17.-Yesterday was a great success. Avice was silent at first, but Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before we arrived. You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother. Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall. The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice's eyes shone all the time. After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour's perfect rest, in a charming little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way. Avice, who has seen scores of fêtes in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers. The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of 'that picture.' It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers-irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy. A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert. Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante's Purgatorio, with the mystic griffin car in the distance. Our hosts were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she very quietly and modestly pointed out the details. A Dante was hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage, which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark both it and Dante.
"I like that girl," said the old Governor-General, "she is intelligent and modest both. There is something fine about the shape of her head."
When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible at what she called the Bird's triumph; but Avice did not seem at all elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque, came naturally. And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole question of Action and Contemplation. At least Metelill asked the explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made her my sister for those two happy years, and-Well, it is no use paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of companionship before you came on the scene. And to think what a jewel I have missed all this time!
18.-I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have to tell you. I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice-
"I tell you it was no joke. It's no use saying so," and I beheld Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel. "I've looked on at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my sister I will speak out."
By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley's very improper tone, and asking what was the matter. Isa sprang to me, declaring that it was all Charley's absurd suspicion and misconstruction. At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.
Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until she could return it. Charley broke out. "As if I did not know better than that! Didn't you make him give you that parasol and promise him your photo? Ay, and give it him in return? You thought he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun over him. And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts. I'm not strait-laced. I wouldn't mind having the photos of a hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is-is-well-a regular old maid about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on purpose to upset Metelill's chances."
Isa clung to me in floods of tears, desiring me not to believe anything so cruel and false. Every one always was so hard upon her, she said, and she had only put the thing inadvertently there, to get it out of sight, into the first book she saw, but unfortunately she did not know I had heard her trying to pass it off to Charley as a jest. However, as there was no proof there, I asked about the parasol. While the shopping was going on, she and young Horne had been in another street, and this was the consequence! I was perfectly confounded. Receive presents from young men! It seemed to me quite impossible. "Oh, Isa thinks nothing of that!" said Charley. "Ask her where she got those bangles, and that bouquet which she told you was half Metelill's. You think me awful, I know, Aunt Charlotte, but I do draw a line, though I would never have said one word about it if she had not played this nasty trick on Metelill." Isa would have begun some imploring excuse, but our two gentlemen were seen coming up towards the window, and she fled, gasping out an entreaty that I would not tell Uncle Martyn.
Nor did I then and there, for I needed to understand the matter and look into it, so I told Martyn and Horace not to wait for me, and heard Charley's story more coolly. I had thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill's friend. "So he was at first," Charley said, "but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan! That's the way she gets so many presents!" Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne's love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend. "But I never meant to have told," said Charley, "if you had not come in upon us, when I was in the midst of such a wax that I did not know what I was saying"; and on my demanding what she meant by the elegant expression she had used about Isa and me, she explained that it was the schoolboy's word for currying favour. Every one but we stupid elders perceived the game, nay, even the Druces, living in full confidence with their children, knew what was going on. I have never spoken, but somehow people must read through one's brains, for there was a general conviction that I was going to choose a niece to accompany us. I wonder if you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith. It is what men always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret themselves, and say, "Nothing is safe with these women."
Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their esprit de corps, I do not know which to call it; for though they looked on at Isa's manuvres and my blindness with indignant contempt, they never attempted to interfere. Jane Druce was seized with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably find out the girl's true disposition, and that it would be wrong to deprive Isa of a chance of coming
under a fresh influence.
Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really, as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice. I see now that it has been her effort to keep the others away from me. This spiteful trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival. Avice always yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any such opportunity.
When I talked to Mary, she said, "Oh yes, I always knew she was a horrid little treacherous puss. Nature began it, and that governess worked on a ready soil. We sent her to school, and hoped she was cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be more plausible. But what can one do? One could not turn out an orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm. I'm sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little manuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will do, I can't think, unless you and Edward will take her off our hands. I believe you might do her good. She is an unfathomable mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the world" (fancy that). "Besides, she is really religious in a sort of a way; much good you'll say it does her, but, as you know, there's a certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people's conduct."
It seems to be the general desire of the family that we should take this unfortunate Isabel off their hands. Shall we? Cruelly as I have been disappointed in the girl, I can't help liking her; she is obliging, pleasant, ladylike in manners, very affectionate, and I can't help thinking that with the respect and fear for you she would feel she might be restrained, and that we could be the saving of her, though at the same time I know that my having been so egregiously deceived may be a sign that I am not fit to deal with her. I leave it to your decision altogether, and will say no more till I hear. Metelill is a charming girl, and I fancy you prefer her, and that her mother knows it, and would send her for at least a winter; but she gets so entirely off her balance whenever a young man of any sort comes near, that I should not like to take charge of her. It might be good for the worthy Jane, but as she would take a great deal of toning down and licking into shape, and as she would despise it all, refer everything to the Bourne Parva standard, and pine for home and village school, I don't think she need be considered, especially as I am sure she would not go, and could not be spared. Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities, and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who did not talk like Oxford dons. Probably the E. E. would be the only people she would think fit to speak to. Avice is the one to whom I feel the most drawn. She is thoroughly thoughtful, and her religion is not of the uninfluential kind Mary describes. Those distresses and perplexities which poor Isa affected were chiefly borrowed from her genuine ones; but she has obtained the high cultivation and intelligence that her Oxford life can give in full measure, and without conceit or pretension, and it is her unselfish, yielding spirit that has prevented me from knowing her sooner, though when not suppressed she can be thoroughly agreeable, and take her part in society with something of her mother's brilliancy. I think, too, that she would be spared, as Oxford does not agree with her, and a southern winter or two would be very good for her. Besides, the others might come and see her in vacation time. Could we not take both her and Isabel at least for the first winter?
19.-A stormy wet day, the first we have had. Poor Isa has made an attempt at explanation and apology, but lost herself in a mist of words and tears. I suppose I was severe, for she shrinks from me, and clings to Avice, who has stood her friend in many a storm before, and, as Jane indignantly tells me, persists in believing that she is really sorry and wishes to be good. She is very attentive and obliging, and my dear mother, who is in happy ignorance of all this uproar, really likes her the best of all the girls.
21.-We have had a great alarm. Last evening we went to the parish church; Horace Druce had been asked to preach, and the rain, which had fallen all the morning, cleared off just in time for the walk. Emily, Margaret, two of her children, and I sat in the gallery, and Avice and Isa in the free seats below. Avice had been kept at home by the rain in the morning, but had begged leave to go later. Darkness came on just as the first hymn was given out, and the verger went round with his long wand lighting the gas. In the gallery we saw plainly how, at the east end, something went wrong with his match, one which he thought had failed, and threw aside. It fell on a strip of straw matting in the aisle, which, being very dry, caught fire and blazed up for a few seconds before it was trampled out. Some foolish person, however, set the cry of 'Fire!' going, and you know what that is in a crowded church. The vicar, in his high old-fashioned desk with a back to it, could not see. Horace in a chair, in the narrow, shallow sanctuary, did see that it was nothing, but between the cries of 'Fire!' and the dying peal of the organ, could not make his voice heard. All he could do was to get to the rear of the crowd, together with the other few who had seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they could, getting them out through the vestry. But the main body were quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a complicated trap meant to keep out draughts. We in the gallery tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd, and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but the cries and shrieks drowned everything, and there was a most terrible time, as some 600 people jammed themselves in that narrow space, fighting, struggling, fainting.
You may suppose how we watched our girls. They had let themselves be thrust up to the end of the seat by later comers: Avice the innermost. We saw them look up to us, with white faces. To our joy, Avice seemed to understand our signs and to try to withhold Isa, but she was too wild with fright not to try to push on to the end of the pew. Avice held her dress, and kept her back. Then, as the crowd swayed, the two girls stood on the seat, and presently I saw Avice bend down, and take from some one's arms a little child, which she seated on the edge of the pew, holding it in her arms, and soothing it. I don't know how long it all lasted, Horace says it was not ten minutes before he had got men and tools to break down the obstruction at the door, and pull out the crowded, crushed people, but to us it seemed hours. They were getting calmer too in the rear, for many had followed the lead through the vestry door, and others had found out that there was no fire at all.
Wonderful to tell, no one was killed. There were some broken arms, three I think, and some bad bruises. Many people were fainting, and much hurt by the horrible heat and crush, but when at last the way was free, we saw Horace come into the church, looking about in great anxiety for the two girls, whom he had failed to find in the trampled multitude. Then Avice came up to him, with the child in her arms, and Isa followed, quite safe! How thankful we all were! Avice says she remembered at once that she had been told of the American fireman's orders to his little girl always to keep still in such an alarm, for the crowd was a worse peril than the fire. By the time we had come down the stairs and joined them, the child's father had come for it in great anxiety, for its sister had been trampled down fainting, and had just only revived enough to miss it! I shall never forget what it was to see people sucked down in that surging mass, and the thankful thrill of seeing our girls standing there quietly with the child between them, its little fair head on Avice's breast. We went home quietly and thankfully. Horace took Avice to the hotel that he might explain all to her parents, and let them know how well she had behaved; Isabel was shaken and tearful, and her voice sounded weak and nervous as she bade her cousin good-night and embraced her with much a
gitation. So I went to her room to see whether she needed any doctoring, but I found Metelill soothing her nicely, so I only kissed her (as I had not done these two nights). "Ah, dear aunt, you forgive me!" she said. The tone threw me back, as if she were making capital of her adventure, and I said, "You have not offended me." "Ah! you are still angry, and yet you do love me still a little," she said, not letting me go. "The more love, the more grief for your having done wrong," I said; and she returned, "Ah! if I always had you." That chilled me, and I went away. She does not know the difference between pardon and remission of consequences. One must have something of the spirit of the fifty-first Psalm before that perception comes. Poor dear child, how one longs for power to breathe into her some such penitence!
Avice is quite knocked up to-day, and her mother has kept her in bed, where she is very happy with her Jane. I have been to see her, and she has been thanking me for having suggested the making way for fresh comers in a pew. Otherwise, she says, she could not have withstood the rush.
SIR EDWARD FULFORD to MISS FULFORD
22d July.
My Dear Charlotte,-I decidedly object to the company of a young lady with such a genius for intrigue as Isabel Fulford seems to possess. If we had only ourselves to consider, no doubt it would be well for you to take her in hand, but in the sort of house ours will be, there must be no one we cannot depend upon in our own family.
More Bywords Page 11
