Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 097, January, 1876», sayfa 6

III

Lady Arthur thought George Eildon a good-natured, rattling lad, with very little head. This was precisely the general estimate that had been formed of her late husband, and people who had known both thought George the very fac-simile of his uncle Arthur. If her ladyship had been aware of this, it would have made her very indignant: she had thought her husband perfect while living, and thought of him as very much more than perfect now that he lived only in her memory. But she made George very welcome as often as he came: she liked to have him in the house, and she simply never thought of Alice and him in connection with each other. She always had a feeling of pity for George.

"You know," she would say to Miss Adamson and Alice—"you know, George was of consequence for the first ten years of his life: it was thought that his uncle the duke might never marry, and he was the heir; but when the duke married late in life and had two sons, George was extinguished, poor fellow! and it was hard, I allow."

"It is not pleasant to be a poor gentleman," said Miss Adamson.

"It is not only not pleasant," said Lady Arthur, "but it is a false position, which is very trying, and what few men can fill to advantage. If George had great abilities, it might be different, with his connection, but I doubt he is doomed to be always as poor as a church mouse."

"He may get on in his profession perhaps," said Alice, sharing in Lady Arthur's pity for him. (George Eildon had been an attaché to some foreign embassy.)

"Never," said Lady Arthur decisively. "Besides, it is a profession that is out of date now. Men don't go wilily to work in these days; but if they did, the notion of poor George, who could not keep a secret or tell a lie with easy grace if it were to save his life—the notion of making him a diplomatist is very absurd. No doubt statesmen are better without original ideas—their business is to pick out the practical ideas of other men and work them well—but George wants ability, poor fellow! They ought to have put him into the Church: he reads well, he could have read other men's sermons very effectively, and the duke has some good livings in his gift."

Now, Miss Adamson had been brought up a Presbyterian of the Presbyterians, and among people to whom "the paper" was abhorrent: to read a sermon was a sin—to read another man's sermon was a sin of double-dyed blackness. However, either her opinions were being corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley to prop her own.

Miss Adamson merely said, "Do you not underrate Mr. Eildon's abilities?"

"I think not. If he had abilities, he would have been showing them by this time. But of course I don't blame him: few of the Eildons have been men of mark—none in recent times except Lord Arthur—but they have all been respectable men, whose lives would stand inspection; and George is the equal of any of them in that respect. As a clergyman he would have set a good example."

Hearing a person always pitied and spoken slightingly of does not predispose any one to fall in love with that person. Miss Garscube's feelings of this nature still lay very closely folded up in the bud, and the early spring did not come at this time to develop them in the shape of George Eildon; but Mr. Eildon was sufficiently foolish and indiscreet to fall in love with her. Miss Adamson was the only one of the three ladies cognizant of this state of affairs, but as her creed was that no one had any right to make or meddle in a thing of this kind, she saw as if she saw not, though very much interested. She saw that Miss Garscube was as innocent of the knowledge that she had made a conquest as it was possible to be, and she felt surprised that Lady Arthur's sight was not sharper. But Lady Arthur was—or at least had been—a woman of the world, and the idea of a penniless man allowing himself to fall in love seriously with a penniless girl in actual life could not find admission into her mind: if she had been writing a ballad it would have been different; indeed, if you had only known Lady Arthur through her poetry, you might have believed her to be a very, romantic, sentimental, unworldly person, for she really was all that—on paper.

Mr. Eildon was very frequently in the studio where Miss Adamson and her pupil worked, and he was always ready to accompany them in their excursions, and, Lady Arthur said, "really made himself very useful."

It has been said that John and Thomas both approved of her ladyship's summer expeditions in search of the picturesque, or whatever else she might take it into her head to look for; and when she issued orders for a day among the hills in a certain month of August, which had been a specially fine month in point of weather, every one was pleased. But John and Thomas found it nearly as hard work climbing with the luncheon-basket in the heat of the midsummer sun as it was when they climbed to the same elevation in midwinter; only they did not slip back so fast, nor did they feel that they were art and part in a "daftlike" thing.

"Here," said Lady Arthur, raising her glass to her lips—"here is to the memory of the Romans, on whose dust we are resting."

"Amen!" said Mr. Eildon; "but I am afraid you don't find their dust a very soft resting-place: they were always a hard people, the Romans."

"They were a people I admire," said Lady Arthur. "If they had not been called away by bad news from home, if they had been able to stay, our civilization might have been a much older thing than it is.—What do you think, John?" she said, addressing her faithful servitor. "Less than a thousand years ago all that stretch of country that we see so richly cultivated and studded with cozy farm-houses was brushwood and swamp, with a handful of savage inhabitants living in wigwams and dressing in skins."

"It may be so," said John—"no doubt yer leddyship kens best—but I have this to say: if they were savages they had the makin' o' men in them. Naebody'll gar me believe that the stock yer leddyship and me cam o' was na a capital gude stock."

"All right, John," said Mr. Eildon, "if you include me."

"It was a long time to take, surely," said Alice—"a thousand years to bring the country from brushwood and swamp to corn and burns confined to their beds,"

"Nature is never in a hurry, Alice," replied Lady Arthur.

"But she is always busy in a wonderfully quiet way," said Miss Adamson. "Whenever man begins to work he makes a noise, but no one hears the corn grow or the leaves burst their sheaths: even the clouds move with noiseless grace."

"The clouds are what no one can understand yet, I suppose," said Mr. Eildon, "but they don't always look as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths, as they are doing to-day. What do you say to thunder?"

"That is an exception: Nature does all her best work quietly."

"So does man," remarked George Eildon.

"Well, I dare say you are right, after all," said Miss Adamson, who was sketching. "I wish I could paint in the glitter on the blade of that reaping-machine down in the haugh there: see, it gleams every time the sun's rays hit it. It is curious how Nature makes the most of everything to heighten her picture, and yet never makes her bright points too plentiful."

Just at that moment the sun's rays seized a small pane of glass in the roof of a house two or three miles off down the valley, and it shot out light and sparkles that dazzled the eye to look at.

"That is a fine effect," cried Alice: "it looks like the eye of an archangel kindling up,"

"What a flight of fancy, Alice!" Lady Arthur said. "That reaping-machine does its work very well, but it will be a long time before it gathers a crust of poetry about it: stopping to clear a stone out of its way is different from a lad and a lass on the harvest-rig, the one stopping to take a thorn out of the finger of the other."

"There are so many wonderful things," said Alice, "that one gets always lost among them. How the clouds float is wonderful, and that with the same earth below and the same heaven above, the heather should be purple, and the corn yellow, and the ferns green, is wonderful; but not so wonderful, I think, as that a man by the touch of genius should have made every one interested in a field-laborer taking a thorn out of the hand of another field-laborer. Catch your poet, and he'll soon make the machine interesting."

"Get a thorn into your finger, Alice," said George Eildon, "and I'll take it out if it is so interesting."

"You could not make it interesting," said she.

"Just try," he said.

"But trying won't do. You know as well as I that there are things no trying will ever do. I am trying to paint, for instance, and in time I shall copy pretty well, but I shall never do more."

"Hush, hush!" said Miss Adamson. "I'm often enough in despair myself, and hearing you say that makes me worse. I rebel at having got just so much brain and no more; but I suppose," she said with a sigh, "if we make the best of what we have, it's all right, and if we had well-balanced minds we should be contented."

"Would you like to stay here longer among the hills and the sheep?" said Lady Arthur. "I have just remembered that I want silks for my embroidery, and I have time to go to town: I can catch the afternoon train. Do any of you care to go?"

"It is good to be here," said Mr. Eildon, "but as we can't stay always, we may as well go now. I suppose."

And John, accustomed to sudden orders, hurried off to get his horses put to the carriage.

Lady Arthur, upon the whole, approved of railways, but did not use them much except upon occasion; and it was only by taking the train she could reach town and be home for dinner on this day.

They reached the station in time, and no more. Mr. Eildon ran and got tickets, and John was ordered to be at the station nearest Garscube Hall to meet them when they returned.

Embroidery, being an art which high-born dames have practiced from the earliest ages, was an employment that had always found favor in the sight of Lady Arthur, and to which she turned when she wanted change of occupation. She took a very short time to select her materials, and they were back and seated in the railway carriage fully ten minutes before the train started. They beguiled the time by looking about the station: it was rather a different scene from that where they had been in the fore part of the day.

"There's surely a mistake," said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow's cap: the princess of Wales was very busy at the third. "Is not that what is called an anachronism, Miss Adamson? Are not sewing-machines a recent invention? There were none in Elizabeth's time, I think?"

"There are people," said Lady Arthur, "who have neither common sense nor a sense of the ridiculous."

"But they have a sense of what will pay," answered her nephew. "That appeals to the heart of the nation—that is, to the masculine heart. If Queen Bess had been handling a lancet, and Queen Vic pounding in a mortar with a pestle, assisted by her daughter-in-law, the case would have been different; but they are at useful womanly work, and the machines will sell. They have fixed themselves in our memories already: that's the object the advertiser had when he pressed the passion of loyalty into his service."

"How will the strong-minded Tudor lady like to see herself revived in that fashion, if she can see it?" asked Miss Garscube.

"She'll like it well, judging by myself," said George: "that's true fame. I should be content to sit cross-legged on a board, stitching pulpit-robes, in a picture, if I were sure it would be hung up three hundred years after this at all the balloon-stations and have the then Miss Garscubes making remarks about me."

"They might not make very complimentary remarks, perhaps," said Alice.

"If they thought of me at all I should be satisfied," said he.

"Couldn't you invent an iron bed, then?" said Miss Adamson, looking at a representation of these articles hanging alongside the three royal ladies. "Perhaps they'll last three hundred years, and if you could bind yourself up with the idea of sweet repose—"

"They won't last three hundred years," said Lady Arthur—"cheap and nasty, new-fangled things!"

"They maybe cheap and nasty," said George, "but new-fangled they are not: they must be some thousands of years old. I am afraid, my dear aunt, you don't read your Bible."

"Don't drag the Bible in among your nonsense. What has it to do with iron beds?" said Lady Arthur.

"If you look into Deuteronomy, third chapter and eleventh verse," said he "you'll find that Og, king of Bashar used an iron bed. It is probably in existence yet, and it must be quite old enough to make it worth your while to look after it: perhaps Mr. Cook would personally conduct you, or if not I should be glad to be your escort."

"Thank you," she said: "when I go in search of Og's bed I'll take you with me."

"You could not do better: I have the scent of a sleuth-hound for antiquities."

As they were speaking a man came and hung up beside the queens and the iron beds a big white board on which were printed in large black letters the words, "My Mother and I"—nothing more.

"What can the meaning of that be?" asked Lady Arthur.

"To make you ask the meaning of it," said Mr. Eildon. "I who am skilled in these matters have no doubt that it is the herald of some soothing syrup for the human race under the trials of teething." He was standing at the carriage-door till the train would start, and he stood aside to let a young lady and a boy in deep mourning enter. The pair were hardly seated when the girl's eye fell on the great white board and its announcement. She bent her head and hid her face in her handkerchief: it was not difficult to guess that she had very recently parted with her mother for ever, and the words on the board were more than she could stand unmoved.

Miss Adamson too had been thinking of her mother, the hard-working woman who had toiled in her little shop to support her sickly husband and educate her daughter—the kindly patient face, the hands that had never spared themselves, the footsteps that had plodded so incessantly to and fro. The all that had been gone so long came back to her, and she felt almost the pang of first separation, when it seemed as if the end of her life had been extinguished and the motive-power for work had gone. But she carried her mother in her heart: with her it was still "my mother and I."

Lady Arthur did not think of her mother: she had lost her early, and besides, her thoughts and feelings had been all absorbed by her husband.

Alice Garscube had never known her mother, and as she looked gravely at the girl who was crying behind her handkerchief, she envied her—she had known her mother.

As for Mr. Eildon, he had none but bright and happy thoughts connected with his mother. It was true, she was a widow, but she was a kind and stately lady, round whom her family moved as round a sun and centre, giving light and heat and all good cheer; he could afford to joke about "my mother and I."

What a vast deal of varied emotion these words must have stirred in the multitudes of travelers coming and going in all directions!

In jumping into the carriage when the last bell rang, Mr. Eildon missed his footing and fell back, with no greater injury, fortunately, than grazing the skin, of his hand.

"Is it much hurt?" Lady Arthur asked.

He held it up and said, "'Who ran to help me when I fell?'"

"The guard," said Miss Garscube.

"'Who kissed the place to make it well?'" he continued.

"You might have been killed," said Miss Adamson.

"That would not have been a pretty story to tell," he said. "I shall need to wait till I get home for the means of cure: 'my mother and I' will manage it. You're not of a pitiful nature, Miss Garscube."

"I keep my pity for a pitiful occasion," she said.

"If you had grazed your hand, I would have applied the prescribed cure."

"Well, but I'm very glad I have not grazed my hand,"

"So am I," he said.

"Let me see it," she said. He held it out. "Would something not need to be done for it?" she asked.

"Yes. Is it interesting—as interesting as the thorn?"

"It is nothing," said Lady Arthur: "a little lukewarm water is all that it needs;" and she thought, "That lad will never do anything either for himself or to add to the prestige of the family. I hope his cousins have more ability."

IV

But what these cousins were to turn out no one knew. They had that rank which gives a man what is equivalent to a start of half a lifetime over his fellows, and they promised well; but they were only boys as yet, and Nature puts forth many a choice blossom and bud that never comes to maturity, or, meeting with blight or canker on the way, turns out poor fruit. The eldest, a lad in his teens, was traveling on the Continent with a tutor: the second, a boy who had been always delicate, was at home on account of his health. George Eildon was intimate with both, and loved them with a love as true as that he bore to Alice Garscube: it never occurred to him that they had come into the world to keep him out of his inheritance. He would have laughed at such an idea. Many people would have said that he was laughing on the wrong side of his mouth: the worldly never can understand the unworldly.

Mr. Eildon gave Miss Garscube credit for being at least as unworldly as himself: he believed thoroughly in her genuineness, her fresh, unspotted nature; and, the wish being very strong, he believed that she had a kindness for him.

When he and his hand got home he found it quite able to write her a letter, or rather not so much a letter as a burst of enthusiastic aspiration, asking her to marry him.

She was startled; and never having decided on anything in her life, she carried this letter direct to Lady Arthur.

"Here's a thing," she said, "that I don't know what to think of."

"What kind of thing, Alice?"

"A letter."

"Who is it from?"

"Mr. Eildon."

"Indeed! I should not think a letter from him would be a complicated affair or difficult to understand."

"Neither is it: perhaps you would read it?"

"Certainly, if you wish it." When she had read the document she said, "Well I never gave George credit for much wisdom, but I did not think he was foolish enough for a thing like this; and I never suspected it. Are you in love too?" and Lady Arthur laughed heartily: it seemed to strike her in a comic light.

"No. I never thought of it or of him either," Alice said, feeling queer and uncomfortable.

"Then that simplifies matters. I always thought George's only chance in life was to marry a wealthy woman, and how many good, accomplished women there are, positively made of money, who would give anything to marry into our family!"

"Are there?" said Alice.

"To be sure there are. Only the other day I read in a newspaper that people are all so rich now money is no distinction: rank is, however. You can't make a lawyer or a shipowner or an ironmaster into a peer of several hundred years' descent."

"No, you can't," said Alice; "but Mr. Eildon is not a peer, you know."

"No, but he is the grandson of one duke and the nephew of another; and if he could work for it he might have a peerage of his own, or if he had great wealth he would probably get one. For my own part, I don't count much on rank or wealth" (she believed this), "but they are privileges people have no right to throw away."

"Not even if they don't care for them?" asked Alice,

"No: whatever you have it is your duty to care for and make the best of."

"Then, what am I to say to Mr. Eildon?"

"Tell him it is absurd; and whatever you say, put it strongly, that there may be no more of it. Why, he must know that you would be beggars."

Acting up to her instructions, Alice wrote thus to Mr. Eildon:

"DEAR MR. EILDON: Your letter surprised me. Lady Arthur says it is absurd; besides, I don't care for you a bit. I don't mean that I dislike you, for I don't dislike any one. We wonder you could be so foolish, and Lady Arthur says there must be no more of it; and she is right. I hope you will forget all about this, and believe me to be your true friend,

"ALICE GARSCUBE.

"P.S. Lady Arthur says you haven't got anything to live on; but if you had all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't make any difference.

"A. G."

This note fell into George Eildon's mind like molten lead dropped on living flesh. "She is not what I took her to be," he said to himself, "or she never could have written that, even at Lady Arthur's suggestion; and Lady Arthur ought to have known better."

And she certainly ought to have known better; yet he might have found some excuse for Alice if he had allowed himself to think, but he did not: he only felt, and felt very keenly.

In saying that Mr. Eildon and Miss Garscube were penniless, the remark is not to be taken literally, for he had an income of fifteen hundred pounds, and she had five hundred a year of her own; but in the eyes of people moving in ducal circles matrimony on two thousand pounds seems as improvident a step as that of the Irishman who marries when he has accumulated sixpence appears to ordinary beings.

Mr. Eildon spent six weeks at a shooting-box belonging to his uncle the duke, after which he went to London, where he got a post under government—a place which was by no means a sinecure, but where there was plenty of work not over-paid. Before leaving he called for a few minutes at Garscube Hall to say good-bye, and that was all they saw of him.

Alice missed him: a very good thing, of which she had been as unconscious as she was of the atmosphere, had been withdrawn from her life. George's letter had nailed him to her memory: she thought of him very often, and that is a dangerous thing for a young lady to do if she means to keep herself entirely fancy free. She wondered if his work was very hard work, and if he was shut in an office all day; she did not think he was made for that; it seemed as unnatural as putting a bird into a cage. She made some remark of this kind to Lady Arthur, who laughed and said, "Oh, George won't kill himself with hard work." From that time forth Alice was shy of speaking of him to his aunt. But she had kept his letter, and indulged herself with a reading of it occasionally; and every time she read it she seemed to understand it better. It was a mystery to her how she had been so intensely stupid as not to understand it at first. And when she found a copy of her own answer to it among her papers—one she had thrown aside on account of a big blot—she wondered if it was possible she had sent such a thing, and tears of shame and regret stood in her eyes. "How frightfully blind I was!" she said to herself. But there was no help for it: the thing was done, and could not be undone. She had grown in wisdom since then, but most people reach wisdom through ignorance and folly.

In these circumstances she found Miss Adamson a very valuable friend. Miss Adamson had never shared Lady Arthur's low estimate of Mr. Eildon: she liked his sweet, unworldly nature, and she had a regard for him as having aims both lower and higher than a "career." That he should love Miss Garscube seemed to her natural and good, and that happiness might be possible even to a duke's grandson on such a pittance as two thousand pounds a year was an article of her belief: she pitied people who go through life sacrificing the substance for the shadow. Yes, Miss Garscube could speak of Mr. Eildon to her friend and teacher, and be sure of some remark that gave her comfort.