the years fly, we know, and come not again, and there’s balm in that for the wounds they leave. for we forget a good deal, and hope is a faithful lover, and never quits us for long together; and then there’s honest use-and-wont, surely our friend. because you were a fool yesterday, you’re wise to-day; and if you’re a fool to-morrow—why, the alternation is established. there’s a progression; it is like the rotation of crops.
there’s a mort of healing in a brace of longish years. the county, which had found little mrs. germain stiff when she came home from her honeymoon, now looked to her for stiffness when it felt relaxed. her idiosyncrasy was accepted, you see; once admitted to be a person, she became a personage. and, discovered by the county, she discovered herself. she found out that she had a character; she had never known that before, nor had any others who had had to do with her: mrs. james, to wit, miss de speyne, her husband. the process of these discoveries ought to entertain us for a chapter, and its resolution shall be attempted. but the county learned it first, when it came to rely upon her stiffness. the chaveneys, the gerald swetebredes, the trevor-waynes, the perceforest people, before the two years were over, forgot that they had ever eyed each other, with brows inquiring “colonial?” or spelling “hopeless, my dear!” such looks had passed, but now, on the contrary, they leaned—some heavily. lady chaveney was one. “she is charming with guy,” she said more than once, “quite charming. an influence—in the nicest way.” she added, once, as if the news was sacred, “i believe he’s told her everything.” guy was the chaveney heir, the florid, assured youth whom we met just now on our visit; he had been pronounced “wild” by mr. germain; and he had told her everything. she took herself quite seriously with guy, in the elder-sister fashion, mr. germain, at first approving, as, at first, he had approved every sign of her making way. he came, before the end of two years, to feel differently, lost touch with the sense of his benevolence, felt to be losing grip of many things. but in the early days he had approved, there’s no doubt—in those days of stress and taut nerves when, returning from a honeymoon by much too long, she had found mrs. james pervading the great, orderly house, and had, without knowing it, braced herself for a tussle, and unawares found herself in it, and amazingly the winner. her husband had backed her up there, in his quiet way. short, quick, breathless work it had been—a fight in spasms. she had been crossing the hall when the great lady came out of the little library.
“ah, mary—a mrs. burgess has called, i see—wife of some one in farlingbridge. she called while you were out. a politeness very natural under the circumstances—but not the custom here, i think. lady diana, i happen to know, never—i suppose you will send cards by the carriage. that would answer the purpose very well. we have never known the townspeople, you know—in that sort of way. there is a tenants’ party in the summer. they come to that.”
mary had listened. she was pale, but her eyes smouldered.
“i can’t do that, mrs. germain. i mean, i must return the call.”
“ah? it will be against my recommendation.”
“i am very sorry. i asked mrs. burgess to call when i met her the other day at waysford.”
“really? waysford? one would meet her there, i suppose. a sale of work?”
“yes. but i asked her to call upon me. it was kind of her to come so soon.”
mrs. james pressed her lips together. so soon! why, the woman would fly! “does my brother know of this, may i ask?”
“i don’t know,” said mary, out of breath. she was scared, but meant to go on.
“it will be better that he should be told.”
“if you think it will interest him—yes,” mary said, and went upstairs—to stare out of window, clench and unclench her hands. mrs. james reported the case to her brother-in-law, and mary drove, the next day, to farlingbridge—her husband with her—and returned the call. nothing more was said; nor, when the visit of a colonel dermott, v.c., and his lady, townspeople, too, had to be witnessed, was a word of warning uttered. but mrs. james left within a fortnight of her rout, staying only for the first dinner-party at southover. that was how she learned that mary middleham had character. it shocked her; and it was annoying, too, that she could expect no sympathy from james.
the house-parties for the winter shooting, and those dinner-parties for the county had to be gone through with somehow. she set herself squarely to the task, and was glad enough to believe towards the end of her two years that she was learning the business. there was little to do, indeed, but be agreeable, but she found that more than enough. agreeable she could be when she felt happy; her nature was as sweet as an apple. but if she felt hurt she must show it, and she discovered that that was a cardinal sin. then there was the language to master, the queer, impertinent, leisurely laconics of these people—expensive, perfectly complacent, incredibly idle young men, old men without reticence, airy, free-spoken women, and girls who unaffectedly ignored her. to cope with such as these she must be even as they were, or seem so. the quickness of their give-and-take in conversation, the ripple and flow, the ease of the thing, asked an alertness of her which excited while it tried her to death. perpetually flagging at the game, she spurred herself perpetually; for she discovered that there is no more deadly sin in the code than an awkward pause, that being all of a piece with the end and aim of living—which is smooth running. a woman should die sooner than drop a conversation, or murder it.
she was at her best with the men, as perhaps she might expect. she could run, she could walk all day, chatter, laugh outright, seem to be herself; they paid her the compliment of approving looks. but among the women she knew that she must be herself, a very different thing. she felt infinitely small, ill-dressed, ill-mannered, clumsy, and a dunce. it was from them, however, that she gained her reputation of being stiff; she had them to thank for that. it had come to her in a flash of spirit one day in the summer of her first year, that if ignoring was in the wind, she could ignore with the best. she chose to ignore mrs. chilmarke, mrs. ralph chilmarke, a beauty, a dainty blonde and a wit. she did it steadily for three days, at what a cost she could never have guessed when she began it, and her reward was great. mrs. chilmarke respected her for it, and the duchess—a duchess was in the house—was frankly delighted, and said so. she had watched out the match, and had backed the brune.
under such exertions as these character will out, while it may slumber through years of pedagogy. but she worked hard at her lessons directly she had found out what she wanted, and was tolerably equipped for her tour in france and italy when the time came. she made no way with latin—mr. germain had to give that up; and english literature made her yawn. she insisted on botany, for reasons unknown to the good gentleman, and became great friends with the head gardener, a scotchman, who made the initial mistake of supposing her a little fool, and was ever afterwards her obedient servant. shall we do wrong in putting this study down to senhouse’s credit? i think not. quietly and methodically, after a method all her own, mary germain began to find herself, as they say. but before she did that her husband had to find her; and he, poor gentleman, who had had to begin upon their wedding day, was at the end of his discoveries before he was at the end of his honeymoon. so far he struggled, but after that he suffered—dumbly and in secret, within his plate armour. the fact is, there had been too much honeymoon. his evident discomfort had made her self-conscious, killed her ease, threatened her gratitude—upon which he had proposed to subsist—and turned him from an improbable mate into a rather unsuccessful father of his wife.
october is a bad time for honeymoons; the evenings are so long. nevertheless, at torquay, her mind had been fairly easy about him. he had liked the hotel. at saltcombe he had been pretty miserable, much on her conscience. he had taught her chess, it seems, and if she had known what she was about, chess might have done pretty well. but unfortunately she took to chess, and began to beat him at it by audacious combinations and desperate sallies quite unwarranted by science. that vexed him sadly. he abandoned the game, telling her frankly that he could not help being irritated to see skill out-vailed by temerity. “one plays, you see, my love, for the pleasure of playing, not to win. that is the first condition of a pastime.” she told him she was very sorry, and he kissed her. but after that villiers used to lay newspapers and reviews on the sitting-room table while they were dining. she consoled herself with the remembrance of that kiss on the lips; it was nearly the last of them. he selected her forehead, from saltcombe onwards, or her cheek. from saltcombe they went down into cornwall—truro, penzance, sennen, st. ives. there it was that she learned to be happy in her own company. she spent hours alone, scrambling among the rocks, watching the sea.
her life was filling, her vistas opening. this was great gain, to feel the triumph of discovery. she had never been so far afield before, and the wild splendours of rocks and seas made her at times like a thing inspired. she was amazed at herself—at the stinging blood in her which made her heart beat. she used to get up early at sennen, steal, hatless, out of the sleeping inn, and fleet over turf to the edge of the cliffs. there she stood motionless, with unwinking eyes and parted lips, while the wind enfolded her. all was pure ecstasy; she was like a nymph—bare-bosomed, ungirdled, unfilletted, in the close arms of the country god. from such hasty blisses she returned drowsy-eyed, glossed with rose-colour, with a sleek bloom upon her, and ministered to her husband’s needs, dressed with care, with the neatness which he loved. she sat quietly by him, hearing but not heeding his measured tones, dreaming of she knew not what, save that the dreams were lyric, and sang of freedom in her ears.
they took more tangible shape as they waxed bolder in outline and scope. there was a tumble-down white cottage on the cliff beyond the coastguard station; two rooms and a wash-house below green eaves. it faced the open sea, but lay otherwise snugly below a jutting boulder, and was so much of a piece with rock and turf that the sea-pinks had seeded in the roof and encrusted it with emerald tufts. her fancy adorned this tenement; she saw herself there in a cotton gown, alone with wind and sea. what a life! the freedom of it, the space, the promise! not a speck could she descry upon the fair blue field of such a life. childlike she built upon the airy fabric, added to it, assured herself of it. some day, some day she would be there—free! the thought made her perfectly happy; she felt her blood glow.
mr. germain complained of the damp cornish air and took her to st. ives and newquay on the way to southover. once on the homeward path, he had no eyes for her in cornwall; all his hopes were now set upon the feast he should have of her, queening it there in his hall—queen by his coronation. she, for her part, was all for lingering good-byes to her glimpses of the wild. she went obediently, but carried with her the assurance that she should see her cottage again; and by some juggling of the mind, in the picture of it which floated up before her at call, she came to see always near it the tilt-cart and its occupant, her friend of the open common. a community down there! the tilt-cart stood in a hollow of the rocks within sound and sight of the sea; the ghost cropped the thyme above it; bingo ran barking out of the tent, and, seeing her, lowered his head and came wriggling for a caress. above them all, dominant, stood her friend, bareheaded to the buffeting gale, so clearly at times that she could see the wind bellying his white trousers or flacking the points of his rolling collar. his face unfortunately was not always to be seen; a mist over it baffled her, but egged her on. for a flash, for a passing second, his bright, quizzing eyes might be upon her; she could hear the greeting of the dawn laugh from them, and feel her bosom swell as she answered it, and knew the long day before them—and every long day to come. what a comradeship that might be—what a comradeship! she came to thank god daily that she had such a friend, and to declare stoutly to herself that she had no need to see him. friendship was independent of such needs; the necessities of touching, eyeing, speaking—what were these but fetters? lovers might hug such chains and call them leading-strings. poor lovers could not walk without them. but friends had their pride in each other and themselves. each stood foursquare in the faith of his friend; the independence of each was the pride of the other. so far was she from loving mr. senhouse that she learned without a pang of his visit to the cantacutes in the following summer, of his painting days with hertha de speyne, and was surprised at herself. it drew the two girls closer together; it gave zest to letter-writing, and brought miss hertha more than once to southover. senhouse was the presiding genius of their fireside talks; between hertha and senhouse mary began to find herself—a person, with a reasonable soul in human flesh.
her wedding-day, and the days that followed it, had dismayed the flesh; she could not be one to whom marriage was a sacred mystery, to be unveiled to piercing music. she had cried herself to sleep—once; but she cried no more. if she had been in love with her husband, even if she had ever been in love with anybody, she might have been won over by pity or by passion; but poor mr. germain was incapable of the second, and somewhat to her surprise she found herself unpersuaded, though she was touched, by the first. she did pity him, she pitied him deeply, but she could not help him. esteem she gave him, gratitude, obedience, meekness, respect. but herself—after that once—never, never! for that discharging of her conscience of its poor little trivial, human load had been forced upon her by pure generosity on her part (she knew it), and had cost her an agony of shame. and it had chilled him to the bone—she had seen his passion fade before her eyes, such passion as he had. her generosity had stultified her, played the traitor. she never taxed him with want of magnanimity, didn’t know the word—but she found herself resolute, and was as much surprised as he was. what dismay she had, as the honeymoon wore on, was brought her by her own position, not by her husband’s; that a girl such as she, with undeniable proofs to hand of her attractiveness of face and person, with experience of men and their ways, should find herself daughter to her husband! an indulged, courted, only daughter, if you please—but certainly a daughter. here was an anti-climax, to say the least of it; and her dismay endured through the honeymoon—until cornish cliffs gave her happier things to dream of. it disappeared as the great red flank of southover house filled up the scene. tussles with mrs. james, the sweets and perils of victory, ordeals of shooting-parties, dinner-parties, household cares, and, above all, routine—such drugs as these sent her heart to sleep. by the time she had been eighteen months a wife she had forgotten that she had never been other than a maiden.
now, what of cratylus, poor cratylus the mature, who, clasping his simple mero (or marina) to his heart, found that he had to reckon with her character first? good, honest man, he had never supposed her to have one; and the bitter thing was that the finding of her character woke up his own. he saw himself again in full plate-armour, cowering behind it, hiding from himself as well as from the world a terrible deformity—an open sore in his self-esteem which could never be healed again, which, at every chance of her daily life, must bleed and ache. oh, the pity of it, on how light a spring all this had depended—a hair, a gossamer! exeter—fatal day of exeter! he had believed himself young again. as she clung to him, half-sobbing, after dinner, he had pressed her to his bosom, called her his bride, his wife. she had not dared to look at him, had bowed her head, hidden her face in his shoulder, let him feel the trembling, the wild beating of her heart. then her broken confessions; pitiful, pitiful! what did they amount to, when all was told? but they, and what followed upon them—his own conduct, his own curse; and her conduct, and her curse—were his nightmare. he had found out that he could not live if he must remember them. he fought, literally, for life; and after a six months’ toil had succeeded in living. he spent himself in benevolence and care, gave her everything she could want, before she asked, taught her, prayed for her, watched over her. she was never out of his thoughts—and, poor girl, without knowing it, she stabbed him deeply every day.
he had his benevolence to fall back upon. he could be king of southover, of the cophetua dynasty; he could dazzle her, take her breath away, and have the delight, which he had promised himself, of seeing her misty eyes and cheeks flushed with wonder. yes, yes; but the ?sthetic nerve, you see, dulls with use, and the worst of a king’s homage to a beggar maid is that the more obsequious the homage the less beggar is the maid. if you set a coronet in her hair she will blush deliciously for a week; but in two years’ time it will be there as a matter of course, put there nightly by her woman—and bang goes your joy of that. so with all the other enrichments of society, travel, book-learning. the more she had of them, the more she was able to take for herself. he who put her in the way of knowledge could not grumble if she acted upon what he had taught her. such gifts as his destroy themselves. it had filled his eyes with tears to see his wilding in the great terraced house, to watch the little airs of dignity of matronhood, wifehood (alas, poor gentleman!) flutter about her, and, like birds, take assurance, and alight. her cares were charming, too. it was pretty to see her knit her brows over some tough nugget of dante’s, exquisite when she came faltering to him, coaxing for help. but then, naturally, the more help she had the less she came. it grew to be her pride to get through alone—her pride and his disaster. no. tristram duplessis had been wiser in his generation than he. if you love to fill a thing you must take care to keep it pretty empty. thus it was that king cophetua kneeled in vain. he had kneeled too low.
but there’s a balm in the passing years for cratylus as well as for marina. the musical clockwork of southover, which he had promised himself, became his. he went about his duties as landlord, county magnate, patron of reasonable things, tolerably sure of a welcome home from a pair of kind brown eyes. kisses might be his if he chose to call for them, clinging arms, a warm and grateful heart. such things had to be his solace; and sometimes they were. and he still fought for his treasure, against all the odds, with his teeth set hard. if he had lost grip it was because her muscles were more practised. he must try another, and another, if he would whirl her in the air. he must impress her anew, prove to her that he was a man, honour-worthy and loveworthy. his ambitions were rekindled: that was the result of his musings. in the spring of the year, when the tulips blazed in the italian gardens, and mary middleham had been mary germain for a good eighteen months, we heard him speak with young mr. wilbraham of sir gregory and the farlingbridge division of the county. there was a chance of lighting up the wonder again in a pair of brown eyes. he hoarded the thought for the month, and by june had made up his mind. then he broke it to his mary. “i will gladly put my experience at the service of the country,” he told her, “and convince you, if i can, that i am not too old for a public career.” she had told him that he wasn’t old at all, and had kissed his forehead. they happened to be alone for a few days just then; so that he could draw her down to his knee and talk to her about himself, and the part she would have to play for him in london. the house in hill-street must be reopened.
