CHAPTER VII

While Emilia was giving Wilfrid her history in the garden, the ladies of

Brookfield were holding consultation over a matter which was well

calculated to perplex and irritate them excessively. Mr. Pole had

received a curious short epistle from Mrs. Chump, informing him of the

atrocious treatment she had met with at the hands of his daughter; and

instead of reviewing the orthography, incoherence, and deliberate

vulgarity of the said piece of writing with the contempt it deserved, he

had taken the unwonted course of telling Arabella that she had done a

thing she must necessarily repent of, or in any case make apology for. An

Eastern Queen, thus addressed by her Minister of the treasury, could not

have felt greater indignation. Arabella had never seen her father show

such perturbation of mind. He spoke violently and imperiously. The

apology was ordered to be despatched by that night's post, after having

been submitted to his inspection. Mr. Pole had uttered mysterious

phrases: "You don't know what you've been doing:--You think the ship'll

go on sailing without wind: You'll drive the horse till he drops," and

such like; together with mutterings. The words were of no import

whatsoever to the ladies. They were writings on the wall;

untranslateable. But, as when the earth quakes our noble edifices totter,

their Palace of the Fine Shades and the Nice Feelings groaned and

creaked, and for a moment they thought: "Where are we?" Very soon they

concluded, that the speech Arabella had heard was due to their darling

papa's defective education.

In the Council of Three, with reference to the letter of apology to Mrs.

Chump, Adela proposed, if it pleased Arabella, to fight the battle of the

Republic. She was young, and wished both to fight and to lead, as

Arabella knew. She was checked. "It must be left to me," said Arabella.

"Of course you resist, dear?" Cornelia carelessly questioned.

"Assuredly I do."

"Better humiliation! better anything! better marriage! than to submit in

such a case," cried Adela.

For, so united were the ladies of Brookfield, and so bent on their grand

hazy object, that they looked upon married life unfavourably: and they

had besides an idea that Wedlock, until 'late in life' (the age of

thirty, say), was the burial alive of woman intellectual.

Toward midday the ladies put on their garden hats and went into the

grounds together, for no particular purpose. Near the West copse they

beheld Mr. Pole with Wilfrid and Emilia talking to a strange gentleman.

Assuming a proper dignity, they advanced, when, to their horror, Emilia

ran up to them crying: "This is Mr. Purcell Barrett, the gentleman who

plays the organ at church. I met him in the woods before I knew you. I

played for him the other Sunday, and I want you to know him."

She had hold of Arabella's hand and was drawing her on. There was no

opportunity for retreat. Wilfrid looked as if he had already swallowed

the dose. Almost precipitated into the arms of the ladies, Mr. Barrett

bowed. He was a tolerably youthful man, as decently attired as old black

cloth could help him to be. A sharp inspection satisfied the ladies that

his hat and boots were inoffensive: whereupon they gave him the three

shades of distance, tempered so as not to wound his susceptible poverty.

The superlative Polar degree appeared to invigorate Mr. Barrett. He

devoted his remarks mainly to Cornelia, and cheerfully received her

frozen monosyllables in exchange. The ladies talked of Organs and Art,

Emilia and Opera. He knew this and that great organ, and all the operas;

but he amazed the ladies by talking as if he knew great people likewise.

This brought out Mr. Pole, who, since he had purchased Brookfield, had

been extinguished by them and had not once thoroughly enjoyed his money's

worth. A courtly poor man was a real pleasure to him.

Giving a semicircular sweep of his arm: "Here you see my little estate,

sir," he said. "You've seen plenty bigger in Germany, and England too. We

can't get more than this handful in our tight little island. Unless born

to it, of course. Well! we must be grateful that all our nobility don't

go to the dogs. We must preserve our great names. I speak against my own

interest."

He lifted Adela's chin on his forefinger. She kept her eyes demurely

downward, and then gazed at her sisters with gravity. These ladies took a

view of Mr. Barrett. His features wore an admirable expression of simple

interest. "Well, sir; suppose you dine with us to-day?" Mr. Pole bounced

out. "Neighbours should be neighbourly."

This abrupt invitation was decorously accepted.

"Plain dinner, you know. Nothing like what you get at the tables of those

Erzhogs, as you call 'em, over in Germany. Simple fare; sound wine! At

all events, it won't hurt you. You'll come?"

Mr. Barrett bowed, murmuring thanks. This was the very man Mr. Pole

wanted to have at his board occasionally: one who had known great people,

and would be thankful for a dinner. He could depreciate himself as a mere

wealthy British merchant imposingly before such a man. His daughters had

completely cut him off from his cronies; and the sense of restriction,

and compression, and that his own house was fast becoming alien territory

to him, made him pounce upon the gentlemanly organist. His daughters

wondered why he should, in the presence of this stranger, exaggerate his

peculiar style of speech. But the worthy merchant's consciousness of his

identity was vanishing under the iron social rule of the ladies. His

perishing individuality prompted the inexplicable invitation, and the

form of it.

After Mr. Barrett had departed, the ladies ventured to remonstrate with

their papa. He at once replied by asking whether the letter to Mrs. Chump

had been written; and hearing that it had not, he desired that Arabella

should go into the house and compose it straightway. The ladies coloured.

To Adela's astonishment, she found that Arabella had turned. Joining her,

she said, "Dearest, what a moment you have lost! We could have stood

firm, continually changing the theme from Chump to Barrett, Barrett to

Chump, till papa's head would have twirled. He would have begun to think

Mr. Barrett the Irish widow, and Mrs. Chump the organist."

Arabella rejoined: "Your wit misleads you, darling. I know what I am

about. I decline a wordy contest. To approach to a quarrel, or, say

dispute, with one's parent apropos of such a person, is something worse

than evil policy, don't you think?"

So strongly did the sisters admire this delicate way of masking a piece

of rank cowardice, that they forgave her. The craven feeling was common

to them all, which made it still more difficult to forgive her.

"Of course, we resist?" said Cornelia.

"Undoubtedly."

"We retire and retire," Adela remarked. "We waste the royal forces. But,

dear me, that makes us insurgents!"

She laughed, being slightly frivolous. Her elders had the proper

sentimental worship of youth and its supposed quality of innocence, and

caressed her.

At the ringing of the second dinner-bell, Mr. Pole ran to the foot of the

stairs and shouted for Arabella, who returned no answer, and was late in

her appearance at table. Grace concluded, Mr. Pole said, "Letter gone? I

wanted to see it, you know."

"It was as well not, papa," Arabella replied.

Mr. Pole shook his head seriously. The ladies were thankful for the

presence of Mr. Barrett. And lo! this man was in perfect evening uniform.

He looked as gentlemanly a visitor as one might wish to see. There was no

trace of the poor organist. Poverty seemed rather a gold-edge to his

tail-coat than a rebuke to it; just as, contrariwise, great wealth is, to

the imagination, really set off by a careless costume. One need not

explain how the mind acts in such cases: the fact, as I have put it, is

indisputable. And let the young men of our generation mark the present

chapter, that they may know the virtue residing in a tail-coat, and cling

to it, whether buffeted by the waves, or burnt out by the fire, of evil

angry fortune. His tail-coat safe, the youthful Briton is always ready

for any change in the mind of the moody Goddess. And it is an almost

certain thing that, presuming her to have a damsel of condition in view

for him as a compensation for the slaps he has received, he must lose

her, he cannot enter a mutual path with her, if he shall have failed to

retain this article of a black tail, his social passport. I mean of

course that he retain respect for the article in question. Respect for it

firmly seated in his mind, the tail may be said to be always handy. It is

fortune's uniform in Britain: the candlestick, if I may dare to say so,

to the candle; nor need any young islander despair of getting to himself

her best gifts, while he has her uniform at command, as glossy as may be.

The ladies of Brookfield were really stormed by Mr. Barrett's elegant

tail. When, the first glass of wine nodded over, Mr. Pole continued the

discourse of the morning, with allusions to French cooks, and his cook,

their sympathies were taken captive by Mr. Barrett's tact: the door to

their sympathies having been opened to him as it were by his attire. They

could not guess what necessity urged Mr. Pole to assert his locked-up

self so vehemently; but it certainly made the stranger shine with a

beautiful mild lustre. Their spirits partly succumbed to him by a process

too lengthened to explain here. Indeed, I dare do no more than hint at

these mysteries of feminine emotion. I beg you to believe that when we

are dealing with that wonder, the human heart female, the part played by

a tail-coat and a composed demeanour is not insignificant. No doubt the

ladies of Brookfield would have rebutted the idea of a tail-coat

influencing them in any way as monstrous. But why was it, when Mr. Pole

again harped on his cook, in almost similar words, that they were drawn

to meet the eyes of the stranger, on whom they printed one of the most

fabulously faint fleeting looks imaginable, with a proportionately big

meaning for him that might read it? It must have been that this uniform

of a tail had laid a basis of equality for the hour, otherwise they never

would have done so; nor would he have enjoyed the chance of showing them

that he could respond to the remotest mystic indications, with a muffled

adroitness equal to their own, and so encouraged them to commence a

language leading to intimacy with a rapidity that may well appear magical

to the uninitiated. In short, the man really had the language of the very

elect of polite society. If you are not versed in this alphabet of mute

intelligence, you are in the ranks with waiters and linen-drapers, and

are, as far as ladies are concerned, tail-coated to no purpose.

Mr. Pole's fresh allusion to his cook: "I hope you don't think I keep a

man! No; no; not in the country. Wouldn't do. Plays the deuce, you know.

My opinion is, Mrs. Mallow's as clever as any man-cook going. I'd back

her:" and Mr. Barrett's speech: "She is an excellent person!" delivered

briefly, with no obtrusion of weariness, confirmed the triumph of the

latter; a triumph all the greater, that he seemed unconscious of it. They

leaped at one bound to the conclusion that there was a romance attached

to him. Do not be startled. An attested tail-coat, clearly out of its

element, must contain a story: that story must be interesting; until its

secret is divulged, the subtle essence of it spreads an aureole around

the tail. The ladies declared, in their subsequent midnight conference,

that Mr. Barrett was fit for any society. They had visions of a great

family reduced; of a proud son choosing to earn his bread honourably and

humbly, by turning an exquisite taste to account. Many visions of him

they had, and were pleased.

Patronage of those beneath, much more than the courting of those above

them, delighted the ladies of Brookfield. They allowed Emilia to give Mr.

Barrett invitations, and he became a frequent visitor; always neat,

pathetically well-brushed, and a pleasanter pet than Emilia, because he

never shocked their niceties. He was an excellent talker, and was very

soon engaged in regular contests with the argumentative Cornelia. Their

political views were not always the same, as Cornelia sometimes had read

the paper before he arrived. Happily, on questions of religion, they

coincided. Theories of education occupied them mainly. In these contests

Mr. Barrett did not fail to acknowledge his errors, when convicted, and

his acknowledgment was hearty and ample. She had many clear triumphs.

Still, he could be positive; a very great charm in him. Women cannot

repose on a man who is not positive; nor have they much gratification in

confounding him. Wouldst thou, man, amorously inclining! attract to thee

superior women, be positive. Be stupidly positive, rather than dubious at

all. Face fearful questions with a vizor of brass. Array thyself in

dogmas. Show thy decisive judgement on the side of established power, or

thy enthusiasm in the rebel ranks, if it must be so; but be firm. Waver

not. If women could tolerate waverings and weakness, and did not rush to

the adoration of decision of mind, we should not behold them turning

contemptuously from philosophers in their agony, to find refuge in the

arms of smirking orthodoxy. I do not say that Mr. Barrett ventured to

play the intelligent Cornelia like a fish; but such a fish was best

secured by the method he adopted: that of giving her signal victory in

trifles, while on vital matters he held his own.

Very pleasant evenings now passed at Brookfield, which were not at all

disturbed by the wonder expressed from time to time by Mr. Pole, that he

had not heard from Martha, meaning Mrs. Chump. "You have Emilia," the

ladies said; this being equivalent to "She is one of that sort;" and Mr.

Pole understood it so, and fastened Emilia in one arm, with "Now, a kiss,

my dear, and then a toon." Emilia readily gave both. As often as he heard

instances of her want of ladylike training, he would say, "Keep her here;

we'll better her." Mr. Barrett assisted the ladies to see that there was

more in Emilia than even Mr. Pericles had perceived. Her story had become

partially known to them; and with two friendly dependents of the

household, one a gentleman and the other a genius, they felt that they

had really attained a certain eminence, which is a thing to be felt only

when we have something under our feet. Flying about with a desperate grip

on the extreme skirts of aristocracy, the ladies knew to be the elevation

of dependency, not true eminence; and though they admired the kite, they

by no means wished to form a part of its tail. They had brains. A circle

was what they wanted, and they had not to learn that this is to be found

or made only in the liberally-educated class, into the atmosphere of

which they pressed like dungeoned plants. The parasite completes the

animal, and a dependent assures us of our position. The ladies of

Brookfield, therefore, let Emilia cling to them, remarking, that it

seemed to be their papa's settled wish that she should reside among them

for a time. Consequently, if the indulgence had ever to be regretted,

they would not be to blame. In their hearts they were aware that it was

Emilia who had obtained for them their first invitation to Lady

Gosstre's. Gratitude was not a part of their policy, but when it assisted

a recognition of material facts they did not repress it. "And if," they

said, "we can succeed in polishing her and toning her, she may have

something to thank us for, in the event of her ultimately making a name."

That event being of course necessary for the development of so proper a

sentiment. Thus the rides with Wilfrid continued, and the sweet quiet

evenings when she sang.