40. MELCHESTER (continued)
The commotion wrought in Julian's mind by the abrupt incursion of
Ethelberta into his quiet sphere was thorough and protracted. The
witchery of her presence he had grown strong enough to withstand in
part; but her composed announcement that she had intended to marry
another, and, as far as he could understand, was intending it still,
added a new chill to the old shade of disappointment which custom
was day by day enabling him to endure. During the whole interval in
which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such
inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his
thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the
character and position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta's
company. Owing to his assumption that Lord Mountclere was but a
stranger who had accidentally come in at the side door, Christopher
had barely cast a glance upon him, and the wide difference between
the years of the viscount and those of his betrothed was not so
particularly observed as to raise that point to an item in his
objections now. Lord Mountclere was dressed with all the cunning
that could be drawn from the metropolis by money and reiterated
dissatisfaction; he prided himself on his upright carriage; his
stick was so thin that the most malevolent could not insinuate that
it was of any possible use in walking; his teeth had put on all the
vigour and freshness of a second spring. Hence his look was the
slowest of possible clocks in respect of his age, and his manner was
equally as much in the rear of his appearance.
Christopher was now over five-and-twenty. He was getting so well
accustomed to the spectacle of a world passing him by and splashing
him with its wheels that he wondered why he had ever minded it. His
habit of dreaming instead of doing had led him up to a curious
discovery. It is no new thing for a man to fathom profundities by
indulging humours: the active, the rapid, the people of splendid
momentum, have been surprised to behold what results attend the
lives of those whose usual plan for discharging their active labours
has been to postpone them indefinitely. Certainly, the immediate
result in the present case was, to all but himself, small and
invisible; but it was of the nature of highest things. What he had
learnt was that a woman who has once made a permanent impression
upon a man cannot altogether deny him her image by denying him her
company, and that by sedulously cultivating the acquaintance of this
Creature of Contemplation she becomes to him almost a living soul.
Hence a sublimated Ethelberta accompanied him everywhere--one who
never teased him, eluded him, or disappointed him: when he smiled
she smiled, when he was sad she sorrowed. He may be said to have
become the literal duplicate of that whimsical unknown rhapsodist
who wrote of his own similar situation--
'By absence this good means I gain,
That I can catch her,
Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my brain:
There I embrace and kiss her;
And so I both enjoy and miss her.'
This frame of mind naturally induced an amazing abstraction in the
organist, never very vigilant at the best of times. He would stand
and look fixedly at a frog in a shady pool, and never once think of
batrachians, or pause by a green bank to split some tall blade of
grass into filaments without removing it from its stalk, passing on
ignorant that he had made a cat-o'-nine-tails of a graceful slip of
vegetation. He would hear the cathedral clock strike one, and go
the next minute to see what time it was. 'I never seed such a man
as Mr. Julian is,' said the head blower. 'He'll meet me anywhere
out-of-doors, and never wink or nod. You'd hardly expect it. I
don't find fault, but you'd hardly expect it, seeing how I play the
same instrument as he do himself, and have done it for so many years
longer than he. How I have indulged that man, too! If 'tis Pedals
for two martel hours of practice I never complain; and he has plenty
of vagaries. When 'tis hot summer weather there's nothing will do
for him but Choir, Great, and Swell altogether, till yer face is in
a vapour; and on a frosty winter night he'll keep me there while he
tweedles upon the Twelfth and Sixteenth till my arms be scrammed for
want of motion. And never speak a word out-of-doors.' Somebody
suggested that perhaps Christopher did not notice his coadjutor's
presence in the street; and time proved to the organ-blower that the
remark was just.
Whenever Christopher caught himself at these vacuous tricks he would
be struck with admiration of Ethelberta's wisdom, foresight, and
self-command in refusing to wed such an incapable man: he felt that
he ought to be thankful that a bright memory of her was not also
denied to him, and resolved to be content with it as a possession,
since it was as much of her as he could decently maintain.
Wrapped thus in a humorous sadness he passed the afternoon under
notice, and in the evening went home to Faith, who still lived with
him, and showed no sign of ever being likely to do otherwise. Their
present place and mode of life suited her well. She revived at
Melchester like an exotic sent home again. The leafy Close, the
climbing buttresses, the pondering ecclesiastics, the great doors,
the singular keys, the whispered talk, echoes of lonely footsteps,
the sunset shadow of the tall steeple, reaching further into the
town than the good bishop's teaching, and the general complexion of
a spot where morning had the stillness of evening and spring some of
the tones of autumn, formed a proper background to a person
constituted as Faith, who, like Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's chicken,
possessed in miniature all the antiquity of her progenitors.
After tea Christopher went into the streets, as was frequently his
custom, less to see how the world crept on there than to walk up and
down for nothing at all. It had been market-day, and remnants of
the rural population that had visited the town still lingered at
corners, their toes hanging over the edge of the pavement, and their
eyes wandering about the street.
The angle which formed the turning-point of Christopher's promenade
was occupied by a jeweller's shop, of a standing which completely
outshone every other shop in that or any trade throughout the town.
Indeed, it was a staple subject of discussion in Melchester how a
shop of such pretensions could find patronage sufficient to support
its existence in a place which, though well populated, was not
fashionable. It had not long been established there, and was the
enterprise of an incoming man whose whole course of procedure seemed
to be dictated by an intention to astonish the native citizens very
considerably before he had done. Nearly everything was glass in the
frontage of this fairy mart, and its contents glittered like the
hammochrysos stone. The panes being of plate-glass, and the shop
having two fronts, a diagonal view could be had through it from one
to the other of the streets to which it formed a corner.
This evening, as on all evenings, a flood of radiance spread from
the window-lamps into the thick autumn air, so that from a distance
that corner appeared as the glistening nucleus of all the light in
the town. Towards it idle men and women unconsciously bent their
steps, and closed in upon the panes like night-birds upon the
lantern of a lighthouse.
When Christopher reached the spot there stood close to the pavement
a plain close carriage, apparently waiting for some person who was
purchasing inside. Christopher would hardly have noticed this had
he not also perceived, pressed against the glass of the shop window,
an unusual number of local noses belonging to overgrown working
lads, tosspots, an idiot, the ham-smoker's assistant with his
sleeves rolled up, a scot-and-lot freeholder, three or four
seamstresses, the young woman who brought home the washing, and so
on. The interest of these gazers in some proceedings within, which
by reason of the gaslight were as public as if carried on in the
open air, was very great.
'Yes, that's what he's a buying o'--haw, haw!' said one of the young
men, as the shopman removed from the window a gorgeous blue velvet
tray of wedding-rings, and laid it on the counter.
''Tis what you may come to yerself, sooner or later, God have mercy
upon ye; and as such no scoffing matter,' said an older man.
'Faith, I'd as lief cry as laugh to see a man in that corner.'
'He's a gent getting up in years too. He must hev been through it a
few times afore, seemingly, to sit down and buy the tools so cool as
that.'
'Well, no. See what the shyest will do at such times. You bain't
yerself then; no man living is hisself then.'
'True,' said the ham-smoker's man. ''Tis a thought to look at that
a chap will take all this trouble to get a woman into his house, and
a twelvemonth after would as soon hear it thunder as hear her sing!'
The policeman standing near was a humane man, through having a young
family he could hardly keep, and he hesitated about telling them to
move on. Christopher had before this time perceived that the
articles were laid down before an old gentleman who was seated in
the shop, and that the gentleman was none other than he who had been
with Ethelberta in the concert-room. The discovery was so startling
that, constitutionally indisposed as he was to stand and watch, he
became as glued to the spot as the other idlers. Finding himself
now for the first time directly confronting the preliminaries of
Ethelberta's marriage to a stranger, he was left with far less
equanimity than he could have supposed possible to the situation.
'So near the time!' he said, and looked hard at Lord Mountclere.
Christopher had now a far better opportunity than before for
observing Ethelberta's betrothed. Apart from any bias of jealousy,
disappointment, or mortification, he was led to judge that this was
not quite the man to make Ethelberta happy. He had fancied her
companion to be a man under fifty; he was now visibly sixty or more.
And it was not the sort of sexagenarianism beside which a young
woman's happiness can sometimes contrive to keep itself alive in a
quiet sleepy way. Suddenly it occurred to him that this was the man
whom he had helped in the carriage accident on the way to Knollsea.
He looked again.
By no means undignified, the face presented that combination of
slyness and jocundity which we are accustomed to imagine of the
canonical jolly-dogs in mediaeval tales. The gamesome Curate of
Meudon might have supplied some parts of the countenance; cunning
Friar Tuck the remainder. Nothing but the viscount's constant habit
of going to church every Sunday morning when at his country
residence kept unholiness out of his features, for though he lived
theologically enough on the Sabbath, as it became a man in his
position to do, he was strikingly mundane all the rest of the week,
always preferring the devil to God in his oaths. And nothing but
antecedent good-humour prevented the short fits of crossness
incident to his passing infirmities from becoming established. His
look was exceptionally jovial now, and the corners of his mouth
twitched as the telegraph-needles of a hundred little erotic
messages from his heart to his brain. Anybody could see that he was
a merry man still, who loved good company, warming drinks, nymph-
like shapes, and pretty words, in spite of the disagreeable
suggestions he received from the pupils of his eyes, and the joints
of his lively limbs, that imps of mischief were busy sapping and
mining in those regions, with the view of tumbling him into a
certain cool cellar under the church aisle.
In general, if a lover can find any ground at all for serenity in
the tide of an elderly rival's success, he finds it in the fact
itself of that ancientness. The other side seems less a rival than
a makeshift. But Christopher no longer felt this, and the
significant signs before his eyes of the imminence of Ethelberta's
union with this old hero filled him with restless dread. True, the
gentleman, as he appeared illuminated by the jeweller's gas-jets,
seemed more likely to injure Ethelberta by indulgence than by
severity, while her beauty lasted; but there was a nameless
something in him less tolerable than this.
The purchaser having completed his dealings with the goldsmith, was
conducted to the door by the master of the shop, and into the
carriage, which was at once driven off up the street.
Christopher now much desired to know the name of the man whom a nice
chain of circumstantial evidence taught him to regard as the happy
winner where scores had lost. He was grieved that Ethelberta's
confessed reserve should have extended so far as to limit her to
mere indefinite hints of marriage when they were talking almost on
the brink of the wedding-day. That the ceremony was to be a private
one--which it probably would be because of the disparity of ages--
did not in his opinion justify her secrecy. He had shown himself
capable of a transmutation as valuable as it is rare in men, the
change from pestering lover to staunch friend, and this was all he
had got for it. But even an old lover sunk to an indifferentist
might have been tempted to spend an unoccupied half-hour in
discovering particulars now, and Christopher had not lapsed nearly
so far as to absolute unconcern.
That evening, however, nothing came in his way to enlighten him.
But the next day, when skirting the Close on his ordinary duties, he
saw the same carriage standing at a distance, and paused to behold
the same old gentleman come from a well-known office and re-enter
the vehicle--Lord Mountclere, in fact, in earnest pursuit of the
business of yesternight, having just pocketed a document in which
romance, rashness, law, and gospel are so happily made to work
together that it may safely be regarded as the neatest compromise
which has ever been invented since Adam sinned.
This time Julian perceived that the brougham was one belonging to
the White Hart Hotel, which Lord Mountclere was using partly from
the necessities of these hasty proceedings, and also because, by so
doing, he escaped the notice that might have been bestowed upon his
own equipage, or men-servants, the Mountclere hammer-cloths being
known in Melchester. Christopher now walked towards the hotel,
leisurely, yet with anxiety. He inquired of a porter what people
were staying there that day, and was informed that they had only one
person in the house, Lord Mountclere, whom sudden and unexpected
business had detained in Melchester since the previous day.
Christopher lingered to hear no more. He retraced the street much
more quickly than he had come; and he only said, 'Lord Mountclere--
it must never be!'
As soon as he entered the house, Faith perceived that he was greatly
agitated. He at once told her of his discovery, and she exclaimed,
'What a brilliant match!'
'O Faith,' said Christopher, 'you don't know! You are far from
knowing. It is as gloomy as midnight. Good God, can it be
possible?'
Faith blinked in alarm, without speaking.
'Did you never hear anything of Lord Mountclere when we lived at
Sandbourne?'
'I knew the name--no more.'
'No, no--of course you did not. Well, though I never saw his face,
to my knowledge, till a short time ago, I know enough to say that,
if earnest representations can prevent it, this marriage shall not
be. Father knew him, or about him, very well; and he once told me--
what I cannot tell you. Fancy, I have seen him three times--
yesterday, last night, and this morning--besides helping him on the
road some weeks ago, and never once considered that he might be Lord
Mountclere. He is here almost in disguise, one may say; neither man
nor horse is with him; and his object accounts for his privacy. I
see how it is--she is doing this to benefit her brothers and
sisters, if possible; but she ought to know that if she is miserable
they will never be happy. That's the nature of women--they take the
form for the essence, and that's what she is doing now. I should
think her guardian angel must have quitted her when she agreed to a
marriage which may tear her heart out like a claw.'
'You are too warm about it, Kit--it cannot be so bad as that. It is
not the thing, but the sensitiveness to the thing, which is the true
measure of its pain. Perhaps what seems so bad to you falls lightly
on her mind. A campaigner in a heavy rain is not more uncomfortable
than we are in a slight draught; and Ethelberta, fortified by her
sapphires and gold cups and wax candles, will not mind facts which
look like spectres to us outside. A title will turn troubles into
romances, and she will shine as an interesting viscountess in spite
of them.'
The discussion with Faith was not continued, Christopher stopping
the argument by saying that he had a good mind to go off at once to
Knollsea, and show her her danger. But till the next morning
Ethelberta was certainly safe; no marriage was possible anywhere
before then. He passed the afternoon in a state of great
indecision, constantly reiterating, 'I will go!'
