We are a strange race! Here are two couples engaged in the same pursuit, and yet how different is the process! While Lyster is strolling idly by Miss Townshend's side, and listening to her little nonsense, Churchill and Barbara are stepping ahead, thoroughly engrossed in their conversation. He is talking now, telling her of a German adventure of his; how, with some other students, he made the descent of the Rhine on one of the timber-rafts; how they came to grief just below the Lôrely, and were all nearly drowned. He tells this with great animation and with many gestures, acting out his story, as is his wont; and throughout all he has a sensation of pleasure as he catches glimpses of her upturned earnest face, lighting up at the special bits of the narrative, always eager and attentive. His earnestness seems infectious. She has dropped all her society drawl, all her society tricks and byplay, and shows more of the real woman than she has for many a day. They talk of Germany and its literature, of Goethe and Schiller and Heine; and he tells her some of those stories of Hoffmann which are such special favourites with Bürschen. Thus they pass on to our home poets; and here Barbara is the talker, Churchill listening and occasionally commenting. Barbara has read much, and talks well. It is an utter mistake to suppose that women nowadays have what we have been accustomed, as a term of reproach, to call "miss-ish" taste in books or art. Five minutes' survey of that room which Barbara called her own in her aunt's house in Gloucester Place would have served to dispel any such idea. On the walls were proofs of Leonardo's "Last Supper" and Landseers "Shoeing the Horse;" a print of Delaroche's "Execution of Lady Jane Grey;" a large framed photograph of Gerome's "Death of Cæsar;" an old-fashioned pencil-sketch of Barbara's father, taken in the old days by D'Orsay long before he ever thought of turning that pencil to actual use; and a coloured photograph--a recent acquisition--of a girl sitting over a wood-fire in a dreamy attitude, burning her love-letters, called "L' Auto da Fé." On the bookshelves you would have found Milton, Thomas à-Kempis, David Copperfield, The Christmas Carol, a much-used Tennyson, Keats, George Herbert's Poems, Quarles' Emblems, The Christian Year, Carlyle's French Revolution, Dante, Schiller, Faust, Tupper (of course! "and it is merely envy that makes you laugh at him," she always said), The Newcomes, and a quarto Shakespeare. No French novels, I am glad to say; but a fat little Béranger, and a yellow-covered Alfred de Musset are on the mantelpiece, while a brass-cross-bearing red-edged Prayer-Book lies on the table by the bed. Barbara's books were not show-books; they all bore more or less the signs of use; but she had read them in a desultory manner, and had never thoroughly appreciated the pleasure to be derived from them. She had never lived in a reading set; for when old Miss Lexden had mastered the police intelligence and the fashionable news from the Post, her intellectual exercises were at an end for the day; and her friends were very much of the same calibre. So now for the first time Barbara heard literature talked of by one who had hitherto made it his worship, and who spoke of it with mingled love and reverence--spoke without lecturing, leading his companion into her fair share of the talk, mingling apt quotation with caustic comment or enthusiastic eulogy, until they found themselves, to Barbara's surprise, at the hall-door.
I am glad that it is my province as historian to discourse to my readers of the thoughts, impulses, and motives influencing the characters in this story, else it would be difficult for me to convey so much of their inner life as I wish to be known, and which yet would not crop out in the course of the action. In writing a full-flavoured romance of the sensational order, it is not, perhaps, very difficult to imbue your readers with a proper notion of your characters' character. The gentleman who hires two masked assassins to waylay his brother at the foot of the bridge has evidently no undue veneration for the Sixth Commandment; while the marchioness who, after having only once seen the young artist in black velvet, gives him the gold key leading to her secret apartments, and makes an assignation with him at midnight, is palpably not the style of person whom you would prefer as governess for your daughters. But in a commonplace story of every-day life, touching upon such ordinary topics as walks and dinners and butchers' meat, marrying and giving in marriage, running into debt, and riding horses in Rotten Row,--where (at least; so far as my experience serves) you find no such marked outlines of character, you must bring to your aid all that quality of work which in the sister art is known by the title pre-Raphaelitic, and show virtue in the cut of a coat and vice in the adjustment of a cravat. Moreover, we pen-and-ink workers have, in such cases, an advantage over our brethren of the pencil, inasmuch as we can take our readers by the button-hole, and lead them out of the main current of the story, showing them our heroes and heroines in déshabille, and, through the medium of that window which Vulcan wished had been fixed in the human breast--and which really is there, for the novelist's inspection--making them acquainted with the inmost thoughts and feelings of the puppets moving before them.
When Barbara went to her room that night and surrendered herself to Parker and the hair-brushes, that pattern of ladies'-maids thought that she had never seen her mistress so preoccupied since Karl von Knitzler, an attaché of the Austrian Embassy,--who ran for a whole season in the ruck of the Lexden's admirers, and at last thought he had strength for the first flight,--had received his coup de grâce. In her wonderment Parker gave two or three hardish tugs at the hair which she was manipulating, but received no reproof; for the inside of that little head was so busy as to render it almost insensible to the outside friction. Barbara was thinking of Mr. Churchill--as yet she had not even thought of him by his Christian name, scarcely perhaps knew it--and of the strange interest which he seemed to have aroused in her. The tones of his voice yet seemed ringing in her ears; she remembered his warm, earnest manner when speaking from himself, and the light way in which he fell into her tone of jesting badinage. Then, with something like a jar, she recollected his suppressed sneer at the difference in their "class," and her foot tapped angrily on the floor as the recollection rose in her mind. Mingled strangely with these were reminiscences of his comely head, white shapely hands, strong figure, and well-made boots; of the way in which he sat and walked; of--and then, with a start which nearly hurled one of the brushes out of Parker's hand, she gathered herself together as she felt the whole truth rush upon her, and knew that she was thinking too much of the man and determined that she would so think no more. Who was he, living away in some obscure region in London among a set of people whom no one knew, leading a life which would not be tolerated by any of her friends, to engross her thoughts? Between them rolled a gulf, wide and impassable, on the brink of which they might indeed stand for a few minutes interchanging casual nothings in the course of life's journey, but which rendered closer contact impossible. And yet--but Barbara determined there should be no "and yet;" and with this determination full upon her, she dismissed Parker and fell asleep.
And Churchill--what of him? Alas, regardless of his doom, that little victim played! When old Marmaduke gave the signal for retiring, Churchill would not, on this night, follow the other men into the smoking-room. The politics, the ribaldry, the scandal, the horsey-doggy talk, would be all more intolerable than ever; he wanted to be alone, to go through that process, so familiar to him on all difficult occasions, of "thinking it out;" so he told Gumble to take a bottle of claret to his room, and, arrived there, he lit his old meerschaum, and leant out of the window gazing over the distant moonlit park. But this time the "thinking it out" failed dismally; amid the white smoke-wreaths curling before him rose a tall, slight grateful figure; in his ear yet lingered the sound of a clear low voice; his hand yet retained the thrill which ran through him as she touched it in wishing him "good night." He thought of her as he had never thought of woman before, and he gloried in the thought: he was no love-sick boy, to waste in fond despair, and sicken in his longing; he was a strong, healthy man, with a faultless digestion, an earnest will, a clear conscience, and a heart thinking no guile. There was the difference in the rank, certainly--and in connexion with this reflection a grim smile crossed his face as he remembered Harding, and his caution about "swells"--but what of that? Did not good education, and a life that would bear scrutiny, lift a man to any rank? and would not she--and then he drew from his pocket a dainty, pearl-gray glove (Jouvin's two-buttoned, letter B), and pressed it to his lips. It was silly, ladies and gentlemen, I admit; but then, you know, it never happened to any of us; and though "the court, the camp, the grove" suffer, we have the pleasure of thinking that the senate, the bar, the commerce of England, and the public press, always escape scot-free.
Breakfast at Bissett Grange lasted from nine--at the striking of which hour old Sir Marmaduke entered the room, and immediately rang the bell for a huge smoking bowl of oatmeal porridge, his invariable matutinal meal--until twelve; by which time the laziest of the guests had generally progressed from Yorkshire-pie, through bacon, eggs, and Finnan haddies, down to toast and marmalade, and were sufficiently refected. Barbara was always one of the last; she was specially late on the morning after the talk just described; and on her arrival in the breakfast-room found only Mr. and Mrs. Vincent, who always lingered fondly over their meals, and who, so long as the cloth remained on the table, sat pecking and nibbling, like a couple of old sparrows, at the dishes within reach of them; Captain Lyster, who between his sips of coffee was dipping into Bell's Life; and Sir Marmaduke himself, who had returned from a brisk walk round the grounds and the stables and the farm, and was deep in the columns of the Times. But, to her astonishment, the place at table next hers had evidently not yet been occupied. The solid white breakfast-set was unused, the knives and forks were unsoiled; and yet Mr. Churchill, who had hitherto occupied that place, had usually finished his meal and departed before Barbara arrived. This morning, however, was clearly an exception; he had not yet breakfasted, for by his plate lay three unopened letters addressed to him. Barbara noticed this--noticed moreover that the top letter, in a long shiny pink envelope, was addressed in a scrawly, unmistakably female hand, and had been redirected in a larger, bolder writing. As she seated herself, with her eyes, it must be confessed, on this dainty missive, the door opened, and Churchill entered. After a general salutation, he was beginning a half-laughing apology for his lateness as he sat down, when his eye lit on the pink envelope. He changed colour slightly; then, before commencing his breakfast, took up his letters and placed them in the breast-pocket of his shooting-coat.
"This is horrible, Miss Lexden," he said, "bringing these dreadful hours into the country; here--where you should enjoy the breezy call of incense-breathing morn, the cock's shrill clarion, and all the rest of it--to come down to your breakfast just when the bucolic mind is pondering on the immediate advent of its dinner."
"Be good enough to include yourself in this sweeping censure, Mr. Churchill," said Barbara. "I was down before you; but I accepted my position, nor, however late I might have been, should I have attempted--"
"I congratulate you, sir," interrupted Mr. Vincent, dallying with a lump of marmalade on a wedge of toast,--"I congratulate you, Mr. Churchill, on a prudence which but few men of your age possess."
"You are very good, but I scarcely follow you."
"I saw you--I saw you put away your letters until after breakfast. A great stroke that! Men generally are so eager to get at their letters, that they plunge into them at once, before meals little thinking that the contents may have horrible influence on their digestion."