CHAPTER I

We are to make acquaintance with some serious damsels, as this English

generation knows them, and at a season verging upon May. The ladies of

Brookfield, Arabella, Cornelia, and Adela Pole, daughters of a

flourishing City-of-London merchant, had been told of a singular thing:

that in the neighbouring fir-wood a voice was to be heard by night, so

wonderfully sweet and richly toned, that it required their strong sense

to correct strange imaginings concerning it. Adela was herself the chief

witness to its unearthly sweetness, and her testimony was confirmed by

Edward Buxley, whose ear had likewise taken in the notes, though not on

the same night, as the pair publicly proved by dates. Both declared that

the voice belonged to an opera-singer or a spirit. The ladies of

Brookfield, declining the alternative, perceived that this was a surprise

furnished for their amusement by the latest celebrity of their circle,

Mr. Pericles, their father's business ally and fellow-speculator; Mr.

Pericles, the Greek, the man who held millions of money as dust compared

to a human voice. Fortified by this exquisite supposition, their strong

sense at once dismissed with scorn the idea of anything unearthly,

however divine, being heard at night, in the nineteenth century, within

sixteen miles of London City. They agreed that Mr. Pericles had hired

some charming cantatrice to draw them into the woods and delightfully

bewilder them. It was to be expected of his princely nature, they said.

The Tinleys, of Bloxholme, worshipped him for his wealth; the ladies of

Brookfield assured their friends that the fact of his being a money-maker

was redeemed in their sight by his devotion to music. Music was now the

Art in the ascendant at Brookfield. The ladies (for it is as well to know

at once that they were not of that poor order of women who yield their

admiration to a thing for its abstract virtue only)--the ladies were

scaling society by the help of the Arts. To this laudable end sacrifices

were now made to Euterpe to assist them. As mere daughters of a merchant,

they were compelled to make their house not simply attractive, but

enticing; and, seeing that they liked music, it seemed a very agreeable

device. The Tinleys of Bloxholme still kept to dancing, and had

effectually driven away Mr. Pericles from their gatherings. For Mr.

Pericles said: "If that they will go 'so,' I will be amused." He

presented a top-like triangular appearance for one staggering second. The

Tinleys did not go `so' at all, and consequently they lost the satirical

man, and were called 'the ballet-dancers' by Adela which thorny scoff her

sisters permitted to pass about for a single day, and no more. The

Tinleys were their match at epithets, and any low contention of this kind

obscured for them the social summit they hoped to attain; the dream

whereof was their prime nourishment.

That the Tinleys really were their match, they acknowledged, upon the

admission of the despicable nature of the game. The Tinleys had winged a

dreadful shaft at them; not in itself to be dreaded, but that it struck a

weak point; it was a common shot that exploded a magazine; and for a time

it quite upset their social policy, causing them to act like simple young

ladies who feel things and resent them. The ladies of Brookfield had let

it be known that, in their privacy together, they were Pole, Polar, and

North Pole. Pole, Polar, and North Pole were designations of the three

shades of distance which they could convey in a bow: a form of salute

they cherished as peculiarly their own; being a method they had invented

to rebuke the intrusiveness of the outer world, and hold away all

strangers until approved worthy. Even friends had occasionally to submit

to it in a softened form. Arabella, the eldest, and Adela, the youngest,

alternated Pole and Polar; but North Pole was shared by Cornelia with

none. She was the fairest of the three; a nobly-built person; her eyes

not vacant of tenderness when she put off her armour. In her war-panoply

before unhappy strangers, she was a Britomart. They bowed to an iceberg,

which replied to them with the freezing indifference of the floating

colossus, when the Winter sun despatches a feeble greeting messenger-beam

from his miserable Arctic wallet. The simile must be accepted in its

might, for no lesser one will express the scornfulness toward men

displayed by this strikingly well-favoured, formal lady, whose heart of

hearts demanded for her as spouse, a lord, a philosopher, and a

Christian, in one: and he must be a member of Parliament. Hence her

isolated air.

Now, when the ladies of Brookfield heard that their Pole, Polar, and

North Pole, the splendid image of themselves, had been transformed by the

Tinleys, and defiled by them to Pole, Polony, and Maypole, they should

have laughed contemptuously; but the terrible nerve of ridicule quivered

in witness against them, and was not to be stilled. They could not

understand why so coarse a thing should affect them. It stuck in their

flesh. It gave them the idea that they saw their features hideous, but

real, in a magnifying mirror.

There was therefore a feud between the Tinleys and the Poles; and when

Mr. Pericles entirely gave up the former, the latter rewarded him by

spreading abroad every possible kind interpretation of his atrocious bad

manners. He was a Greek, of Parisian gilding, whose Parisian hat flew off

at a moment's notice, and whose savage snarl was heard at the slightest

vexation. His talk of renowned prime-donne by their Christian names, and

the way that he would catalogue emperors, statesmen, and noblemen known

to him, with familiar indifference, as things below the musical Art, gave

a distinguishing tone to Brookfield, from which his French accentuation

of our tongue did not detract.

Mr. Pericles grimaced bitterly at any claim to excellence being set up

for the mysterious voice in the woods. Tapping one forefinger on the

uplifted point of the other, he observed that to sing abroad in the night

air of an English Spring month was conclusive of imbecility; and that no

imbecile sang at all. Because, to sing, involved the highest

accomplishment of which the human spirit could boast. Did the ladies see?

he asked. They thought they saw that he carried on a deception admirably.

In return, they inquired whether he would come with them and hunt the

voice, saying that they would catch it for him. "I shall catch a cold for

myself," said Mr. Pericles, from the elevation of a shrug, feeling that

he was doomed to go forth. He acted reluctance so well that the ladies

affected a pretty imperiousness; and when at last he consented to join

the party, they thanked him with a nicely simulated warmth, believing

that they had pleased him thoroughly.

Their brother Wilfrid was at Brookfield. Six months earlier he had

returned from India, an invalided cornet of light cavalry, with a

reputation for military dash and the prospect of a medal. Then he was

their heroic brother he was now their guard. They love him tenderly, and

admired him when it was necessary; but they had exhausted their own

sensations concerning his deeds of arms, and fancied that he had served

their purpose. And besides, valour is not an intellectual quality, they

said. They were ladies so aspiring, these daughters of the merchant

Samuel Bolton Pole, that, if Napoleon had been their brother, their

imaginations would have overtopped him after his six months' inaction in

the Tuileries. They would by that time have made a stepping-stone of the

emperor. 'Mounting' was the title given to this proceeding. They went on

perpetually mounting. It is still a good way from the head of the tallest

of men to the stars; so they had their work before them; but, as they

observed, they were young. To be brief, they were very ambitious damsels,

aiming at they knew not exactly what, save that it was something so wide

that it had not a name, and so high in the air that no one could see it.

They knew assuredly that their circle did not please them. So, therefore,

they were constantly extending and refining it: extending it perhaps for

the purpose of refining it. Their susceptibilities demanded that they

should escape from a city circle. Having no mother, they ruled their

father's house and him, and were at least commanders of whatsoever forces

they could summon for the task.

It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say, they

supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice Feelings, and

exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades. Whereof more will be said; but

in the meantime it will explain their propensity to mount; it will

account for their irritation at the material obstructions surrounding

them; and possibly the philosopher will now have his eye on the source of

that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which was the crown of

their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross appreciation

of the world by other people, who excel in this and that accomplishment,

persons that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with the Fine Shades

carry their own test of intrinsic value.

Nor let the philosopher venture hastily to despise them as pipers to

dilettante life. Such persons come to us in the order of civilization. In

their way they help to civilize us. Sentimentalists are a perfectly

natural growth of a fat soil. Wealthy communities must engender them. If

with attentive minds we mark the origin of classes, we shall discern that

the Nice Feelings and the Fine Shades play a principal part in our human

development and social history. I dare not say that civilized man is to

be studied with the eye of a naturalist; but my vulgar meaning might

almost be twisted to convey: that our sentimentalists are a variety owing

their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding. The

pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this training. He does.

But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of high German

romances. Here is so notable a difference, that he cannot possibly be

said to be of the family. And I maintain it against him, who have

nevertheless listened attentively to the eulogies pronounced by the

vendors of prize bacon.

After thus stating to you the vast pretensions of the ladies of

Brookfield, it would be unfair to sketch their portraits. Nothing but

comedy bordering on burlesque could issue from the contrast, though they

graced a drawing-room or a pew, and had properly elegant habits and taste

in dress, and were all fair to the sight. Moreover, Adela had not long

quitted school. Outwardly they were not unlike other young ladies with

wits alert. They were at the commencement of their labours on this night

of the expedition when they were fated to meet something greatly

confusing them.