Chapter Four.
“Hope.”
“The wit, the vivid energy of sense,
The truth of nature, which, with Attic point,
And kind, well-temper’d satire, smoothly keen,
Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects.”
Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles on imaginative foundations—châteaux en Espagne—that had almost crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous months, of waiting, and watching, and longing!
She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks, its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand, into an enchanted palace.
The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been awakened; and all was altered.
The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux, describing deeds of gallant chivalry—so my fancy pictured—and love, and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in effected all this to my mind.
What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm face bent earnestly over her task—the surrounding foliage, scattered here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter omnes, as Virgil sang of “the young Marcellus,” his hero: she “glistened out before them all.”
Of course she was introduced to me.
“Mr Lorton—Miss Minnie Clyde.” Now, at last, I had met her and knew her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell had said! Just in keeping with its owner.
As my name was pronounced, she raised her beautiful grey eyes from the garland in her lap; and I could perceive, from a sudden gleam of intelligence which shot through them for an instant, that I was at once recognised:—from my face, I’m sure, she must have noticed that she had not been forgotten.
I was in heaven; I would not have relinquished my position, kneeling at her feet and stripping off ivy leaves for her use, no, not for a dukedom!
Our conversation became again imperceptibly of a higher tone. Hers was light, sparkling, brilliant; and one could see that she possessed a fund of native drollery within herself, despite her demure looks and downcast eyes. She had a sweet, low voice, “that most excellent thing in woman;” while her light, silvery laughter rippled forth ever and anon, like a chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach’s champagne music.
In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler’s prosy platitudes, which some deemed wit—Horner, par exemple—sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake, one of the “gushing” order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather, a too pliant sapling—her inane “yes’s” and lisping “no’s” having an opportunity of being “weighed in the balance,” and consequently, in my opinion, “found wanting.” All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me singularly silly.
From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.
To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his assertions; and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that is grand and good in a writer and in man.
“You make a great mistake,” I said, “for Thackeray is a satirist pur et simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods—indeed I would rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term.”
“Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference lies between the two?” the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and wishing, as usual, to display his critical acumen by demolishing me.
“I will tell you with pleasure,” said I, not a bit “put out,” according to his evident wish and expectation, “and I will use the plainest language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming society—in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private opinion, you need only take it for what it is worth.”
“Thank you, Mr Lorton,” said somebody, giving me a gratefully intelligent look from a pair of deep, thinking grey eyes.
“Oh, indeed! so that’s your opinion, Lorton?” put in Mr Mawley, as antagonistic as ever. “So that’s your opinion, is it? I will do as you say, and take it for what it is worth—that is, keep my own still! You may be very sharp and clever, and all that sort of thing, my dear fellow; but I don’t see the difference between the two that you have so lucidly pointed out. Satire and cynicism are co-equal terms to my mind: your argument won’t persuade me, Lorton, although I must say that you are absolutely brilliant to-day. You should really start a school of Modern Literature, my dear fellow, and set up as a professor of the same!”
“Please get my scissors, Frank,” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to stop our wordy warfare. I got them; but I had my return blow at the curate all the same.
“I suppose you’d be one of my first pupils, Mr Mawley,” I said. “I think I could coach you up a little!”
He was going to crush me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation, being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by entering the arena and changing the conversation to a broader footing.
“How I dote on Thackeray!” she exclaimed with all her natural impulsiveness. “What a dear, delicious creature Becky Sharp is; and that funny old baronet, Sir Pitt something or other, too! When I first took up Vanity Fair I could not let it out of my hands until I finished it.”
“That’s more than I can say,” said the curate. “I don’t like Thackeray. He cuts up every one and everything. Is not that a cynic for you?”
“Not everybody,” said Min—I cannot call her anything else now—coming to my assistance, “not everybody, Mr Mawley. I think Thackeray, with all his satire and kindly laughter in his sleeve at persons that ought to be laughed down, has yet given us some of the most pathetic touches of human nature existing in English literature. There’s the old colonel in The Newcomes, for instance. That little bit about his teaching his tiny grandson to say his prayers, before he put him into bed in his poor chamber in the Charter House, to which he was reduced, would make any one cry. And Henry Esmond, and Warrington, and Laura—where would you find more nobly-drawn characters than those?” and she stopped, out of breath with her defence of one of the greatest writers we have ever had, indignant, with such a pretty indignation, at his merits being questioned for a moment.
“Of course I must bow to your decision, Miss Clyde,” said the curate, with one of those stock ceremonial bows that stood him in such good stead amongst the female community of the parish. He was a cunning fellow, Mawley. Knew which way his interest lay; and never went against the ladies if he could help it. “But,” he continued, “if we talk of pathos, there’s ‘the great master of fiction,’ Dickens; who can come up to him?”
“Ah, yes! Mr Mawley,”—chorused the majority of the girls—“we quite agree with you: there’s nobody like Dickens!”
It is a strange thing how perverse the divine sex is, in preferring confectionery to solid food; and superficial writers, to those who dive beneath the surface of society and expose its rottenness—like as they esteem Tupper’s weak-minded version of Solomon’s Proverbs beyond the best poetry that ever was written!
I wasn’t going to be beaten by the curate, however, prattled he never so wisely with the cunning of the serpent-charmer. “I grant you,” said I, “that Dickens appeals oftener to our susceptible sympathies; but he is unreal in comparison with Thackeray. The one was a far more correct student of human nature than the other. Dickens selected exceptionalities and invested them with attributes which we never see possessed by their prototypes whom we may meet in the world. He gives us either caricature, or pictures of men and women seen through a rose-coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you life as it is. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself how the ‘dummies’ and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper painting, all beauty from the front of ‘the house,’ looks on nearer inspection, how the ‘lifts’ work, and the ‘flats’ are pushed on; besides disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and ‘properties.’ He is not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did you ever read the former’s Story of a Feather, by the way?”
“No,” answered Mawley, testily, “I can’t say I ever did; and I don’t think it likely I ever will.”
“Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank,” said the kindly voice of my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right time—as she always did, indeed—to throw oil on the troubled waters. “But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children,” she went on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, “do you know, children, I’ve no doubt you’ll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read ‘David Copperfield’—and I was an old woman then—I cried my eyes out over the account of the death of poor Dora’s little dog Gyp. Dear little fellow! Don’t you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master’s hand and died? I think it’s the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life.”
“And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell,” said Min, in her soft, low voice, which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in her clear grey eyes—silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her heart. “I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of now—except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the ‘Christmas Carol,’ where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it dry-eyed now.”
“Nor I,” lisped Baby Blake, following suit, in order to keep up her reputation for sentimentality; “I would thob my eyth out!”
“See,” quoted the curate, grandiloquently, “how ‘one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!’”
“For my part,” exclaimed Miss Spight, who had taken no share in our conversation since we had dropped personalities, “I don’t see the use of people crying over the fabulous woes of a lot of fictitious persons that never existed, when there is such an amount of real grief and misery going on in the world.”
“That is not brought home to us,” said Min, courageously; “but the troubles and trials of the people in fiction are; and I believe that every kind thought which a writer makes throb through our hearts, better enables us to pity the sorrows of actual persons.”
“Bai-ey Je-ove!” exclaimed Horner, twisting his eye-glass round and making an observation for the first time—the discussion before had been apparently beyond his depth,—“Bai-ey Je-ove! Ju-ust what I was gaw-ing to say! Bai-ey Je-ove, yaas! But Miss Spight is much above human emawtion, you know, and all that sawt of thing, you know-ah!”
“Besides,” continued Min, not taking any notice of our friend’s original remark I was glad to see, “one does not always cry over novels. I’m sure I’ve laughed more than I’ve wept over Dickens, and other authors.”
“Ah!” said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head, “life is too serious for merry-making! It is better to mourn than to rejoice, as I’ve often heard my poor dear papa say when he was alive.”
“Nonsense, ma!” pertly said her daughter Seraphine; “you can’t believe that. I’m sure I’d rather laugh than cry, any day. And so would you, too, ma, in spite of your seriousness!”
“Your mamma is quite right in some respects, my dear,” said little Miss Pimpernell. “We should not be always thinking of nothing but merry-making. Don’t you recollect those lines of my favourite Herrick?—
“‘Time flies away fast!
The while we never remember,
How soon our life here
Grows old with the year,
That dies in December.’”
“Yes, I do, you cross old thing!” said the seraph, shaking her golden locks and laughing saucily; “and I remember also that your ‘favourite Herrick’ says something else about one’s ‘gathering rose-buds whilst one may.’”
“You naughty girl!” said Miss Pimpernell, trying to look angry and frown at her; but the attempt was such a palpable pretence that we all laughed at her as much as the delinquent.
“And what is your favourite style of poetry, Miss Clyde?” asked the curate, taking advantage of the introduction of Herrick to change the subject.
And then there followed a chorus of discussion: Miss Spight declared she adored Wordsworth: Mr Mawley tried to show off his superiority, and I attempted to put him down; I believe I was jealous lest Min should agree with him.
“Now, Frank,” exclaimed Miss Pimpernell, “I will not have any more sparring between you and Mr Mawley, for I’m sure you’ve argued enough. It is ‘the merry Christmas-time,’ you know; and we ought all to be at peace, and gay and happy, too! What do you say, girls?”
“But what shall we do to be merry?” asked Bessie Dasher.
“Ah! my dear,” groaned her mother; “it is not right to be foolishly ‘merry,’ as you call it. This season of the year is a very sad one, and we ought to be thinking, as my poor dear papa used to say, of what our Saviour did for us and the other world! We have now arrived at the end of another year, and it is very sad, very sad!”
“What!” exclaimed Min, “wrong to be merry at Christmas? The vicar said in his sermon last Sunday, that our hearts ought to expand with joy at this time; and that we should try, not only to be glad and happy in ourselves, but also to make others glad and happy, too. It appears to me,” and her face flushed with excitement as she spoke, “a very erroneous idea of religion that would only associate it with gloom and sadness. The same Creator endowed us with the faculty to laugh as well as cry; and we must take poor comfort in him if we cannot be glad in his company, to which the Christmas season always brings us nearer and into more intimate connection, as it were.”
“Bravo, my little champion!” said the vicar, who had again stolen in unperceived by us all. “That is the spirit of true Christianity. You have preached a more practical sermon than I, my dear.” Then, seeing her confusion at being thus singled out and her embarrassment at having, as she thought, been too forward in speaking out impulsively on the spur of the moment, the vicar created a diversion. “And now, young ladies,” he said, “as we are going to be merry, what shall we play at?”
“Oh, puss in the corner!” cried Seraphine Dasher. “That will be delightful!”
“With all my heart; puss in the corner be it,” said the vicar, who could be a boy again on fitting occasions, and play with the best of us. “Come, Mawley,” he added, “come and exert yourself; and help to pull these forms out of the way,” setting to work vigorously at the same time, himself.
In another minute or two we were in the middle of a wild romp, wherein little Miss Pimpernell and the vicar were the most active participants—they showing themselves to be quite as active as the younger hands; while Miss Spight and Lady Dasher were the only idle spectators. Min at first did not join in, as she was not accustomed to the ways of us old habitués, but she presently participated, being soon as gay and noisy as any. What fun we had in blindfolding Horner, and manoeuvring so that he should rush into the arms of Miss Spight! What a shout of laughter there was when he exclaimed, clasping her the while, “Bai-ey Je-ove! Yaas, I’ve cawght you at lawst!”
The look of pious horror which settled on the face of the elderly maiden was a study.
Thus our working day ended; and it became time to separate and go home. I had the further happiness of seeing Min to her door, both of us living in the same direction.
It was the same on the morrow, and on the morrow after that, for a whole week.
Of course, we did not talk “Shakspeare and the musical glasses” always. Our discourse was generally composed of much lighter elements, especially when Mr Mawley and I did not come in contact—argument being then, naturally, as a dead letter. Our conversation during these peaceful interregnums mainly consisted in friendly banter, parish news, and gossip. Scandal Miss Pimpernell never permitted; indeed, no one would have had the heart to say an ill-natured thing of anybody else in her presence.
Day after day Min and I were closely associated together, learning to know more of one another than we might have acquired in years of ordinary society intercourse; day after day, I would watch her dainty figure, and study her beautiful face, and gaze into the fathomless depths of her honest grey eyes, my love towards her increasing by such rapid strides, that, at length, I almost worshipped the very ground on which she trod.
And so the week wore by, until Christmas Eve arrived. Then our task was finished, and we decorated Saint Canon’s old church with all the wreaths and garlands, the crosses and illuminations, on which we had been so busy in the school-room; making it look quite modern in its festal preparation for the ensuing day, when the result of our handiwork would be displayed to the admiration, we hoped, of the congregation at large.
On parting with Min late in the evening at her door—for our work at the church had occupied us longer than usual—I thought it the happiest Christmas Eve I had ever passed; and, as I went to bed that night, I wondered, dreamily, if the morning’s sun would rise for another as happy a day, while I prayed to God that He would shape my life in accordance with the fervent desire of my heart.