CHAPTER XXXVIII BLACK FRIDAY
In whatever condition a man may be placed, under the will of Heaven, there is generally something to alleviate it, if he seek perseveringly; and always something to aggravate it, without any exertion on his part. In my present trouble I had several consolations; and the best and sweetest of them was the kindness of my sister Grace. She had leaped, without looking for any signal, or even any ground to jump from, to the solid conclusion that her poor brother George had been treated most cruelly, shamefully, shockingly, and if there be worse than this, put it on the pile. And yet she never spoke of it—never at least to me (though she may have filled the world with it to her beloved Jackson)—but let me know her sympathies by a silent lift of cover, as a large and capable ham-boiler does,—when a tin saucepan would have blown its top off. A man loathes sympathy if he is of English race; nothing irritates him more than for other fellows to come prying down into what goes on inside him. Even to his dearest friend, he does not stretch out his heart, like a washerwoman's line; what may be inside it is his own concern; and, like a gentleman, he must not be too curious about that, so long as it leads him into nothing mean. All I can say is that I never felt inclined to be savage towards the female race, because one of them had disappointed me. And the beauty of it was that I could not hold one spark of rancour against her. The great generosity of love was in me; and all the fault I had to find went abroad among her sex, but never touched herself. So do jilted poets wail about all other women, but acquit the one they love.
But Grace showed her sympathy more delicately, according to her sex and education. What pleased me most in her behaviour was that she never brought her own little whiffs of love—and lovers are always having either whiffs, or tiffs—into her placid pretty interviews with me. She even broke out against her own sect, now and then—for the women had begun to make sect of sex even then, as they feign to do now altogether—and expressed a contempt of them, which any man would have been extremely rash to acquiesce in. She meant it for the best, and I was much obliged about it; but not the faintest fibre of my heart was put in tune by it.
Then all of a sudden it became the duty of my life to comfort her. One evening, getting on for Christmas-tide, I was sitting in my beloved den, after a rather hard day's work, as glum as a Briton can wish to be, but soothed by my pipe, and the smell of saddles, when in came Grace very quietly and kindly, but without saying anything at first, as if I were too busy to notice her. She began to sweep a trifle of tobacco-dust which had dropped on the table contradictorily—for I am a wonderfully tidy fellow—into the pink cup of her palm; and then she went and put something straight that was straight enough before for any man; and then she pretended not to hear me, when I asked—"What is the matter, dear?" for I knew as well as a thousand sighs could have told me, that she was in trouble; and being up to every trick of hers, I was sure that her eyes were full of tears, although she would not let me see them.
"Butter returned on your hands again?" I suggested in a feeling tone; for there was an old lady, quite a double patent screw, at the further end of the parish, who was never tired of boasting—as old Croaker told us more than once—that her butter was made by a baronet's daughter, yet sent her such messages as no Duchess would think of sending to her dairymaid. "Returned on my own hands," Grace seemed to mutter, and I let her take her time, unable as I was to make this out. Then without caring properly where she might be in the narrow little room, she hit upon, by force of a gleam from the fireplace, that very same cracked and spotted looking-glass, in which my friend Tom had admired himself. With infinitely better reason—however feminine and wavering—Grace Cranleigh might have regarded herself, and defied any one (except Dariel) to peep over the snowy shoulders. But instead of pride, what came? I know not. Only that I flung my pipe away, and had my darling sister in my arms, where she cast away all pretence, and would have spoiled any waistcoat that was not worn out.
"He—he—he," she sobbed. And I said—"What he?" and she answered "him," as if there was only one man in the world, though he might go into fifty cases. "Jackson?" I asked. But she would not have it even at such a crisis.
"My Jack," she declared, looking up at me, as if every George was rubbish; "my own Jack—will you never understand? And when I was getting so fond of him."
"Getting indeed! Why you have thought of nothing else, for at least three months. You have made too much of him; with the usual result, I daresay."