the English postilion, then ill-tempered and capricious, swerving from side to side, necessitating in self-defence the use of the whip–“But only gently and lighthanded, as one’s obliged to do sometimes, just to show ’em who’s master,” was the poor fellow’s explanation amid the bitter tears he shed when recounting the catastrophe–when suddenly Tom reared and plunged, and set off at a mad gallop which no human hand could have had the power to arrest. The postilion kept a cool head and steady seat: not so the Duke of Orleans, who rose to his feet in alarm just as the wheels of the carriage struck against a stone. The shock caused him to lose his balance: he was dashed violently to the ground, and in a few hours the hope of France lay dead in the small back shop of a petty tradesman in the avenue.
The blow was a dreadful one–far heavier than that of a mere domestic bereavement. It was felt that the royal family had lost its hold, not of authority, but of sentiment, upon the nation–that the dynasty for which such sacrifices had been made was wrecked for ever. But no blame was attached to any individual save by the Count de Cambis himself, who acknowledged the grievous responsibility he had incurred by instantly sending in his resignation and withdrawing from court. In vain did Louis Philippe endeavor to persuade him to return; in vain did the queen herself, even amid the desolation of the first storm of grief, disclaim any imputation of blame to the count; in vain did the Duc de Nemours write with his own hand the urgent request that he would resume office, were it only for a time, in order to display to the world the conviction felt by every member of the royal family of the utter absence of any neglect or carelessness on his part. It was of no avail: the Count de Cambis remained steady to his purpose of retirement, and disappeared entirely from court.
It was not until the summer of 1847 that a renewal of intercourse took place. The day was a festival, and the approaches to the palace were thronged till a late hour. A garden below the windows, surrounded by a low iron grating, and called the garden of the Count de Paris, had just been closed for the night; the sound of the drums beating the _retraite_ was already dying in the distance; the crowd had all withdrawn, and yet one solitary figure still remained, leaning disconsolately against the railing, gazing wistfully into the garden, and every now and then casting furtive glances up at the balcony into which opened the window of the apartment occupied by the Duchess of Orleans. Presently a child came down the steps and walked straight to the gate against which the stranger was leaning, his forehead pressed against the grating, his hand grasping the iron bars. In a moment the key was turned in the lock, a little hand was placed within that of the Count de Cambis, and a gentle voice whispered in his ear, “Come in! come in! We are all there to-night–grandpere and all. We want to see you so much. It is mamma’s fete.” There was no resisting this appeal. Le premier gentilhomme de France would have been compelled to forego his title had he refused the invitation, and clasping the child’s hand he traversed the garden in silence, and soon found himself in the midst of the royal family assembled to celebrate the fete of St. Helene in the privacy of domestic affection. The sight of the well-remembered faces, the smiles and greetings of the royal family, the cordial kindness of the king, the silent sympathy of the queen, the gentle welcome of the duchess, at length brought consolation to the wounded spirit of the count, and without further ado he consented at once to resume his old position; and the next day, when he was seen galloping beside the royal carriage up the Champs Elysees, he was greeted with hearty shouts of recognition by the promenaders on either side. Everything now went on in the old train. He was readmitted to the intimacy of the Orleans family, and retained his place and the confidence of his master until the revolution of February drove the Orleans family into exile. He retired into obscurity with a grace and dignity befitting the premier gentilhomme de France–without reproach, without a stain upon his escutcheon. He refused the most tempting offers of employment at the imperial court, and was seen no more, save when now and then, passing down the boulevard with hurried steps, he was recognized by his long white hair and braided jacket, with the persistent cipher of the royal house to which he had been for so many years attached. Then, as he hastened along with riding-whip in hand and jingling spurs upon his heels, some old bourgeois sipping his demi-tasse at the door of a cafe would exclaim, “There goes the Count de Cambis, le dernier gentilhomme de France!”
A desperate attempt was made by the imperialists to set up a premier gentilhomme of their own in the person of Count Morny, who sought to revive the traditions of De Grammont and of De Montrond. He was brave, he was witty, his _physique_ might be said to realize the ideal of the role, but his _morale_ was founded on the theories of the Bonaparte school. De Grammont tells us how he cheated the greasy cattle-dealer; De Montrond makes us laugh when he relates how in his tour of mediation with Prince Talleyrand he was wont to take bribes from two rival princes, each willing to pay a heavy sum that the other might be baffled; but neither De Grammont nor De Montrond would ever have consented to soil his hands with such vile commercial speculations as the Houilleres d’Anzin or the Vieille Montagne, or condescend to such disgraceful financial mystification as the “Affaire Jecker” of Mexico.
It would be impossible to explain the difference which exists between the “gentilhomme” and the “gentleman.” It is felt and understood, but cannot be described. The term “gentleman” itself is conventional. Neither birth nor accomplishments, nor even gentle manners, are necessary for undisputed assumption of the title. The man who acts as a lawyer’s clerk cannot be called a gentleman, according to Judge Keating’s decision, because, the title having no place in the language of the law, if he chanced to be indicted for a criminal offence he would be denominated a “laborer.” Serjeant Talfourd’s sweeping theory, of the term “gentleman” being legally applicable to every man who has nothing to do and is out of the workhouse, cannot be accepted, as it would of necessity include thieves, mendicants and out-door paupers. The American police have been compelled, to defend the border-line of gentility against the encroachments of their vagabond gold-seekers, card-sharpers and ruffians, and confine the term to those of respectable calling. In California the term may be applied to every individual of the male gender and the Caucasian race, the line being drawn at Chinamen. An American writer contests the acceptance of the term, in England as being too vague and uncertain for comprehension by foreigners, and suggests that some less conventional designation than those now in use should be found to indicate the idea. To the moral sense it would be natural to suppose that character rather than calling would be the most important point in the consideration of the question; but it is not so. In the four-oared race of gentlemen amateurs held last year at Agecroft in Lancashire the prize of silver plate was won by a crew taken from a club composed entirely of colliers, who had been allowed to row under protest, they not being acknowledged as “_gentlemen_ amateurs.” The race over and the prize won by the colliers, an investigation took place by the committee. The result was unanimity of the vote against acceptance of the qualification of the winners. Here, then, occurred the best illustration of the comprehension of the term by the moderns, for the “gentlemen,” deeming that money _must_ be a salvo to pride in the bosom of all whose quality of gentleman remains unacknowledged, subscribed a handsome sum to be distributed amongst the disappointed crew. But here, again, the proof was given of the vague uncertainty of the term, for the crew of colliers were _gentlemen_ enough to refuse the proffered gift with scorn.
G. COLMACHE.
SPECIAL PLEADING.
Time, bring back my lord to me:
Haste, haste! Lov’st not good company? Here’s but a heart-break sandy waste
‘Twixt this and thee. Why, killing haste Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!
Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend. He called thee _Sometime_. Change it, friend: _Now-time_ soundeth far more fine.
Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree And broods as gray as any dove,
And calls, _When wilt thou come, O Love_? And pleads across the waste to thee.
Good Moment, that giv’st him me,
Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe
Thou’lt be this heavenly velvet time When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme
Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;
Or haply some noon afar,
–O life’s top bud, mixt rose and star! How ever can thine utmost sweet
Be star-consummate, rose-complete, Till thy rich reds full opened are?
Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time,
I ask but one small, small boon, Time: Come thou in night, come thou in day,
I care not, I care not: have thine own way, But only, but only, come soon, Time.
SIDNEY LANIER.
THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.
BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF “PATRICIA KEMBALL.”
CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT MUST COME.
If Madame de Montfort could not teach Leam some of the things generally considered essential to the education of a gentlewoman, if her orthography was disorderly, her grammar shaky, her knowledge of geography, history and language best expressed by _x_, and her moral perceptions never clear and seldom straight, she was yet far in advance of a girl whose training in all things was so infinitely below even her own dwarfed standard. Madame could read with native grace and commendable fluency, making nimble leapfrogs over the heads of the exceptionally hard passages, but Leam had to spell every third word, and then she made a mess of it, Madame did know that eight and seven are fifteen, but Leam could not get beyond five and five are ten and one over makes eleven. If madame thought deception the indispensable condition of pleasant companionship, and lies the current coin of good society–in which she certainly sided with the majority of believing Christians–Leam would be none the worse for a little softening of that crude out-speaking of hers, which was less sincerity than the hardness of youthful ignorance and the insolence of false pride. If madame was only lacquer, and not clear gold all through, Leam had not the grace of even the thinnest layer of varnish, and might well take lessons in the religion of appearances and that thing which we call “manner.” Madame did know at least how to bear herself with the seeming of a lady, and could say her shibboleth as it ought to be said. Thus, she ate with delicacy and held her knife nicely poised and balanced, but Leam grasped hers like a whanger, and cut off pieces of meat anyhow, which as often as not she took from the point. Mamma had eaten with her knife grasped also like a whanger, and why might not she? she said when madame remonstrated and gave her a lecture on the aesthetics of the table. And why should she not make her bread her plate, and hold both bread and meat in her hand if she liked? Why was she to wipe her lips when she drank? and why, traveling farther afield, was she to speak when she was spoken to if she would rather be silent? Why get up from her chair when ladies like Mrs, Harrowby and Mrs. Birkett came into the room? They did not get up from their chairs when she went into their rooms, and mamma never did. And why might she not say what she thought and show what she disliked? Mamma said what she thought and showed what she disliked, and mamma’s rule was her law.
All these objections madame had to combat, and all these things to teach, and many more besides. And as Leam was young, and as even the hardest youth is unconsciously plastic because unconsciously imitative, the suave instructress did really make some impression; so that when she assured the incredulous neighborhood of Leam’s improvement she had more solid data than always underlaid her words, and was partly justified in her assertion.
Religion, too, was another point on which the forces of new and old met in collision. Madame was of course what is meant by the word “religious.” Like all persons trading on falsehood and living in deception, her orthodoxy was undoubted, and the most rigid investigation could not have discovered an unsound spot anywhere. She would as soon have thought of questioning her own existence as of doubting the literal exactness of the first chapter of Genesis, and she thought science an awfully wicked thing because it went to disprove the story of the six days. She firmly believed in the personality of Satan and material fires for wicked souls; and the sweet way in which she lamented the probable paucity of the saved was extremely edifying, not to say touching. This childlike acceptance, this faithful orthodoxy, was one of the things for which the rector liked her so well. He had a profound contempt for science and skepticism together; and an unbeliever, even if learned in the stars and old bones, ranked with him as a knave or a fool, and sometimes both. His pet joke, which was not original, was that there was only one letter of difference between septic and skeptic, and of the two the skeptic was the more unsavory.
Being then pious, madame had hung about her walls short texts in fancy lettering, with a great deal of scroll-work in gold and carmine to make them look pretty. When she came into possession of Leam’s mind, she was shocked at her ignorance of all the sayings that were so familiar to herself and other persons of respectability. Leam knew nothing but a few barbarous prayers to saints, used more after the fashion of charms than anything else, the ave and the paternoster said incorrectly and not understood when said. Wherefore madame caused to be illuminated some texts for her room too, as lessons always before her eyes, and counter-charms to those heathenish invocations in which the child put her sole faith and trust of salvation. And among other things she gave her the Ten Commandments, very charmingly done. Round each commandment were pictures, emblems, symbolic flowers, all enclosed in fancy scroll-work of an elaborate kind. Really, it was a very creditable piece of bastard art, and Mr. Dundas was moved almost to tears by it. Madame did it herself–so she said with a tender little smile–as her pleasant surprise for poor dear Leam on her fifteenth birthday. And Leam was so far tamed in that she suffered the Tables to be hung up in her bedroom, and even found pleasure in looking at them. The pictures of Ruth and Naomi; of the thief running away with the money-bags; of a woman lying prostrate with long hair, and a broken lily at her side; of a murdered man prone in the snow, and a frightened-looking bravo, half covering his face in his cloak, fleeing away in the darkness, with a bowl marked “poison” and a dagger dripping with blood in the margin,–all these pictures, which stood against the commandments they illustrated, fascinated her greatly. The colors and the gilding, the flowers and the emblems, pleased her, and she took the texts sandwiched between as the jalap in the jam. At first she thought it impious to have them there at all, because they were in the Bible, and mamma used to say that good Christians never read the Bible. It was a holy book which only priests might use, and when those pigs of Protestants looked into it and read it, just as they would read the newspaper, they profaned it. But by force of habit she reconciled herself to the profanity, and by frequent looking at the art got the literature into her head. And when it was there she did not find anything in it to be afraid of or to condemn as too mysteriously holy for her knowledge. All of which was so much to the good; and Mr. Dundas had no words strong enough whereby to express his gratitude to the fair woman who had saved his child from destruction by giving her the Ten Commandments made pretty by adjuncts of bastard art.
But had it not been for Alick Corfield, Madame la Marquise de Montfort would not have made quite so much way. Alick and Leam used to meet in Steel’s Wood; and when Leam carried her perplexities to Alick, and Alick told her that she ought to yield and gave her the reasons why, after first fiercely combating him, telling him he was stupid, wicked, unkind, she always ended by promising to obey; and when Leam promised the things agreed to might be considered done. In point of fact, then, it was Alick who was really moulding her, in excess of that unconscious plasticity and imitation already spoken of. But this was one of the things which the world did not know, and where judgment went awry in consequence.
Of course the neighborhood saw what was coming–what must come, indeed, by the very force of circumstances. The friendship which had sprung up from the first between Mr. Dundas and madame could not stop at friendship now, when both were free and evidently so necessary to each other. For madame, with that noble frankness backed by wise reticence characteristic of her, had told every one of her loss by which she had been necessitated to become Leam’s governess; always adding, “So that I am glad to be able to work, seeing that I am obliged to do so, as I could not borrow, even for a short time: I am too proud for that, and I hope too honest.”
Wherefore, as she was evidently Leam’s salvation, according to her own account, and Sebastian was confessedly her income, and a very good one too, there was no reason why their several lines should not coalesce in an indissoluble union, and one home be made to serve them instead of two. As indeed it came about.
When the year of conventional mourning had been perfected, on the anniversary of the very day when poor Pepita died, the final words were said, the last frail barrier of madame’s conjugal memories and widowed regrets was removed, and Sebastian Dundas went home the gladdest man in England. All that long bad past was now to be redeemed, and he had made a good bargain with life to have passed through even so much misery to come at the end into such reward.
Nothing startled him, nothing chilled him. When madame, laying her hand on his arm, said in a kind of playful candor infinitely bewitching, “Remember, dear friend, I told you beforehand that I have lost _all_ my fortune; in marrying me you marry only myself with my past, my child and my liabilities,” his mind repudiated the idea of the flimsiest shadow on that past, the faintest blur on its spotless record. As for her child, it was his: he would give it his name, it should be dearer to him than his own; which, all things considered, was not an overwhelming provision of love; and her liabilities, whatever they were, he would be glad to discharge them as a proof of his love for her and the forging of another golden link between them.
He doubted nothing, believed all, and loved as much as he believed. He was happy, radiant, content: the woman whom he loved loved him, and had consented to become his wife. In giving her dear self to him she was also accepting security and devotion at his hands; and what more can a true man want than to be of good service to the woman he loves? If women like to minister, it is the pride of men to protect; and if the vow to endow with all his worldly goods is a fable in fact, it is true as an instinctive feeling.
When Mrs. Harrowby heard that the marriage was positively arranged, she sat with her daughters at a kind of inquest on their dead friendship with Sebastian Dundas, and came to the conclusion that they must know something more definite now about this person calling herself Madame la Marquise de Montfort. As a stranger it was all very well to overlook the vagueness of her biography–they were not committed to anything really dangerous by simply visiting a householder among them–but it was another matter if she was to be married to one of themselves. Then they must learn who she really was, and Mr. Dundas must satisfy them scrupulously, else they should decline to know her.
“It will make a great gap in our society,” said kindly Josephine, who, having the most to suffer, had forgiven the most readily.
“Gap or no gap, it is what we owe to ourselves,” said Mrs. Harrowby.
“And to Edgar,” added Maria.
“I shall call on Sebastian to-morrow,” said Mrs. Harrowby, laying aside her knitting with the air of a minister who has dictated his protocol and has now only to sign the clean copy.
“Sleep on it, mamma,” pleaded Josephine.
“It will make no difference,” returned the mother; and her elder two echoed in concert, “I hope not.”
The next day Mrs. Harrowby did call on Mr. Dundas, and, finding that gentleman at home, succeeded in speaking her mind. She conveyed her ultimatum as a corporate not individual resolution, speaking in the name of the “ladies of the place,” which she was scarcely entitled to do.
Mr. Dundas declined to satisfy her. Indeed, it would have been difficult for him to have done so, seeing that he knew no more of Madame de Montfort, his intended wife, than what they all knew; which was substantially nothing, unless her fancy autobiography could be called something. He spoke, however, as if he had her private memoirs and all the branches, roots and hole of the family tree in his pocket; and he spoke loftily, with the intimation that she was superior; to all at North Aston, Mrs. Harrowby herself included.
This interview, with its demand unsatisfied and its assertions unproved, sent the coolness already existing between the Hill and Andalusia Cottage down to freezing-point; and the worst of it was that Mrs. Harrowby did not find backers. The neighborhood did not take up the cause as she expected it would. It halted midway and faced both sides, in the manner so dear to English respectability–less cordial to Mr. Dundas and madame than it would have been had Mrs. Harrowby been friendly, but unwilling to follow her to the bitter end. As they said to each other, it was all very well for Mrs. Harrowby to be so severe on the marriage, because she was angry and disappointed–and an angry and disappointed mother is ever unreasonable–but they who had no daughters to marry, really they did not see why they should persecute that poor madame who was such pleasant company, and had behaved herself with so much propriety since she came. And if Sebastian Dundas was going to make a second mistake, that was his lookout, and would be his punishment.
On the whole, the neighborhood when polled was decidedly more friendly than hostile. The Corfields and Fairbairns were, as they had always been, neutrals of a genial tint, more for than against; Mr. and Mrs. Birkett were warm partisans; and only Adelaide joined hands with the Hill and said that Mrs. Harrowby was justified in her renunciation and that madame was a wretch. And for the first time in her life the rector’s daughter spoke compassionately of Leam and humanely of Pepita, saying of the one how much she pitied her, having such a woman for a stepmother; of the other, that, horrible as she was, at least they knew the worst of her, which was more than they could say of madame.
She made her father very angry when she said these things, but she repeated them, nevertheless; and she knew that he dared not scold her too severely before the world for fear of that little something called conscience, and knowledge of the reason why he believed in Madame de Montfort so implicitly.
CHAPTER XVIII.
RECKONING WITH LEAM.
The announcement of her father’s intended marriage with madame came on Leam with a crushing sense of terror and despair. Unobservant youth sees little, and even what it does see it does not comprehend. Though the girl had accustomed herself by slow degrees to many works and ways which mamma had never known; though the faculties which had been, as it were, imprisoned by that close-set, hide-bound love of hers were now a little loosened and set free; though the activities of youth were stirring in her, and her inner life, if still isolated, was a shade more expanded than of old,–yet she had no desire for greater change, and she had no keener vision for the world outside herself than before. She saw nothing of that diabolical thing which her father and madame had been so long plotting as the outcome of their friendship, the parable of which her education had been the text. If her intelligence was warping out from the narrow limits in which her mother had confined it, it was still below the average–as much as her feverish love and tenacious loyalty were above. All that she knew was, mamma dead was the same as mamma living, only to be more tenderly dealt with, as she could not defend herself; and that she wondered how papa could be so wicked as to affront her now that she was not able to punish him and let him know what she thought of him.
When he told her that he was going to give her a new mother, one whom she must love as she had loved her own poor dear mamma— he was so happy he could afford to be tender even to that terrible past and poor Pepita–Leam’s first sensation was one of terror, her first movement one of repulsion. She flung off the hand which he had laid on her shoulder and drew back a few steps, facing him, her breath held, her tragic eyes flashing, her face struck to stone by what she had heard.
“Well, my dear, you need not look so surprised,” said Mr. Dundas jauntily. “And you need not look so terrified. Your new mother will not hurt you,”
“She shall not be my mother, papa,” said Learn: “I will not own her.”
“You will do what I tell you to do,” her father returned with admirable self-command.
“Not when you tell me to do a crime,” flashed Leam.
Mr. Dundas smiled. “Your words are a trifle strong,” he said.
“It is a crime,” she reiterated. “But if you have forgotten mamma, and want to affront her now that she cannot defend herself, I have not, and never will.”
Mr. Dundas smiled again. If he was so happy that he could afford to be tender to the past, so also could he afford to be patient with the present. “Foolish child!” he said compassionately: “you do not understand things yet.”
“I understand that I love mamma, and will not have this wicked woman in her place,” said Leam hotly.
“I think you will,” he answered, playing with his watch-guard. “And in the future, my little daughter, you will thank me.”
“Thank you? For what?” asked Leam. “You made mamma miserable when she lived: you and your madame helped to kill her, and now you put this woman in her place! Papa, I wonder Saint Jago lets you live.”
“As Saint Jago is kind enough to leave me in peace, perhaps you will follow his example. What a saint allows my little daughter may accept,” said Mr. Dundas mockingly.
“No,” said Leam with pathetic solemnity, “if the saints forget mamma, I will not.”
“My dear, you are a fool,” said Mr. Dundas.
“You may call me what you like, but madame shall not be my mother,” returned Leam.
“Madame will be your mother because she will be my wife,” said Mr. Dundas slowly. “Unfortunately for you–perhaps for myself also–neither you nor I can alter the law of the land. The child must accept the consequences of the father’s act.”
“Then I will kill her,” cried Leam.
Her father laughed gayly. “I think we will brave this desperate danger,” he said. “It is a fearful threat, I grant–an awful peril–but we must brave it, for all that.”
“Papa,” said Leam, “I will pray to the saints that when you die you may not go to heaven with mamma and me.”
It was her last bolt, her supreme effort at threat and entreaty, and it meant everything. If her words of themselves would have amused Mr. Dundas as a child’s ignorant impertinence, the superstition of an untaught, untutored mind, her looks and manner affected him painfully. True, he did not love her–on the contrary, he disliked her–but, all the same, she was his child; and, dissected, realized, it was rather an awful thing that she had said. It showed an amount of hatred and contempt which went far beyond his dislike for her, and made him shudder at the strength of feeling, the tenacity of hate, in one so young.
If more absurdity than good sense is talked about natural affection, still there is a residuum of fact underneath the folly; and Leam’s words had struck down to that small residuum in her father’s heart. It was not that he was wounded sentimentally so much as in his sense of proprietorship, his paternal superiority, and he was angry rather than sorrowful. It made him feel that he had borne with her waywardness long enough now: it was time to put a stop to it. “Now, Leam, no more insolence and no more nonsense,” he said sternly. “You have tried my patience long enough. This day month I marry Madame de Montfort, with or without your pleasure, my little girl. In a month after that I bring her home here as my wife, consequently your mother, the mistress of the house and of you. I give you the best guide, the best friend, you have ever had or could have: you will live to value her as she deserves. Your own mother was not fit to guide you: your new one will make you all that my dearest hopes would have you. Now go. Think over what I have said. If you do not like our arrangements, so much the worse for you.”
“The saints will never let her come here as my mother. I will pray to them night and day to kill her.” said Leam in a deep voice, clenching her hands and setting her small square teeth, as her mother used to set hers, like a trap.
Naturally, the second Mrs. Dundas could not be brought home without a certain upsetting of the old order and a rearrangement of things to suit the new. And the upsetting was not stinted, nor were the exertions of Mr. Dundas. He superintended everything himself, to the choice of a tea-cup, the looping of a curtain, and racked his brains to make his beloved’s bower the fit expression of his love, though never to his mind could it be worthy of her deserving. There was not an ornament in the place but was dedicated to her, placed where she could see it on such and such an occasion, and shifted twenty times a day for a more advantageous position. Everything which the house had of most beautiful was pressed into her service, and even Leam’s natural rights of inheritance were ignored for madame’s better endowing. Lace, jewelry, trinkets, all that had been Pepita’s, was now hers, and the man’s restless desire to make her rich and her home beautiful seemed insatiable.
But there was always Leam in the background with whom he had to reckon–Leam, who wandered through the house in her straight-cut, plain black gown, made in the deepest fashion of mourning devisable, pale, silent, feverish, like an avenging spirit on his track; undoing what he had done if he had profaned an embodied memory of her mother, and as impervious to his anger as he was to her despair.
One day he carried from the drawing-room to the boudoir which was to be madame’s, and had been Pepita’s, a certain Spanish vase which had been a favorite ornament with her because it reminded her of home. He firmly fixed it on the bracket destined for it, opposite the couch where he longed so ardently to see his fair and queenly loved one sitting–he by her side in the lovers’ paradise of secure content; but the next time he went into the room he found it lying in fragments on the floor. None of the servants knew how the mischance had happened: the window was not open, and none of them had been in the room. How, then, came it there, broken on the floor? When he asked Leam, wandering by in that pale, feverish, avenging way of hers, he knew the truth.
“Yes,” she said defiantly, “I broke it. It was mamma’s, and your madame shall not have it.”
“If you intend to go on like this I shall have you sent to school or shut up in a lunatic asylum,” cried Mr. Dundas in extreme wrath.
“Then I shall be alone with mamma, and shall not see you or your madame,” answered Leam, unconquered.
“You are a hardened, shameful, wicked girl,” said her father angrily. “Madame is an angel of goodness to undertake the care of such a wretched creature as you are. I could not do too much for her if I gave her all I had, and you can never be grateful enough for such a mother.”
“She is not my mother, and she shall not pollute mamma’s things,” Leam answered with passionate solemnity. “If you give them to her I will break or burn them. Mamma’s things are her own, and she shall not be made unhappy in heaven.”
Provoked beyond himself, Sebastian Dundas said scornfully, “Heaven! You talk of heaven as if you knew all about it, Leam, like the next parish. How do you know she is there, and not in the place of torment instead? Your mother was scarcely of the stuff of which angels are made.”
“Then if she is in the place of torment, she is unhappy enough as it is, and need not be made more so,” said faithful Leam, suddenly breaking into piteous weeping; adding through her sobs, “and madame shall not have her things.”
Her tenacity carried the day so far that Mr. Dundas left off rearranging the old, and sent up to London for things new and without embarrassing memories attached to them. On which Leam swept off all that had been her mother’s, and locked up her treasures in her own private cupboard, carrying the key in the hiding-place which that mother had taught her to use, the thick coils of her hair. And her father, warned by that episode of the vase, and a little dominated, not to say appalled, by her resolute fidelity, shut his eyes to her domestic larceny and let her carry off her relics in safety.
So the time passed, miserably enough to the one, if full of hope and the promise of joy to the other; and the wedding morning came whereon Sebastian Dundas was to be made, as he phrased it, happy for life.
It had been madame’s desire that Leam should be her bridesmaid. She had laid great stress on this, and her lover would have gratified her if he could. He had no wish that way–rather the contrary–but her will was his law, and he did his best to carry it into effect. But when he told Leam what he wanted–and he told her quite carelessly, and so much as a matter of course that he hoped she too would accept her position as a matter of course–the girl, enlightened by love if not by knowledge, broke into a torrent of disdain that soon showed him how sleeveless his errand was likely to be.
He did his best, and tried all methods from pleading to threatening, but Leam was immovable. No power on earth should bend her, she said, or make her take part in that wicked day. She go to church? She would expect to be struck dead if she did. She expected, indeed, that all of them would be struck dead. She had prayed the saints so hard, so hard, to prevent this marriage, she was sure they would at the last; and if they did not, she would never believe in them nor pray to them again. But she did believe in them, and she was sure they would punish this dreadful crime. No, she would take no part in it. Why should she put herself in the way of being punished when she was not to blame?
So Mr. Dundas had the mortification of carrying to his bride-elect the intelligence that he had been worsted in his conflict with his daughter, and that her hatred and reluctance were to be neither concealed nor overcome.
Madame was sorry, she said with her sweetest air of patience and liberal comprehension. She would have liked the dear girl to have been her bridesmaid: it would have been appropriate and touching. But as she declined–and her feelings were easy to be understood and honorable, if a little extreme–she, madame, elected to be married as a widow should, with only Mrs. Birkett and Mr. Fairbairn as the witnesses, Mr. Fairbairn to give her away for form’s sake. The dear rector of course would marry them in this simple manner. They must hope that time and her own unvarying affection–Mr. Dundas called it sweetness, angelic patience, greatness of soul–would soften poor Leam into loving acceptance of what would be so much to her good when she could be got to understand it. Meanwhile they must be patient–content to go gradually and gain her bit by bit. She, madame, would be quite content with her presence in the room, when they returned to breakfast, in the pretty white muslin frock ordered from town as the sign of her participation in the event.
But when the morning came, where was Leam? The most diligent search failed to discover her, and the only person who could have betrayed her whereabouts was the last whom they would have thought of asking.
Of course, Mr. Dundas was properly distressed at this strange disappearance, and madame was unduly afflicted. She proposed that the marriage should be delayed till the girl was found, but the lover was stronger than the father, and she was overruled–yielding because it is the duty of the wife to yield, but only because of that duty–for her own part desirous of delay until they were assured of the safety of Leam.
The ceremony, however, was performed within the canonical hours, the rector a little tremulous and apparently suffering from sore throat; and as the happy pair drove away, madame, remembering her advent and her objects more than a year ago now, could not but confess that she had done better than she expected, and, her conscience whispered, better than she deserved.
All this time Leam was sitting on the lower branches of the yew tree beneath which that godless ruffian had murdered his poor sweetheart two generations ago in Steel’s Wood. It was a lonely corner, where no one would have gone by choice at the best of times, but now, with its bad name and evil association, it was entirely deserted. Leam had made it her hiding-place ever since madame had taken her in hand to teach her the correct pronunciation of Shibboleth, and she had escaped from her teaching and run away into the wood, armed banditti and wild beasts notwithstanding. And one day, hunting in it for fungi, Alick Corfield had found her sitting there, and thenceforth they had shared the retreat between them.
No one knew that they met there, and no one suspected it–not even Mrs. Corfield, who believed, after the manner of mothers who bring up their boys at home, that she knew the whole of her son’s life from end to end, and that he had not a thought kept back from her, nor had ever committed an action of which she was not cognizant.
Alick had installed Leam as the girl-queen of his imagination, and paid her the homage which she seemed to him to deserve more than many a real queen crowned and sceptered or princess born in the purple. It pleased him to write bad poems to her as his Infanta, his royal rose, his pomegranate flower, his nestling eagle waiting for strength to fly upward to the sun–all with halting feet and strained metaphor. He drew pictures of her by the dozen, mostly symbolic and all out of drawing, but expressive of his admiration, his hope, his respect; while to Leam he was little better than a two-legged talking dog whose knowledge interested and whose goodness swayed her, but on whose neck she set her little foot and kept it there. She always treated him with profound disdain, even when he told her curious things that were like fairy-tales, some of which she did not believe if they were too far removed from the narrow area of her personal experience. Thus, when he assured her that certain plants fed on flies as men feed on meat, she told him with her sublime Spanish calm, “I do not believe it.” And she said the same when he one day informed her that the planets could be weighed and their distance from the earth and the sun measured. In the beginning she knew nothing–neither whether the earth was round or flat, nor what was the meaning of the stars, nor the name of one wild flower excepting daisies, nor of one great man. That fallow waste called her mind was virgin ground in truth, but Alick was patient, and labored hard at the stubborn soil; and when madame had given the credit to her own tact and those ugly little books from which she taught, it was to him really that Leam’s microscopic amount of plasticity and reception was due.
These secret meetings amused Leam, and kept her from that ceaseless inward contemplation of her mother which else was her only voluntary occupation. They gave her a sense of power, as well as of successful rebellion to her father, that gratified her pride. To be sure, they were not what mamma would have liked. Alick Corfield was an Englishman, and mamma hated the English. But then, Leam reflected, she had not known Alick: if she had, she would have seen there was no harm in him, and that he was not teaching her things which a child of Spain ought not to know, and which Saint Jago would be angry with her for learning. And perhaps now that mamma was up in heaven, and knew all that went on here at home, she would not mind her little Leama seeing Alick Corfield so often. In her prayers she told her very faithfully all that she had done and felt and thought; she never deceived her a hair’s breadth; and as she had asked her permission so often and so humbly, she made sure now that it was granted. Mamma could not refuse her when she asked her so earnestly; and she was not angry, but on the contrary glad, that her little heart had such a good dog to care for her, and that she was defying el senor papa, that false image of the false saint.
For the rest, it was only natural that she should like the air of quasi adventure and independence which this unknown, intercourse with Alick gave her. And as she was still in that conscienceless phase of youth when liking means everything, and honor without love is a grass having neither root nor flower, she continued to meet her faithful dog, and to learn from him–not all that he could tell her, but what she chose to accept.
So here it was, perched among the lower branches of the yew tree in Steel’s Wood, that Leam spent her father’s wedding-day with Madame la Marquise de Montfort; and when she became hungry Alick went home and brought her some dry bread and grapes from Steel’s Corner, Dry bread and grapes–this was all that she would have, she said. She was not greedy like the English, who thought of nothing but eating, she added in her disdainful way; and if Alick brought her anything but bread and grapes, she would fling it into the wood. On his life he was not to touch anything on papa’s table. She would rather die of hunger than eat their wicked food. She wondered it did not choke them both.
“Now go,” she said superbly, “and come back soon: I am hungry,” as if her sense of inconvenience was a catastrophe which heaven and earth should be moved to avert.
But young and so beautiful as she was, her little tricks of pride and arbitrariness were just so many additional charms to Alick; and if she had not flouted and commanded him, he would have thought that something terrible was about to happen: had she become docile, grateful, familiar, he would have expected her to die before the day was out. He liked her superb assumption of superiority. She was his girl-queen, and he was her slave; she was his mistress, and he was her dog; and, dog-like, he fawned at her feet even when she rated him and placed her little foot on his neck.
CHAPTER XIX.
AT STEEL’S CORNER.
“I hope you will not be bored, my boy, but I am thinking of bringing that wretched Leam Dundas here for a few days. I don’t like a girl of her age and character to be left for a full month alone. It is not right, for who knows what she may not do? If she ran away on the wedding-day, she may run away again, and then where would we all be? I cannot think what her father was about to leave her unprotected like this. So I shall just take and bring her here; and if you are bored with her, you must make the best of it.”
Mrs. Corfield and Alick were sitting in the “work-room” on the morning of the fifth day after the marriage, when the thought struck the little woman of the propriety of Leam’s visit to them for the month of her father’s absence. She did not see her son’s face when she spoke, being busy with her wood-carving. If she had, she would not have thought that the presence of Leam Dundas would bore or annoy him. The clumsy features gladdened into smiles, the dull eye brightened, the dim complexion flushed: if ever a face expressed supreme delight, Alick’s did then; and it expressed what he felt, for, as we know, the one love of his boyish life was this girl-queen of his fancy. Not that he was in love with her in the ordinary sense of being in love. He was too reverent and she too young for vulgar passion or commonplace sentiment. She was something precious to his imagination, not his senses, like a child-queen to her courtier, a high-born lady to her page. He bore with her girlish temper, her girlish insolence of pride, her ignorant opposition, with the humility of strength bending its neck to weakness–the devotion and unselfish sweetness characteristic of him in other of his relations than those with Leam. Judge, then, if he was likely to be bored, as his mother feared, or if this project of a closer domestication with her was not rather a “bit of blue” in his sky which made these early autumn days gladder than the gladdest summer-time.
To will and to do were synonymous with Mrs. Corfield: her motto was _velle est agere_; and a resolve once taken was like iron at white heat, struck into the shape of deed on the instant. Darting up from her chair, birdlike and angular, she put away her work. “Order the trap,” she said briskly, “and come with me. We will go at once, before that poor creature has had time to do anything, wild, or silly.”
“I do not think she would do anything wild or silly, mother,” said Alick in a deprecating voice. It galled him to hear his darling spoken of so slightingly.
“No? What has she ever done that was rational?” cried his mother sharply. “From the beginning, when she was a baby of three months old, and howled at me because I kissed her, and that dreadful mother of hers flew at me like a wildcat and said I had the evil eye, Leam Dundas has been more like some changeling than an ordinary English girl. I declare it sometimes makes my heart ache to, see her with those awful eyes of hers, looking as if she had seen one does not know what–as if she was being literally burnt up alive with sorrow. However, don’t let us discuss her: let us fetch her and save her from herself. That is more to the purpose at this moment.”
And Alick said “Yes,” and went out to order the trap with alacrity.
When they reached Andalusia Cottage, the first thing they saw was a strange workman from Sherrington painting out the name which in his early love-days for his Spanish bride Sebastian Dundas had put up in bold letters across the gate-posts. The original name of the place had been Ford House, but the old had had to give place to the new in those days as in these, and Ford House had been rechristened Andalusia Cottage as a testimony and an homage. Mrs. Corfield questioned the man in her keen inquisitorial way as to what he was about; and when he told her that the posts were to show “Virginia” now instead of “Andalusia,” her great disgust, to judge by the sharp things which she said to him, seemed as if it took in the innocent hand as well as the peccant head. “I do think Sebastian Dundas is bewitched,” she said disdainfully to her son as they drove up to the house. “Did any one ever hear of such a lunatic? Changing the name of his house with his wives in this manner, and expecting us to remember all his absurdities! Such a man as that to be a father! Lord of the creation, indeed! He is no better than a court fool.” Which last scornful ejaculation brought the trap to the front door and into the presence of Leam.
Standing on the lawn bareheaded in the morning sunshine, doing nothing and apparently seeing nothing, dressed in the deepest mourning she could make for herself, and with her high comb and mantilla as in olden days, her eyes fixed on the ground and her hands clasped in each other, her wan face set and rigid, her whole attitude one of mute, unfathomable despair,–for the instant even Mrs. Corfield, with all her constitutional contempt for youth, felt hushed, as in the presence of some deep human tragedy, at the sight of this poor sorrowful child, this miserable mourner of fifteen. Instead of speaking in her usual quick manner, the sharp-faced little woman, poor Pepita’s “crooked stick,” went up to the girl quietly and softly touched her arm.
Leam slowly raised her eyes. She did not start or cry out as a creature naturally would if startled, but she seemed as if she gradually and with difficulty awakened from sleep, or from something even more profound than sleep. “Yes?” she said in answer to the touch. “What do you want?”
It was an odd question, and Leam’s grave intensity made it all the more odd. But Mrs, Corfield was not easily disconcerted, and it was “only Leam” at the worst.
“I want you,” she answered briskly, “Tell the maid to pack up your box, take off that lace thing on your head, and come home with me for a day or two. You need not stay longer than you like, but it will be better for you than moping here, thinking of all sorts of things you had better not think of.”
“Why do my thoughts vex you?” asked Learn gravely. “I was not thinking of you.”
Mrs. Corfield laughed a little confusedly. “I don’t suppose you were,” she said, “but you see I did think of you. But whether you were thinking of me or not, you certainly look as if you would be the better for a little rousing. You were standing there like a statue when we came up.”
“I was listening to mamma,” said Leam with an air of grave rebuke.
Mrs. Corfield rubbed her nose vigorously. “You would do better to come and talk to me instead,” she said.
Learn transfixed her with her eyes. “I like mamma’s company best,” she said in the stony way which she had when stiffening herself against outside influence.
“But if you come to us, you can listen to her as much as you like,” said Alick soothingly. “We will not hinder you; and, as my mother says, it is not good for you to be here alone.”
“I like it,” said Leam.
“Nonsense! then you should not like it. It is not natural for a girl of your age to like it. Come with us,” cried Mrs. Corfield: “why not?”
“I have something to do,” Leam answered solemnly.
“What can a chit of a thing like you have to do? Come with us, I tell you.” Mrs. Corfield said this heartily rather than roughly, though really she could not be bothered, as she said to herself, to stand there wasting her time in arguing with a girl like Leam. It was too ridiculous.
Leam looked at her with mingled tragedy and contempt, and disdained to answer.
“What have you got to do?” again asked Mrs. Corfield.
“I shall not tell you,” answered Leam, holding her head very high.
How, indeed, should she tell this little sharp-faced woman that she was thinking how she could prevent madame from coming here as her home? The saints had deserted her; she had prayed to them, threatened them, coaxed, entreated, but they had not heard her; and now she had nothing but herself, only her poor little frail hands and bewildered brain, to protect her mother’s memory from insult and revenge her wrongs. The fever in her veins had given her mamma’s face sorrowful and weeping, meeting her wherever she turned–mamma’s voice, faint as the softest summer breeze in the trees, whispering to her, “Little Leama, I am unhappy. Sweet heart, do not let me be unhappy.” For five days this fancy had haunted her, but it had not become distinct enough for guidance. She was listening now, as she was listening always, for mamma to tell her what to do. She was sure she would show her in time how to prevent that wicked woman from living here, bearing her name, taking her place: mamma could trust her to take care of her, now that she could not take care of herself. As she had said to papa, if all the world, the saints, and God himself deserted hers she, her child, would not.
She would not tell these thoughts, even to Alick. They were a secret, sacred between her and mamma, and no one must share them. If, then, she went with this bird-like, insistent woman, she would talk to her and not let her think: she and Alick would stand between herself and mamma’s spirit, and then mamma would perhaps leave her again, and go back to heaven angry with her. No, she would not go, and she lifted up her eyes to say so.
As she looked up Alick whispered softly, “Come.”
Feverish, excited, her brain clouded by her false fancies, Leam did not recognize his voice. To her it was her mother sighing through the sunny stillness, bidding her go with them, perhaps to find some method of hinderance or revenge which she could not devise for herself. They were clever and knew more than she did; perhaps her mother and the saints had sent them as her helpers.
It seemed almost an eternity during which these thoughts passed through her brain, while she stood looking at Mrs. Corfield so intently that the little woman was obliged to lower her eyes. Not that Leam saw her. She was thinking, listening, but not seeing, though her tragic eyes seemed searching Mrs. Corfield’s very soul. Then, glancing upward to the sky, she said with an air of self-surrender, which Alick understood if his mother did not, “Yes, I will go with you: mamma says I may.”
“It is my belief, Alick,” said Mrs. Corfield, when she had left them to prepare for her visit, “that poor child is going crazy, if she is not so already. She always was queer, but she is certainly not in her right mind now. What a shame of Sebastian Dundas to bring her up as he has done, and now to leave her like this! How glad I am I thought of having her at Steel’s Corner!”
“Yes, mother, it was a good thing. Just like you, though,” said Alick affectionately.
“You must help me with her, Alick,” answered his mother. “I have done what I know I ought to do, but she will be an awful nuisance all the same. She is so odd and cold and impertinent, one does not know how to take her.”
Alick flushed and turned away his head. “I will take her off your hands as much as I can,” he said in a constrained voice.
“That’s my dear boy–do,” was his mother’s unsuspecting rejoinder as Leam came down stairs ready to go.
Steel’s Corner was a place of unresting intellectual energies. Dr. Corfield, a man shut up in his laboratory with piles of extracts, notes, arguments, never used, but always to be used, an experimentalist deep in many of the toughest problems of chemical analysis, but neither ambitious nor communicative, was the one peaceable element in the house. To be sure, Alick would have been both broader in his aims and more concentrated in his objects had he been left to himself. As it was, the incessant demands made on him by his mother kept him too in a state of intellectual nomadism; and no one could weary of monotony where Mrs. Corfield set the pattern, unless it was of the monotony of unrest. This perpetual taking up of new subjects, new occupations, made thoroughness the one thing unattainable. Mrs. Corfield was a woman who went in for everything. She was by turns scientific and artistic, a student and a teacher, but she was too discursive to be accurate, and she was satisfied with a proficiency far below perfection. In philosophy she was what might be called a woman of antepenultimates, referring all the more intricate moral and intellectual phenomena to mind and spirit; but she was intolerant of any attempt to determine the causation of her favorite causes, and she derided the modern doctrines of evolution and inherent force as atheistic because materialistic. The two words meant the same thing with her; and the more shadowy and unintelligible people made the _causa causarum_ the more she believed in their knowledge and their piety. The bitterest quarrel she had ever had was with an old friend, an unimaginative anatomist, who one day gravely proved to her that spirits must be mere filmy bags, pear-shaped, if indeed they had any visual existence at all. Bit by bit he eliminated all the characteristics and circumstances of the human form on the principle of the non-survival of the useless and unadaptable. For of what use are shapes and appliances if you have nothing for them to do?–if you have no need to walk, to grasp, nor yet to sit? Of what use organs of sense when you have no brain to which they lead?–when you are substantially all brain and the result independent of the method? Hence he abolished by logical and anatomical necessity, as well as the human form, the human face with eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and by the inexorable necessities of the case came down to a transparent bag, pear-shaped, for the better passage of his angels through the air.
“A fulfillment of the old proverb that extremes meet,” he said by way of conclusion. “The beginning of man an ascidian–his ultimate development as an angel, a pear-shaped, transparent bag.”
Mrs. Corfield never forgave her old friend, and even now if any one began a conversation on the theory of development and evolution she invariably lost her temper and permitted herself to say rude things. Her idea of angels and souls in bliss was the good orthodox notion of men and women with exactly the same features and identity as they had when in the flesh, but infinitely more beautiful; retaining the Ego, but the Ego refined and purified out of all trace of human weakness, all characteristic passions, tempers and proclivities; and the pear-shaped bag was as far removed from the truth, as she held it, on the one side as Leam’s materialistic conception was on the other. The character and condition of departed souls was one of the subjects on which she was very positive and very aggressive, and Leam had a hard fight of it when her hostess came to discuss her mother’s present personality and whereabouts, and wanted to convince her of her transformation.
All the same, the little woman was kind-hearted and conscientious, but she was not always pleasant. She wanted the grace and sweetness known genetically as womanliness, as do most women who hold the doctrine of feminine moral supremacy, with base man, tyrant, enemy and inferior, holding down the superior being by force of brute strength and responsible for all her faults. And she wanted the smoothness of manner known as good breeding. Though a gentlewoman by birth, she gave one the impression of a pert chambermaid matured into a tyrannical landlady.
But she meant kindly by Leam when she took her from the loneliness of her father’s house, and her very sharpness and prickly spiritualism were for the child’s enduring good. Her attempts, however, to make Leam regard mamma in heaven as in any wise different from mamma on earth were utterly abortive. Leam’s imagination could not compass the thaumaturgy tried to be inculcated. Mamma, if mamma at all, was mamma as she had known her; and if as she had known her, then she was unhappy and desolate, seeing what a wicked thing this was that papa had done. She clung to this point as tenaciously as she clung to her love; and nothing that Mrs. Corfield, or even Alick, could say weakened by one line her belief in mamma’s angry sorrow and the saints’ potent and sometimes peccant humanity.
Among other scientific appliances at Steel’s Corner was a small off-kind of laboratory for Alick and his mother, to prevent their troubling the doctor and to enable them to help him when necessary: it was an auxiliary fitted up in what was rightfully the stick-house. The sticks had had to make way for retorts and crucibles, and as yet no harm had come of it, though the servants said they lived in terror of their lives, and the neighbors expected daily to hear that the inmates of Steel’s Corner had been blown into the air. Into this evil-smelling and unbeautiful place Leam was introduced with infinite reluctance on her own part. The bad smell made her sick, she said, turning round disdainfully on Alick, and she did not wonder now at anything he might say or do if he could bear to live in such a horrid place as this.
When he showed off a few simple experiments to amuse her–made crystal trees, a shower of snow, a heavy stone out of two empty-looking bottles, spilt mercury and set her to gather it up again, showed her prisms, and made her look through a bit of tourmaline, and in every way conceivable to him strewed the path of learning with flowers–then she began to feel a little interest in the place and left off making wry faces at the dirt and the smells.
One day when she was there her eye caught a very small phial with a few letters like a snake running spirally round it.
“What is that funny little bottle?” she asked, pointing it out. “What does it say?”
“Poison,” said Alick.
“What is poison?” she asked.
“Do you mean what it is? or what it does?” he returned.
“Both. You are stupid,” said Leam.
“What it does is to kill people, but I cannot tell you all in a breath what it is, for it is so many things.”