I
Firelight casts a weird enchantment over an old-fashioned room in the gloaming, and cleanses it from the commonplace. Distant comers are veiled in a shadow full of mystery; heavy curtains conceal unknown persons in their folds; a massive cabinet, full of Eastern curios, is flung into relief, so that one can identify an Indian god, who distinctly grins and mocks with sardonic humour, although in daylight he be a personage of awful solemnity; a large arm-chair, curiously embroidered, grows into the likeness of a stout elderly gentleman of benevolent heart but fierce political prejudices; the flickering flames sketch on the ceiling scenes of past days which can never return; and on a huge mirror the whole interior is reflected as in a phantasmagoria.
“It is, I do honestly believe, the dreariest room in Bloomsbury, and one can hardly go farther,” said a young woman, lying at her ease on the white bearskin before the fire; “and yet it has a beauty of its own—sober, of course, but kindly; yes, that is the word, and true. My room at Kensington, that Reggie and his artist friends have been doing up in their best style, as Maples say, does not look prettier to-night, nor your lovely black oak at the Rectory.”
“If you had got your will, Frances,” answered a sister some six years older from the couch, “every stick of this furniture would have been sold long ago, and the walls draped in pale green. You are full of sentiment to-night.”
“It's the double wedding and the departure from the ancestral mansion which is casting shadows over my too susceptible heart and a glamour over this prosaic old room with its solid Philistine furniture,” and Frances pretended to conceal her rising emotion behind a fan. “Your already matronly staidness, Gerty, is incapable of entering into such moods. It is a mercy one daughter, at least—I think there are two—reproduces mother, and can never be accused of sentiment—and such a blessing for the Rector! It is a rule, one would say from observation, that clergymen choose matter-of-fact and managing wives, as a check, I suppose, on their own unworldliness and enthusiasm. As for me, so frivolous and... affectionate, poor papa must have the entire responsibility,” and Frances sighed audibly.
“Are you really deceived by mother's composure and reserve?” Gertrude's quiet tone emphasized the contrast between her refined face and Frances' Spanish beauty. “Strangers count her cold as marble, and I can excuse them, for they judge her in society. We ought to know better, and she has always seemed to me the very type of loyalty and faithfulness.”
“Of course she is the dearest mater ever was, and far too unselfish, and she has been most patient with her wayward youngest daughter; but she is—well, I could not say that she is a creature of emotion.”
“You believe, I suppose,”—Gertrude was slightly nettled—“in women who kiss frantically on meeting, first one cheek and then the other, and sign themselves 'with a thousand remembrances and much love, yours most affectionately,' who adopt a new friend every month, and marry three times for companionship.”
“Gertrude, I am ashamed of you; you are most provoking and unjust; my particular detestations, as you know very well, are a couple of girls' arms round each other's waists—studying one another's dresses all the time—and a widow who marries again for protection,—it's a widower who says companionship,—but I enjoy your eloquence; it will be a help to Fred when he is sermon-making. You will collaborate—that is the correct word, isn't it?”
“None of us will ever know how deep and strong is the mater's love,” continued Gertrude, giving no heed to her sister's badinage; “she cannot speak, and so she will always be misunderstood, as quiet people are. Did you ever notice that she writes her letters on that old desk, instead of using the escritoire? that is because it was father's; and although she never mentions his name, I believe mother would rather starve than leave this house or part with a chair that was in it when he was living.
“Frances, I'll tell you something I once saw and can never forget. When I slept in mother's room, I woke one night, and found she had risen. She opened a drawer that was always kept locked, and took out a likeness of father. After looking at it again and again—can you believe that?—she laid it on a chair, and, kneeling down, prayed to God for us all, and that they might meet again; and then she looked at him once more, and put the picture in its place.
“Pray God, Frances, that you and I, who are to be married on Tuesday, may love as she has done, once for ever; do you know I've often thought that Grace is the only one of us that has mother's power of affection, and yet we are to be married and she is to be left.”
“Yes, Grace is like mother, and yet I don't think mother understands her one bit What a wife she would make to some man, Gerty; only it would be bad for him. She would serve him like a slave, and he would be insufferable.
“But there is no fear of that calamity,” Frances went on, “for Grace will never marry. She is beginning to have the airs of an old maid already, a way of dressing and a certain primness which is alarming.”
“It passes me,” said Gertrude, “how no man has seen her excellence and tried to win her; do you know I've sometimes thought that Mr. Lennox admired her; they would certainly make a perfect pair.”
“You are the dearest old stupid, Gertrude. Of course George Lennox adores Grace, as he would do a saint in a painted window; and Grace appreciates him because he teaches astronomy or conchology or something to working men in the East End. Neither of them knows how to make love; their conversation is a sort of religious exercise,” and Frances' eyes danced with the delight of a mistress in her art “Why, I once did my best with him just to keep my hand in, and Gertrude, you might as well have flirted with that wretched god. I would rather have the god, for he winked to me just now quite distinctly, the reprobate old scoundrel.”
“Perhaps you're right, and Grace does not wish to marry. But it will be lonely in this big, empty house for mother and her when we are gone.”
“Dull! Gerty, you do not understand the situation. It will be a relief for the two of them to have this love traffic over, and no more men about the house. Grace simply endures it, as a nun might, and the mater resents any of her daughters being married. They have their programme fixed. Grace will visit her sick people in the forenoon, and the mater will do her tradesmen; in the afternoon the two will attend the Committee for the Relief of Decayed Washerwomen, and after dinner Gracie will read to mother out of Hallam's Middle Ages.
“I'll box that creature's ears,” and Frances jumped to her feet, a very winsome young woman indeed; “he's grinning from ear to ear on his pedestal at some wicked joke, or as if he knew a family secret He's an old cynic, and regards us as a pair of children prattling about life.”