Volume Three—Chapter Four.
Poor Andromeda!
While events were thus hastening on abroad, all was quiet at home, both at The Poplars and the parsonage. Fancy Andromeda’s lamentations when Perseus left her! and in her place picture Lizzie, since Tom had gone.
It was now autumn, or rather winter, for the month of November was well in hand, and Christmas was “coming,” as the adage says.—Some people’s Christmases seem always coming.
It was now autumn. The trees were leafless, with their skeleton boughs stretched out like spectral hands clutching towards the sky, and sighing with every breath of the dull wintry wind that swept across their moaning branches for the approach of spring.
What a change the past three weeks had made in Lizzie Pringle’s life! It is one of the anomalies of our nature, ever changeful and varying, that the world—our world—is made up of change, even in the most monotonous of lives. The machinery of existence is wonderfully intricate, and of such delicate construction, that the slightest hitch or strain can throw it entirely out of gear. We move on calmly, perhaps, in a smooth groove, from life to death, from the cradle towards the grave, when of a sudden a pebble gets into the works, a new element is introduced into, or an old one subtracted from, the course of our existence, and all is changed. No more do the wheels move steadily round and the cranks slide up and down as of yore; a hitch has occurred; and although the machine goes on still, apparently with the same rumble and clang, the motion is not what it was; it is parallel, perhaps, or elliptical, but is not the same as it was before. Nothing can ever restore it again. Our lives are altered against our wills, and though the cradle stands in the background and the grave looms in front, the change of the enchanter’s hand—it may be of pleasure and joy, or more likely one of grief and pain—has passed over our lives, and we ourselves are altered too, for better or worse—God grant the former!
In a woman’s life this change is more common, although not so apparent as with men; because love and marriage, which cause more proportionately this change, are looked upon by them more as their natural destiny than as exceptional incidents in an otherwise even life. Marriage is the ultimate end of a woman’s life, as the subsequent nursing of babies and darning of socks; with the sterner, though by no means nobler sex, it is but a new phase of existence.
When the little winged god makes his appearance, therefore, and hurls one of his death-dealing darts, it is a much more serious matter for a girl than it is with us. Daphne feels it far more acutely than Apollo. With him it has been merely a pleasant little change in his life—pour s’amuser; but to her it is a new existence—her life, her all. She has only been in a state of pupilage before; but now she is a woman, with all a woman’s hopes and fears. She has entered on the portals of the future state, when once Love’s fetters have entwined themselves around her, the state for which she was born—her ultima Thule.
For eighteen calm and happy years Lizzie’s life had flowed on smoothly in the one quiet groove. She had passed from babyhood to girldom and school-age in the usual course of nature, and, until now, she had never had a deeper happiness than what a passing fancy would give, or a greater trouble than a few hours could efface. Her one great loss—the death of her mother—had occurred at so early an age that it left no lasting impression on her; and she had consequently grown up a merry little lassie, winning all hearts with her sweetly piquante face and those wondrous violet eyes, whose unknown depths now laughed defiance at you, and now displayed a strange wistful languor, which irresistibly attracted you.
That was until last summer; but Lizzie was very much changed now. The little laughing girl was transformed into the winning, wistful maiden, who knew now that there was more in life than eighteen summers usually dreams of. The apples of the Tree of Knowledge had been tasted, and Lizzie became aware that existence was not all lotus-eating, although it did contain, perhaps, some secret joys unknown to childhood.
Everyone meets their “Fate” at some time or other; and Tom was her fate, young as they both were; perhaps, it was better that that mysterious affinity which unites us all, for a temporary or a permanent period with those especially appointed for us, should come across her early in life. It is a cup which one only sips once in a lifetime—better early perhaps than late. Do you know there is something in the Mormon doctrine after all—putting polygamy aside—in that principle of theirs that the brides of the elders or prophets are “sealed” to them. It shows a belief in the mystical and apparently predestined affinity of certain souls to one another.
From that first meeting in church, when the stolen glances of Tom had set the loom of love in motion, a regular and intricate warp and woof of affection had been woven between the pair. The time of their acquaintance was perhaps short; but love laughs at time even as well as he does at the proverbial locksmiths: between kindred souls an hour affects more than years in others—as may have been already observed.
Lizzie was visited with an attack of that malaria mortis which comes to some of us in our lives at some certain time or other, either for good or ill. It was a very serious attack. Not a trumpery little ailment which could be patched up for the nonce, and the patient recover without having a scar to remind her of the disease; but a real bona fide visitation, in which the sickness works its course from beginning to end, and is not to be repelled by namby-pamby lotions of milk and water, and worldly prudence and mammon panaceas. It was love. Love pur et simple, which one hears derided every day by philosophising “anti-gamonists” and Pharisaical parents, who esteem riches beyond happiness, and “an eligible parti” superior to the attainment of healthy though poor affection. Love overrides worldly motives still, however, in this so-called heathenish and worldly nineteenth century, and exists in spite of the false code of morality which strives to bear it down. Love in a cottage may be humbug certainly when our souls thirst after the gargoyles of a ten-storied mansion and purple and fine linen. The dinner of roots and herbs in preference to the stalled ox, is a delusion and a snare to one who had a weakness for entrées, and would rather the high priced salmon and early peas, at some fabled sum a peck in Covent Garden; but bear me out, Chloe, when next thou listenest with attentive ear to the tuneful pipes of Amaryllon, and you, God-like Augustus, when you see the modest blush of happiness which crimsons the cheek of the gentle though rustic Lettice Lisle!
After Lizzie had first seen Tom she did not know what was the matter with her, and nobody else could perhaps have enlightened her on the subject.
She was restless, and did not know what to do. Things which had previously given pleasure to her she now wondered she could have ever enjoyed. Nothing pleased her; nothing delighted her; what could have come over her?
Her brother perceived the change, and wondered too what was the matter. He thought Lizzie was hipped at being left alone so much, for he had to be out a good deal, and the household was only composed of himself and her, with the exception of the servants. Acting on this idea he had proposed to Lizzie that they should invite a certain Aunt Jane to visit them; but Lizzie made up a horrible little moue, expressive of disgust, and laughed the idea to scorn.
She drew such a picture of the peculiarities of the stern Aunt Jane, and showed what straits they would be reduced to under her régime, that Pringle quickly abandoned the project in holy horror, and wondered how he could have ever thought of such a thing. Then when he commented on Lizzie’s looks, and asked her affectionately what was the matter, she laughed it off at first, told him she was never better in her life, asked him what could induce him to question her so, and concluded by making a pretty scene, and sobbing on his neck. She was miserable! She did not know what was the matter with her! She must be ill! She would be all right probably to-morrow; she had a headache now, and was tired; she would go to bed!—which she accordingly did.
This was after the first acquaintance with Master Tom.
But when that young gentleman began to take such a deep interest in fly-fishing, and, in pursuing his favourite spoilt, had to pay so many and frequent visits to the parsonage in order to fish in the pool that ran at the bottom of the lawn, Lizzie got brighter and better.
Instead of her movements being all languor and lack of elasticity, they were now all life and vivacity. She took a deeper interest in everything around her; every little humdrum detail in her daily routine seemed to be invested with a new charm: there was not a brighter little lassie around the country side. She was merry then, and when Tom’s avowal came, and she heard from his own lips those burning words of love, of which she had been intuitively cognisant, and which she had, unknown to herself, already returned, her cup of happiness brimmed over.
The change was complete.
Then came the after relapse, when Tom came down so miserably to tell of his mother’s refusal, and had afterwards parted from her in anger.
In anger with her! She thought her little heart would break.
The falling out of lovers, however, is the renewal of love; and so Lizzie found it.
The happiness which she then enjoyed was greater than that which preceded it. Who is it that defines that word happiness to be “gleams of a brighter world, too soon eclipsed and forfeited?” Lizzie’s bliss, however, was saddened by the thought that Tom was soon to leave her. It intensified her love, and surrounded it with that holier charm which sorrow always lends.
Then came the parting. And Andromeda was left alone to lament, whilst her lover was ploughing the stormy main. Tom was “off to the wars”—rather a queer place for a knight of chivalry in the nineteenth century to seek for adventure, Abyssinia!—and Lizzie had, like most women in such cases, to nurse her grief, which was her joy as well, by herself. ’Tis the way of the world, as Kingsley sings—
“For men must work! and women must weep!
And the sooner ’tis over, the sooner to sleep!”
The weary weeks glided by slowly after Tom’s departure, and Lizzie’s little world was changed. But greater changes were coming soon, if not to her spiritual, at least to her temporal state.
Lizzie had been made aware, of course, long since, of her brother’s engagement with Laura Inskip; but she had been so much taken up with her own troubles that she had not had spirit enough to enter into Herbert’s “little roman” with all the good-natured enthusiasm of which her bursting: little heart was capable. Events had rolled on so rapidly that she became confused between them all, and the engagement with Laura was not looked upon with that surprise and interest with which any enterprise or suit of her brother’s was usually regarded.
But time went on, and Lizzie could not but interest herself now in the progress of change around her. She had liked the languid Laura in her way; but she was not the sort of girl—being a very energetic and hopeful little sister—that she would have selected for her brother’s mate. She would have had a little goddess or empress for Herbert; still as Herbert had chosen for himself, she made up her mind to love her expected sister-in-law with all her heart.
With these thoughts, Lizzie made many advances to the Inskips, but the old campaigner was very disagreeable to her, and treated her as a nonentity; and Laura was too lazy to share her future sister’s enthusiasm, so Lizzie’s feelings were damped. Carry, she thought very “nice,” but she was too noisy and gushing for Lizzie, just so heavily bereaved; consequently the little maiden was forced to withdraw herself within herself, and think of the future and Tom, and build very unstable castles in the air.
And so the autumn passed by, and winter was nigh, and the change changed still.
Herbert Pringle was to be married early in the new year. It was to be quite a grand affair, and from the hints dropped, Bigton and Hartwood village were all agog with the news and their anticipations, for you may be sure the campaigner was not one to hide her light under a bushel.
But Lizzie felt alone! Poor Andromeda. Perseus had gone! not in a classic trireme! but by one of the P. and O. steamers.