XXIV Lady Cheyne to Mrs. Radworth
Ashton Hildred, Nov. 22nd.
MY DEAR CLARA:
I HAVE got leave to write and thank you. Nothing has made me so happy for a long time as to know how kind you have been, and that you are still such good friends with me. It was no want of thankfulness to you that made me leave Portsmouth in that horrid way to get home here. I knew how good you had been, and you are not to make me out too bad. To hear from you, even such a little word, was nicer than to get the things you sent. But I was as glad as I could be to have some of them back. I would never have let any one send for them to Lidcombe, so it was all the kinder of you to do it this way. I hope you will all be well there, and quite happy while you stay. It is nice to think of people about the poor house. They are all bent on making me out ill. I am not ill in the least; only faint now and then, and always very tired.
I am terribly tired now all my life through, awake and asleep. I feel as if there was nothing nice to think of in the world, and as if it were easier to begin crying than thinking. It is only because I am foolish naturally and afraid to face things. If people were less good to me I should be just as afraid to feel at all, or at least to say I did. But good as they are now, my own nearest friends here could not have been better to me than I know you were then-writing letters and nursing and saving me all sorts of wretched things. You were as good as Reginald, and I had only you two to help me through, but you did all that could be done, both of you, and I knew you did. When I am most tired and would like to let go of everything else, I try to hold on to my remembrance of that. If I had not been a little worthy to be pitied, I hope now and then you would not have been quite so good. I am sorrier than I can say to hear how foolish you think him. Ever since that I have thought of you two together. You say it so kindly, too, that it is wretched to hear said. I do hope it is only his silly candid habit of showing things he feels and thinks-he always thought about you so much and in such an excited way. You are so much beyond me, and except us two he never had any close ally among his own relations; there are hardly any other women, you know. If I had been like you it would have been different; but so few people will take him at his best, poor boy, and I am so little use, though he is fond of me. I had got a sort of hint from my grandmother which broke the surprise of the news you send me. I hope, as you seem to wish for it, that Mademoiselle de Rochelaurier and your brother may have all things turn out as they would like; and I shall be as happy as possible to know they do. It is not the least a painful hearing to me that there will be a wedding at the right time. I am only too glad there should be some one there, and I am sure, if you both are so fond of her, she must be perfectly nice. Tell me when to congratulate. I wish I had ever seen her; nobody here knows at all what she is like. But I seem to have heard people say her mother is not pretty. They will not let me write any more-my pen is to be dragged off if I try. And really there is this much reason in it, that I am most stupidly tired, and see myself opposite too hideous to speak of. I feel as if I were running down; but I don’t mean to run out for some time yet. So don’t let there be any one put out on such a foolish account as that. I hope Mr. Radworth’s head and eyes keep better; they are of rather more value than mine, and I am always sorry to hear of his going back in health. My love to Redgie, and try to make him good.
XXV Reginald Harewood to Edward Audley
Lidcombe, Dec. 15th.
I AM not coming out at all. I can’t now; the whole concern is blown up. I have had a most awful row with my father; you know the sort of way he always does write and talk; and two months ago he gave me the most incredible blowing up-I suppose no fellow ever got such a letter. So I just dropped into him by return of post, and let the whole thing lie over. He chose to pitch into her too, in the most offensive way. Now I’m not going to behave like a sneak to her because she is too good for them. She trusts me in the most beautiful way. I would give up the whole earth for her. Frank would have made an end of that fellow long ago if he had the right sort of pluck. And you see a man can’t let himself be bullied into skulking. It’s all fair chaffing about it if you please, but you don’t in the least know what the real thing is like. Here she is tied down and obliged to let that sort of animal talk to her, and go about with her, and take her by the hand or arm-I tell you I have seen it. It was like seeing a stone thrown at her. And she speaks to him without wincing. I do think the courage of women is something unknown. I should run twenty times a day if I couldn’t fight. He brings her specimens of things. You can’t conceive what a voice and face and manner the fellow has. She lets him talk about his symptoms. He tells me he wishes he could eat what I can. It would be all very well if he had anything great about him. I suppose women can put up with men that have; but a mere ingenious laborious pedant and prig, and a fellow that has hardly human ways, imagine worshipping that! I believe he is a clever sort of half-breed between ape and beaver. But the sort of thing cannot go on. I found her yesterday by herself in the library here, looking out references for him. The man was by way of being ill upstairs. She spoke to me with a sort of sad laugh in her eyes, not smiling; and her brows winced, as they never do for him, whatever he says. She is so gentle and perfect when he is there; and I feel like getting mad. Well, somehow I let her see I knew what an infernal shame it was, and she said wives were meant for the work. Then I began and told her she had no sort of right to take it in that way, and she couldn’t expect any fellow to stand and look on while such things were-and I would as soon have looked on at Haynau any day. I dare say I talked no end of folly, but I was regularly off my head. Unless she throws me over I will never give her up. She never will let her brother know how things are with her. But to see him sit by her ought to be enough for a man with eyes and a heart. I know you were a good deal in love last year, but Miss Charnworth couldn’t have put anybody into such a tender fever of pity as this one puts me; you can’t be sorry for her; and I don’t think you can absolutely worship anything you are not a little sorry for. To have to pity what is such a way above you, no one could stand that. It gives one the wish to be hurt for her. I think I should let him insult me and strike me if she wanted it. Nothing hurts me now but the look of her. She has sweet heavy eyes, like an angel’s in some great strange pain; eyes without fear or fault in them, which look out over coming tears that never come. There is a sort of look about her lips and under the eyelids as if some sorrow had pressed there with his finger, out of love for her beauty, and left the mark. I believe she knew I wanted her to come away. If there were only somewhere to take her to and hide her, and let her live in her own way, out of all their sight and reach, that would do for me. I tell you, she took my hands sadly into hers and never said a word, but looked sideways at the floor, and gave a little beginning kind of sigh twice; and I got mad. I don’t know how I prayed to her to come then. But she turned on me with her face trembling and shining, and eyes that looked wet without crying, and made me stop. Then she took the books and went out, and up to him. Do you imagine I can be off and on, or play tricks with my love, for such a woman as that? Because of my father, perhaps, or Ernest Radworth? She has a throat like pearlcolour, with flower-colour over that; and a smell of blossom and honey in her hair. No one on earth is so infinitely good as she is. Her fingers leave a taste of violets on the lips. She is greater in her mind and spirit than men with great names. Only she never lets her greatness of heart out in words. I don’t think now that her eyes are hazel. She has in her the royal scornful secret of a great silence. Her hair and eyelashes change colour in the sun. I shall never come to know all she thinks of. I believe she is doing good somewhere with her thoughts. She is a great angel, and has charge of souls. She has clear thick eyebrows that grow well down, coming full upon the upper lid, with no gap such as there is above some women’s eyes before you come to the brow. They have an inexplicable beauty of meaning in them, and the shape of the arch of them looks tender. She has charge of me for one. I must have been a beast or a fool if there had not b
een such a face as that in the world. She has the texture and colour of roseleaves crushed deep into the palms of her hands. She can forgive and understand and be angry at the right time: things that women never can do. You know Lady Midhurst is set dead against her, and full of the most infernal prejudice. The best of them are cruel and dull about each other. I let out at her (Lady M., that is), one day when we spoke of it, and she stopped me. “She is always very good to you,” she said; which is true enough. “You and your sister are her children, and she always rather hated Frank and me for your sakes. I like her none the worse, for my part. I don’t know that she is so far wrong about you. Once I could have wanted her to like me, but we must put up with people’s deficiencies. It is very unreasonable, of course, but she does not like me in the least, I quite know “: and the way she smiled over this no one could understand without knowing her. “ Only there is one thing to be sorry about: that hard pointed way of handling things leaves her with the habit of laughter that shrinks up the heart she has by inches.” Those words stuck to me. “If she believed or felt more than she does, her cleverness and kindness would work so much better. As it is, one can never go to her for warmth or rest; and one cannot live on the sharp points of phrases. She has edges in her eyes, and thorns in her words. That perpetual sardonic patience which sits remarking on right and wrong with cold folded hands and equable observant eyes, half contemptuous in an artistic way of those who choose either-that cruel tolerance and unmerciful compassion for good and bad-that long tacit inspection, as of a dilettante cynic bidden report critically on the creatures in the world, that custom of choosing her point of view where she can see the hard side of things glitter and the hard side of characters refract light in her eyes, till she comes (if one durst say so) to patronize God by dint of despising men-oh, it gets horrid after a time! It takes the heart out of all great work. Her world would stifle the Garibaldis. It is all dust and sand, jewels and iron, dead metal and stone, and dry sunshine: like some fearful rich no-man’s land. I could as soon read the ‘Chartreuse de Parme’ as listen to her talk long; it is Stendhal diluted and transmuted; and I never could read cynicism.” You see how her thoughts get hold of one; I was reminded of her first words, and the whole thing came back on me. She said just that; I know the turn of her eyes and head as she spoke, and how her cheeks and neck quivered here and there. Then she made all excuses, the gentlest wise allowances; you see what a mind and spirit she has. She keeps always splendid and right. She can understand unkindness to herself, you see; never dreaming that nothing can be so unnatural as that; but not a dry ignoble tone of heart and narrow hardness of eye. Not to love greatness and abhor baseness, each for its own sake-that is the sort of thing she finds unforgivable and incomprehensible. She would make all things that are not evil and have not to be gone right at and fought with till they give in brave and just, full of the beauty of goodness and a noble liberty: all men fit men to honour, and all women fit women to adore.
That is what she is. Only if I were to write for ever, and find you in heavy reading for centuries, I should never get to express a thing about her. Fancy any one talking about that little Rochelaurier girl. She does, and to me, or did till I made her see it was no use, and I didn’t like it as chaff. Philomène is a good pretty child, and as to heart and mind believes in Pius Iscariot and the vermin run to earth this year at Gaeta. They think my father might put up with that. He used to admire the men of December till they did something to frighten the ruminant British bull at his fodder, and set that sweet animal lowing and thrusting out volunteer bayonets, by way of horns, in brute self-defence. I remember well how he spoke once of the Beauharnais to me, à propos of my reading the Châtiments one vacation. It was before you went down, I think, that we had a motion up about that pickpocket. My father believes in the society that was saved; he holds tight to the salvation-by-damnation theory. “A strong man and born master “-all that style of thing, you know. Liberty means cheese to one’s bread, then honey, then turtle-fat. Libre à vous, MM. les doctrinaires! What infinite idiocy and supreme imbecility to get hanged, burnt, crucified, for one’s cause! You want proof you are a fool?- you are beaten; all’s said. The smoke of the martyr’s pile is the refutation of the martyr-in the nostrils of a pig. And when people have ideas like that, and act on them, how can one expect them to see the simplest things rightly? How should they know a great spirit or noble intellect from a base little one? Souls don’t carry badges for such people to know them by; and whatever does not walk in uniform or livery they cannot take into account. As to me, and I suppose all men who are not spoilt or fallen stolid are much the same, when I see a great goodness I know it-when I meet my betters I want to worship them at once, and I can always tell when any one is born my better. When I fall in with a nature and powers above me, I cannot help going down before it. I do like admiring; service of one’s masters must be good for one, it is so perfectly pleasant. Then, too, one can never go wrong on this tack. I feel my betters in my blood; they send a heat and sting all through one at first sight. And the delight of feeling small and giving in when one does get sight of them is beyond words-it seems to me all the same whether they beat one in wisdom and great gifts and power, or in having been splendid soldiers or great exiles, or just in being beautiful. It is just as reasonable to worship one sort as the other; they are all one’s betters, and were made for one to come down on one’s knees to, clearly enough. Victor Hugo or Miss Cherbury the actress, Tennyson or a fellow who rode in the Balaklava charge when you and I were in the fifth form, we must knock under and be thankful for having them over our heads somewhere in the world; and small thanks to us. But when men who are by no means our betters won’t do so much as this, and want to walk into us for doing it, I don’t see at all that one is bound to stand that. So that if I am ever to be turned out of my way, it won’t be by anything my father may say or do. I suspect you repent of writing and reading by this time; but please remember how you did go into me last year about Eleanor; and you know by this time there was not so much even for a fellow in love to say about her.
Yours always,
R. E. HAREWOOD
XXVI Lady Cheyne to Reginald Harewood
Ashton Hildred, Jan. 14th, 1862
MY DEAREST REGINALD:
I AM writing to-day instead of our grandmother. She is very unwell, and wants you to hear from us. They will not let her trouble or exert herself in any way, but she is bent on your getting a word; so, as I am well enough to write, I must take her place. I am afraid she is upset on your account. I think she has even exchanged letters with your father about it. They seem to fear something very bad for you. You know by this time how much we both love you, and ought to care a little for us. I know I must not talk now as if I could fall back on self-esteem or selfreliance. I don’t the least want to appeal in that style, but just to plead with you as well as I may. I am stupid enough, too, and can’t put things well; only, except the people here at home, you are the one person left me that I may let myself love. I am very grateful to you, and I beg you to let me come in this way to you. You must see that there is nobody now that I love as well. I want you to remember as I do how good you were once. If I am ill it comes of miserable thought. You talk of her compassionate noble nature. Dearest, if she has any mercy, let her show it and save you. It is cruel to make people play with poison in this way. I would not blame her for worlds. I want to thank her and keep good friends, but she must not let you run to ruin. Think what imaginable good end can there be to this? I suppose she is infinitely clever and brave, as you say, but how can she face things for you? Every one would say the horridest things. Do you want shame for her? It would break your life up at the beginning. I have no right to accuse-should have none anyhow-but one has always a right to be sorry. I see you could not be happy even if all were given up on both sides. Don’t let her give all up. I dare say she might; and that of course is braver than any treason. If you knew my own great misery! Sometimes I feel the whole air hot about me; I sho
uld like to cry and moan out loud, or beat myself. I am not old, and if I live all my time out I shall never feel as if my face had a natural look. I wish I were very old, and gone foolish. I was false in every word and thought I had. I cannot kill myself, you see, even by writing it down. Thinking of it only hurts, without doing harm; I want to be done harm to. I never spoke to you at Portsmouth. If you never did know, you see now. I thought you all knew. I seemed to myself to have the eyes of a woman who has been cheating and lying to some one just dead. I was penitent enough to have had the mark on me. It would be better than playing false, to leave her husband. But then she takes you-your life and all. I do think she must not be let. I hate repeating what was said viciously; and God knows I must not talk or think scandal: but Madame de Rochelaurier, her own friend and yours, says things about her and M. de Saverny; it is no unkindness of my grandmother’s. She does not like Clara now, but she is clear of all that, quite. And there were letters, certainly. Madame de Rochelaurier said so; they were the cleverest she ever saw, but not good to write. It was two or three years ago; M. de Saverny let her see them. It was base and wretched, and he keeps them. He is a detestable man; but you cannot get over that. I believe no harm of her; only you will not let her take you from us. You must see it would be the end of all our pleasure and hope. People would laugh too. If you want to stand by C., as you say, how can you begin by helping people to scandal? I am so sorry for you, I know you are too fond of her and good to her, and would never give her up; and I am not fit to help. Still, whatever I am, I do know there must be right and wrong somehow in the world. You should not make so much misery. I don’t mean as to the people nearest you both. On your side of course I cannot tell you how to look at things; and as to hers I can only be sorry, and am very. But you know, after all, my mother is something to you while she lives; you are my very own brother and dearest one friend. I wish you might see her. She is so full of the tenderest beautiful ways. I know what she hears hurts her. She shows little, but she cried when our grandmother gave her letters to read. You might be so good to us, for we can never do anything or be much to you. If evil comes of this I shall think we were all born to it. There will be no one left to think of or speak to without some afterthought or aftertaste of memory and shame. The names nearest ours will have stings in them to make us wince. It is not good for us to try and face the world. It has beaten all that ever took heart to stand up against it. Surely there is something just and good in it, whatever we think or say, let it look ever so unfair and press ever so hard. I write this as well as I can, but it is very hard to write. I cannot make way any further: my head and hand and eyes ache, and the sight of the words written down makes me feel sick; the letters seem to get in at my eyes and burn behind them. You must be good and bear with my letter.
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 303
