CHAPTER IX.
ELEANOR ARMYTAGE.
There was to be a great gathering of the family at aunt Alice’s house next day, in honour of our arrival. Uncle Armytage and aunt Kate were coming up from their country rectory with their daughter Eleanor, a girl of my own age, and their son Rupert, a young fellow lately from Oxford, now reading for holy orders. Aunt Kate had three more children, but they were in the school-room, and were to be left at home with their governess. In the evening Reginald Goodeve, whom his sisters had proudly told me was “an officer,” and now quartered in some suburban barracks, was coming up to dinner, and was to bring two of his fellow-officers with him to make up the proper complement of men for the party.
In the middle of the afternoon I was sitting in my room by myself. I had been sorting away my clothes in the drawers and cupboards assigned to them, having no maid of my own, and not wishing for anybody else’s, and I had refused to go out when this was done on the plea that I wanted to write letters. Of permitted correspondents I don’t think I had any that I cared for sufficiently to wish to make such a sacrifice to please them, for I disliked writing letters, and I had an intense desire to drive in the park, and see the costumes and equipages displayed there at this season and on such a lovely day. But I had discovered that the Australian mail was on the point of leaving, and I had determined to send an account of our voyage and news of our safe arrival to little Mrs. Barton, our late clergyman’s wife, because I knew she would gossip about it to the people who went to church the Sunday after she got the letter, and that my dearest Tom would hear it all. Father had said “Next mail will be time enough,” and “People never make themselves anxious about travellers nowadays,” when I suggested to him the propriety of writing a line to the Smiths, or of asking mother to do so; but, of course, they did not take into account the weary longing for good tidings that my poor, dear, lonely boy would feel. So I allowed my cousins to carry off mother for a drive without me, and I spread out my materials on a little table near the window, and sat down to my task.
I had not begun to write. I was resting my head on my hand, and looking down dreamily upon the trees and bushes in the square below—very tiny trees and bushes, but green and shady, and sweet with early summer blossoms—and my thoughts were very sad ones. I was thinking of the little bush township and the little brick church, with its shingle roof and its bell tinkling cheerily from the limb of a gum-tree, wondering whose buggy would appropriate the particular corner of the fence where ours used to stand, and who would sit in the choir instead of me, and how my dear love was bearing the dreadful new solitude that had come to him. How vividly I pictured what the Sundays would be to him now! No merry drive home through the parrot-haunted bush, one buggy at the tail of the other; no stopping at Narraporwidgee for the immemorial “cold collection” (for the new owner was a retired storekeeper, ambitious, like the merchant princes at home, in his smaller way, of becoming a country gentleman and a J.P.); no happy talks under the apple-trees in the warm afternoons; no hand-in-hand rambles by the river in the lovely moonlight. I knew so well how he would go wandering about by himself, while his father nodded over his English papers, and his mother dozed in her armchair—how he would sit on that stump at the water’s edge, with our two dogs running races round him, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, and think of his Kitty at the other side of the world, and wonder if she would keep true to him through those two long, long years.
“Oh, Tom,” I murmured aloud to the empty air, while my tears dropped fast upon the white sheet before me, “what shall we do without one another? Oh, what shall we do?”
There came a little tap at the door at this unfortunate juncture, and I wiped my eyes fiercely.
“Is anybody in,” asked a sweet-tuned voice that I had never heard before.
“It must be aunt Kate,” I said to myself, and I rose reluctantly to admit her.
Aunt Kate was my godmother, and my father’s favourite sister. She had been in the habit of sending little presents to me on my birthday, and otherwise showing an interest in my existence, and it seemed quite natural that she should seek me in this affectionate haste. But it was not aunt Kate. It was a youthful little creature, with soft hazel eyes and a tender pale face, dressed in the severest grey homespun, with only big pearl buttons to trim it, and a little grey bonnet, with a white border peeping out under it upon her smooth brown hair.
“I heard you were in, cousin Kitty,” the sweet voice said, “so I have come to call upon you. I am Eleanor Armytage, and I am so glad you are come home to us at last!”
Here she lifted her small arms and clasped my neck to kiss me, whereat I—the last person in the world to be sentimental with strangers—hugged her fervently, and then burst into violent weeping. This is how I made the acquaintance of the best and dearest of all my English cousins, sitting beside her on a low sofa at the foot of the bed, with my head on her shoulder, and my hand clasped in her lap, like a weak-minded school-girl. I cannot describe the delicacy of her sympathy, and her delicate ways of expressing it, with so much self-possession and such an entire absence of “gush,” and yet with such a flutter of emotion about her, and such an evident sound of tears in her voice. In my own rash and headlong way, I lost my heart to her there and then. But I only indulged in what, for me, was an extraordinary weakness for a very few seconds, and then I sat bolt upright and abused myself roundly.
“No, I am not a bit tired, and I do not feel strange—people are too kind to me for that; I’m just a great baby, and I’m ashamed of myself,” I said, scrubbing my wet eyes angrily. “Pray don’t think I’m such a donkey in the ordinary way, cousin Eleanor. To think of my receiving you for the first time by falling on your neck and weeping, like a born idiot!”
“Don’t call yourself any more names, Kitty,” broke in Eleanor, with a rather hysterical laugh. “I’m sure I understand it. I know it just happens—just once in a way—when you are thinking of things that even if a dog comes and looks at you it upsets you somehow, when an army of soldiers wouldn’t do it.”
When she said that—so true as it was—I thought of my dear old Spring, and how he used to come and look at me if anything was the matter. I could see his great, soft, wistful eyes, as he laid his nose on my knee, and held his feathery tail poised ready to wag the moment he was satisfied that things were not so bad as he had feared, and found himself at liberty to offer consolation. He would never come and look at me any more! He would stray away to Narraporwidgee, and hunt about for his lost mistress; and Tom would go in search of him, and the two would sadly wander back again, heavy-footed and heavy-hearted under the sense of loss and loneliness that weighed them down. I buried my face in the sofa cushions, and broke into such a passion of crying as I had never indulged in since I parted from them. This time I could not get over it so easily. Eleanor let me alone—that is to say, she went down on her knees beside me, and coaxed my head with her small pale cheek and her small warm hand, and she kept silence while I had it out. I blessed her for her delicate forbearance, and began to think better of girls from that moment, for her sake.
This was the worst fall I ever had in my daily contest with memory, set always in battle array against me, though I was subject to periodical reverses. And Eleanor Armytage became in a manner identified with my inner life thenceforth, though even to her I did not confide so much as the name of my sweetheart, or the bare fact that I had one. We had not “things in common;” we were as unlike one another as two girls of the same age, belonging to the same class, could well be; but in this earliest hour of our acquaintance we inaugurated a true and tender friendship that will certainly last our lives. Neither of us knew what it was to say one thing and mean another; we could never take one another in; we were incapable of that amiable, half-unconscious, and, in the main, well-meaning hypocrisy, which, though it makes many fervent friendships, destroys the most of them, sooner or later; we trusted one another with the completest trust, even when our mutual relations were the least agreeable, and occasionally they were not as pleasant as they might have been. And these I take it, are the essential conditions of any friendship that is worthy of the name.
When I began to show signs of recovery, Eleanor poured some water into a hand-basin, and sponged my heated face. I sat up submissively to have it done, feeling that I had so dreadfully disgraced myself that I could no longer assert my dignity. “I am so sorry,” I said meekly, “but the truth is, I had just got a little attack of homesickness before you came in, thinking of my old friends. I hardly ever cry; but, you know, if once you do let yourself begin, almost anything will start you afresh.”
“Yes, dear, I know, and I came just at the wrong moment. I was reading to-day in the train as I came along an old Welsh tale of a chieftain who buried the last of his sons, all slain in battle, and how a bird began to sing in a tree over the grave as they laid the body in it. It said, ‘that broke the old chiefs heart.’ It was nothing, of course, to all that must have gone before, but it was just the particular touch that pierced him. I am sure I understand that. Do you like reading old poetry, Kitty?” she added, hastily, fearing this pathetic story would tempt another outburst if she gave me time to think about it.
I told her I liked poetry of all sorts, if it really was poetry, and not sentimental platitudes in rhyme. And then we had a discussion about Tennyson, and our first “falling out”—for, having cordially agreed that the music of some of his descriptive passages, and the perfect beauty of some special poems and verses were enough to haunt one’s memory to one’s dying day, she went on to glorify him as an infallible deity in human shape, while I contended that a man who wrote such shocking bad grammar as he sometimes did hadn’t learned his art, notwithstanding the years he had been about it. First, she denied the accusation against his grammar with indignation (touched with an air of kindly toleration for a critic who probably did not know good grammar when she saw it); and then I quoted several passages in proof of it from a volume lying on a table at my hand, in a clear prose voice of triumph. Whereat, having to shift her ground, she planted herself upon the very popular theory that a great poet was “above those trivial considerations,” as being, in her opinion, a perfectly safe basis of operations. Upon which I hotly insisted that a poet had his responsibilities as well as his privileges in his dealings with his mother tongue, and asked her what she would think of a great poet who sat down in a room with her with his hat on.
Finding this argument unproductive, we went on to discuss books in general, and in particular the literature of the colonies; whence I drifted into reminiscences of Narraporwidgee life, and Eleanor told me of her home in Norfolk. And so we talked—puzzling one another a little at times, I with my childish ignorance of some things and my wide and cultured acquaintance with others, and she with the strange, formal lines of thought and judgment in which her clear intellect flowed, until my cousins came home, and found us laughing and gossiping over a cheerful cup of tea, like old friends.
I must introduce the rest of my relations in a few words, and have done with it. Here is the family party, on its way to dinner:—
First in order, next to mother and uncle Groodeve, is dear aunt Kate, with her gentle face like Eleanor’s, her soft grey hair, her soft grey dress—less like father in some ways than aunt Alice, but with more of his genial frankness in her kind eyes. A very pretty woman she must have been when she was young; even now she has a certain bloom and brightness in her fair faded face that is very winning to me, expressing, as it clearly does, a warm, and loving, and sympathetic nature. She is younger than aunt Alice, but she does not wear a low-bodied dress, and flowers in her hair, as Mrs. Goodeve does. Some soft old lace, and a pearl brooch at her throat, and a little lace cap with lappets on her head, are the modest ornaments of her elderly lady costume; and father tells her, as he lays his broad palm on the thin fingers she rests on his coat sleeve, that she is prettier than she was when she was the belle of the family, and all the beaux of the county were after her.
Uncle Armytage, though he comes last, as aunt Alice’s chosen squire, must be introduced with his wife. Tall, large-framed, majestic, with fine lines at the corners of his mouth, and a noble old Roman nose much elevated in the air, he has a dignified and imposing presence which awes me just a little. His voice is measured, his accent particularly pure and refined, his manner the least trifle verging upon pompousness; but, as mother says, and she ought to know, there is no mistaking him for a well-born and well-bred gentleman in whatever company you find him. Every one defers to him as if by instinct; every one listens when he lays down the law, which he does with the least possible imperiousness; and the servants wait on him with a silent assiduity that marks their (always correct) estimate of his social importance. As a clergyman, he is one of a class by no means rare in England, I am told; but looking at him on the outside I am quite sure I never met one the least like him before.
Behind aunt Kate and father, I come sailing downstairs, radiant in white net and the inevitable jewel that I am so proud of; and Reginald Goodeve is my cavalier. A handsome young man in the common sense of the term, with shaven cheeks and close-cropped head, a bold pair of dark eyes, and a delicate, silky, dark moustache, not to speak of a tall and slender figure which evening clothes become, he justifies his sisters’ inordinate admiration of him perhaps, though I do not consider him worthy to be for a moment compared with Tom. Perhaps I am a little prejudiced to-night in my first impressions. I remember Tom’s warning to me not to have “anything to do with” him, because he was not a nice fellow; and I cannot help feeling that there is a shade of familiarity in his way of talking to me that is not so much cousinly as an indication that he considers me a colonial bumpkin, and, as such, not requiring the strict courtesy demanded by ladies of his own world. And then he asked me about Tom just now, before we left the drawing-room, in a particularly offensive manner. “How’s Tom Jones—Jack Robinson—what’s the fellow’s name?—that young bushman of yours who was at Christchurch—whom Bertie Armytage brought here to a ball once?”
I was very angry at his impertinence, and I answered him haughtily, and then, seeing him taken aback and puzzled to understand why I should fire up at such an innocent question, I crimsoned to the colour of a peony; whereupon he smiled mischievously, and began to tease me in what I thought an extremely vulgar manner. However, he is too bright, and chatty, and good-humoured to be repelled altogether; and, as we go down the stairs, arm in arm, all in the bright gaslight, I am in too high spirits to be disagreeable, even if I wished.
Behind us, in her noiseless way, glides pretty Eleanor, in her sober draperies of black gauze, with one white rose in her smooth hair, shining out against the sleeve of her gigantic attendant, Captain Damer. I need not describe her, though I long to do it over again, and Captain Damer is only a huge, ponderous, good-natured fellow, with the biggest red moustache I ever saw, and a voice like muffled thunder. Behind these again hops cousin Bertha on the arm of Lieutenant Wiggles. Bertha is gorgeous in frizzled hair and a bower of artificial flowers, and a gown so tight about her legs that it puzzles me to understand how she will get upstairs again when dinner is over. Lieutenant Wiggles is a little, skipping, dancing-master sort of man, with a high metallic voice that reaches me distinctly, even through the thickness of Captain Damer’s body and his tremendous bass notes.
“Your pretty little colonial heiress far exceeds my expectations,” he is saying (the horrid little wretch, I should like to box his ears!).
“Yes,” replies Bertha, also in a clear falsetto, and with a peculiar drawl that I notice she wears in the evening, with her other full-dress ornaments; “yes, she has agreeably surprised us all. You really would hardly know she was colonial if you were not told.”
“I am quite sure I should not. And her dress—really now, her dress is quite perfect—now, isn’t it?”
“Oh, her dress!” says Bertha, with what sounds like a sharper intonation of voice. “Of course her dress is the correct thing, for it was made at one of the best houses in Paris. She did not bring that from Australia.”
“She brought that fine figure, though.”
Here Captain Damer begins to thunder away to Eleanor with a somewhat angry vehemence. I know he is kindly trying to shut off that obtrusive dialogue from my ears, and I feel grateful to him. I inwardly determine that I will make myself pleasant to him when he comes up from his wine, and that I will not speak to Lieutenant Wiggles if I can help it. Bella Goodeve and Bertie Armytage bring up the rear of the family procession, which is closed by aunt Alice and her distinguished brother-in-law. Bella is a weak copy of Bertha, and both of them (as far as I can judge from so short an acquaintance) fair types of a common class of fashionable young ladies not quite in the best society. Cousin Bertie is like his father, in a loose, unformed, elementary way, with a thin, bright-eyed, hook-nosed face, a large frame unfilled and angular, and the shy, quiet manners of a gentlemanly boy. Some day he will be big and handsome, I think to myself, if he does not study too much, or fall into consumption.
And so we sail, and sweep, and rustle into the dining-room, two and two, and are marshalled to our places at the table, which is simply a great bank of flowers, with a shining fringe of silver and crystal all round it, lit up by that dazzling gaslight which I enjoy so much, and which never makes my head ache as it does mother’s. Uncle Armytage stands up and says grace, the velvet-footed servants begin to glide about with plates and dishes; Mr. Goodeve beams upon his family party, and says “Welcome” in every line of his kind, ugly, fat face. And my dear father looks round on us all, and sighs, and says to aunt Alice, “We only want James here to make it all complete.”
“James!” echoes Mr. Goodeve, with cold astonishment. “James!—my dear Harry, what are you thinking of?”
“I can’t help thinking, now we are all together and happy, that I wish poor James were here, too,” repeats my dearest daddy, gravely.
The remark is evidently considered by the company (some of them, at any rate) a proof of the disastrous effects of bush life in blunting the polite perceptions of even well-born gentlemen, but mother looks up at him with quick, glad eyes; and, as for me, it is all I can do to keep from running round the table to kiss him.