“You won’t give in?” said Frederick. “You are just like all women. You will never allow you are in the wrong. When I come home, fretted and vexed from the world,” continued the young man, taking a high tone, “and hoping to have a little repose and comfort at home, you begin to worry me from the first moment you catch sight of me. I declare it is hard; a man who has always tried to do his duty at home—and instead of finding it a refuge from the troubles of life——”
This speech was perfectly unintelligible to Innocent. She looked up at him with vague surprise, being quite unaware, poor child, of the troubles of life from which Frederick escaped with the hope of finding comfort at home. He had fallen without thinking into the ordinary and conventional manner in which manhood indignant addresses its womankind. He pulled himself up suddenly with a “pshaw!” of disgust, which could only be addressed to himself.
“I mean you must put a stop to all this nonsense,” he said abruptly. “Make yourself happy somehow. Do as other people do. Don’t sit and mope in a corner and gaze at me, and don’t watch for me any more at that window. If you do, I shall be horribly vexed. There now, run in and think no more of it. I don’t mean to be cross; but you must remember, Innocent,” he concluded with great emphasis, “you must remember that what you have got to do is to please, not yourself, but me.”
Innocent received this first lesson in the female necessity of self-renunciation in silence, taking it in with her eyes as well as her ears. She kept looking at him, in the dulness of her perception, wondering if there was something more to follow; but nothing followed. Then she said “Yes” vaguely, and they went in together, he to the drawing-room, where he had his mother to encounter, she to the schoolroom, high up in the roof, which she had taken possession of to sit and dream in. Girls seldom have their lesson so very plainly put forth to them in words, but perhaps Innocent’s undeveloped mind required it. “What you have to do is to please, not yourself, but me!” She pondered the words, and got to the length of mastering their meaning without any criticism. Such plainspeaking has in it a certain sublimity, surmounting all secondary shades of meaning, and penetrating into the simplest soul. She got it by heart, seated on her window-ledge, looking out upon the little chapel, which once more had caught something of the aspect of the church of the Spina. “Not yourself, but me; not yourself, but me!” Thus Innocent got her first great lesson by heart.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FLOWER OF STERBORNE.
I do not know if any prevision of the fate which was about to befall him was in Frederick’s mind on that eventful night. He had a few words with his mother, which were not altogether friendly, ere he went to dress, for Mrs. Eastwood objected to the private walk and talk with Innocent, which seemed to her to be done in defiance of her warning and request.
“Ask her what I said to her, if you don’t trust me,” Frederick had said in high dudgeon, before he went to prepare himself for Mr. Batty’s entertainment; and this encounter excited him, and gave him a perverse inclination to enjoy himself with the host whom he felt would be so highly disapproved of by his family. I don’t think he let his imagination dwell at all on the fact that there was a third person to be present, or that this was a woman and a “beauty.” The greatest beauty in the world being Mr. Batty’s daughter could be of little importance to an Eastwood. He went his way to Batty’s hotel with his head full of many thoughts, but totally indifferent to this one. He thought it was immensely impudent of the fellow to ask him, that it was rather hard upon himself to be obliged to go, that it would be amusing to see how fellows of that sort dined and conducted themselves generally, along with a variety of other reflections equally superficial; but he never thought of the Flower of Sterborne, nor of the special effect she might be likely to produce on a young man suddenly presented to her. The hotel was not one of those seeming humble and quiet establishments, where princes and millionaires abound; it was more pretentious and less expensive, but yet dear enough to frighten any moderate soul out of London. Frederick was shown into a small dining-room, prepared for a small party. He saw with some relief that there were but three places, and took his seat very easily and without ceremony in front of the fire, with the Times, which was lying on a table. He scarcely noticed the door open; when it did open it would no doubt be Batty, who was not shy, and would soon make his presence known. Frederick read on, without looking behind him. Until he became suddenly aware of a rustling and subdued movement, and a slight air moved his paper as if some one had passed behind him. Startled by this, and somewhat ashamed of his own easy indifference, he started suddenly to his feet, and turned round. He never forgot all his life the sight that met his eyes. Standing behind his chair was (he thought) the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The arch look with which she had been contemplating his unconcern was still in her face. She was tall, almost as tall as himself, and ample, a fully-developed and splendid piece of flesh and blood, not so warm or so full-blown as Rubens, but something approaching that school of art. She was of the class of beauty which has come to be distinctive of the present period, though I cannot tell why. Her hair, I need not say, was golden; her complexion dazzling. She was like the sun, almost as brilliant, in her mingling of tints, her snow-white, and rose-red, and glittering glory of hair. The sight of her was too much for weak vision. It dazzled and brought water to the eyes of the rash and feeble beholder. If you could have calmly examined her features, without regard to that soft glow and glory of colour, and texture, and roundness, and life, it is possible that you might have found them to be not at all perfect; but this not one spectator in a hundred had coolness enough to do. Her eyes were hazel; they ought to have been blue, according to all rules; but it seemed part of her character, and the wilfulness which was its chief point, that she should have eyes, which, beautiful as they were, did not quite “go with” her face. There are many kinds of hazel eyes; it is the most changeful, the most capricious of colours. I have seen it turn to gold in a certain pair of orbs I wot of, showing like light itself in the light. I have seen it melt into the softest liquid grey; but there is a kind of hazel eye, very bright, very splendid, in which there is hung a subtle little danger-signal to all mankind. These are the eyes that have a spark of red in them, flashing out now and then from the warm, translucent brown, a spark which tells of temper, of passion, of headstrong will, and impulse. ’Manda Batty had these eyes. They were lamps of light, and it seemed to the looker-on, if any one remarked it at all, that this fiery gleam was necessary to give them character, and keep them from losing their due importance in the brilliant and sweet glow of colour that surrounded them. This, if it really was, as I think, an indication of danger, was the only one. At this moment her face was full of suppressed laughter. She had a finger lifted to her lip like a statue of Silence, but how unlike a statue of Silence was she otherwise! or, indeed, a statue of anything; everything about her was warm and soft, breathing a lavish life. When Frederick turned round upon her so suddenly the laughter in her face burst forth. Perhaps it was louder and more uncultivated than if she had been, as people say, a lady. She threw herself down in a chair, and laughed till the water sparkled on her pretty eyelashes, and she put her hands to her waist with such a rendering of “Laughter holding both his sides” as never entered into any painter’s imagination. “Oh,” she cried, “I shall die of laughing; come and stop me, come, papa.”
It struck Frederick with a shock of surprise and pain when Mr. Batty came in by another door, also inarticulate with laughter. The idea of this wonderful creature being Batty’s daughter appalled and struck him dumb. Not to say that he was very deeply embarrassed by the situation altogether, by the laughter of the new-comer, and his own semi-ridiculous attitude—her beauty had struck him at once with one of those impressions which are not to be shaken off, which count, slight and superficial as is often the instrument, among the great things of life. Never before had Frederick been so profoundly moved. He did not understand the effect, nor what it meant. He ceased to be himself for the moment, and became the subject of a strange and subtle experiment, which stamped her reflection upon him. No, he was not himself; he was a mirror of her, a sensitive plate, upon which that sudden light had painted her likeness. These may seem fantastic similes, but I know no other that would convey what I mean. I suppose it was what we, with our limited powers of expression, call love at first sight. It was certainly adoration at first sight, which is a different thing.
“Well, Mr. Eastwood, here’s my wild girl making fun of us both,” said Batty, “without even giving me a chance of introducing you. ’Manda, this is Mr. Eastwood, as of course you have found out.”
“Don’t say Mr. Eastwood, papa.”