CHAPTER XVI

"Seen Wilfrid?" was Mr. Pole's first cheery call to his daughters, on his

return. An answer on that head did not seem to be required by him, for he

went on: "Ah the boy's improved. That place over there, Stornley, does

him as much good as the Army did, as to setting him up, you know; common

sense, and a ready way of speaking and thinking. He sees a thing now.

Well, Martha, what do you,--eh? what's your opinion?"

Mrs. Chump was addressed. "Pole," she said, fanning her cheek with

vehement languor, "don't ask me! my heart's gone to the young fella."

In pursuance of a determination to which the ladies of Brookfield had

come, Adela, following her sprightly fancy, now gave the lead in

affability toward Mrs. Chump.

"Has the conqueror run away with it to bury it?" she laughed.

"Och! won't he know what it is to be a widde!" cried Mrs. Chump. "A

widde's heart takes aim and flies straight as a bullet; and the hearts o'

you garls, they're like whiffs o' tobacca, curlin' and wrigglin' and not

knowin' where they're goin'. Marry 'em, Pole! marry 'em!" Mrs. Chump

gesticulated, with two dangling hands. "They're nice garls; but, lord!

they naver see a man, and they're stuputly contented, and want to remain

garls; and, don't ye see, it was naver meant to be? Says I to Mr. Wilfrud

(and he agreed with me), ye might say, nice sour grapes, as well as nice

garls, if the creatures think o' stoppin' where they are, and what they

are. It's horrud; and, upon my honour, my heart aches for 'm!"

Mr. Pole threw an uneasy side-glance of inquisition at his daughters, to

mark how they bore this unaccustomed language, and haply intercede

between the unworthy woman and their judgement of her. But the ladies

merely smiled. Placidly triumphant in its endurance, the smile said: "We

decline even to feel such a martyrdom as this."

"Well, you know, Martha; I," he said, "I--no father could wish--eh? if

you could manage to persuade them not to be so fond of me. They must

think of their future, of course. They won't always have a home--a

father, a father, I mean. God grant they may never want!--eh? the dinner;

boh! let's in to dinner. Ma'am!"

He bowed an arm to Mrs. Chump, who took it, with a scared look at him:

"Why, if ye haven't got a tear in your eye, Pole?"

"Nonsense, nonsense," quoth he, bowing another arm to Adela.

"Papa, I'm not to be winked at," said she, accepting convoy; and there

was some laughter, all about nothing, as they went in to dinner.

The ladies were studiously forbearing in their treatment of Mrs. Chump.

Women are wonderfully quick scholars under ridicule, though it half-kills

them. Wilfrid's theory had impressed the superior grace of civility upon

their minds, and, now that they practised it, they were pleased with the

contrast they presented. Not the less were they maturing a serious

resolve. The suspicion that their father had secret vile designs in

relation to Mrs. Chump, they kept in the background. It was enough for

them that she was to be a visitor, and would thus destroy the great

circle they had projected. To accept her in the circle, they felt, was

out of the question. Wilfrid's plain-speaking broke up the air-bubble,

which they had so carefully blown, and in which they had embarked all

their young hopes. They had as much as given one another a pledge that

their home likewise should be broken up.

"Are you not almost too severe a student?" Mr. Barrett happened to say to

Cornelia, the day after Wilfrid had worried her.

"Do I show the signs?" she replied.

"By no means. But last night, was it not your light that was not

extinguished till morning?"

"We soon have morning now," said Cornelia; and her face was pale as the

first hour of the dawn. "Are you not a late foot-farer, I may ask in

return?"

"Mere restlessness. I have no appetite for study. I took the liberty to

cross the park from the wood, and saw you--at least I guessed it your

light, and then I met your brother."

"Yes? you met him?"

Mr. Barrett gestured an affirmative.

"And he--did he speak?"

"He nodded. He was in some haste."

"But, then, you did not go to bed at all that night? It is almost my turn

to be lecturer, if I might expect to be listened to."

"Do you not know--or am I constitutionally different from others?" Mr.

Barrett resumed: "I can't be alone in feeling that there are certain

times and periods when what I would like to call poisonous influences are

abroad, that touch my fate in the days to come. I know I am helpless. I

can only wander up and down."

"That sounds like a creed of fatalism."

"It is not a creed; it is a matter of nerves. A creed has its 'kismet.'

The nerves are wild horses."

"It is something to be fought against," said Cornelia admonishingly.

"Is it something to be distrusted?"

"I should say, yes."

"Then I was wrong?"

He stooped eagerly, in his temperate way, to catch sight of her answering

face. Cornelia's quick cheeks took fire. She fenced with a question of

two, and stood in a tremble, marvelling at his intuition. For possibly,

at that moment when he stood watching her window-light (ah, poor heart!)

she was half-pledging her word to her sisters (in a whirl of wrath at

Wilfrid, herself, and the world), that she would take the lead in

breaking up Brookfield.

An event occurred that hurried them on. They received a visit from their

mother's brother, John Pierson, a Colonel of Uhlans, in the

Imperial-Royal service. He had rarely been in communication with them;

his visit was unexpected. His leave of absence from his quarters in Italy

was not longer than a month, and he was on his way to Ireland, to settle

family business; but he called, as he said, to make acquaintance with his

nieces. The ladies soon discovered, in spite of his foreign-cut chin and

pronounced military habit of speech and bearing, that he was at heart

fervidly British. His age was about fifty: a man of great force of

shoulder and potent length of arm, courteous and well-bred in manner, he

was altogether what is called a model of a cavalry officer. Colonel

Pierson paid very little attention to his brother-in-law, but the ladies

were evidently much to his taste; and when he kissed Cornelia's hand, his

eyes grew soft, as at a recollection.

"You are what your mother once promised to be," he said. To her he gave

that mother's portrait, taking it solemnly from his breast-pocket, and

attentively contemplating it before it left his hands. The ladies pressed

him for a thousand details of their mama's youthful life; they found it a

strange consolation to talk of her and image her like Cornelia. The

foreign halo about the Colonel had an effect on them that was almost like

what nobility produces; and by degrees they heated their minds to

conceive that they were consenting to an outrage on that mother's memory,

in countenancing Mrs. Chump's transparent ambition to take her place, as

they did by staying in the house with the woman. The colonel's few

expressive glances at Mrs. Chump, and Mrs. Chump's behaviour before the

colonel, touched them with intense distaste for their present surly

aspect of life. Civilized little people are moved to fulfil their

destinies and to write their histories as much by distaste as by

appetite. This fresh sentimental emotion, which led them to glorify their

mother's image in their hearts, heightened and gave an acid edge to their

distaste for the think they saw. Nor was it wonderful that Cornelia, said

to be so like that mother, should think herself bound to accept the

office of taking the initiative in a practical protest against the

desecration of the name her mother had borne. At times, I see that

sentiment approaches too near the Holy of earthly Holies for us to laugh

at it; it has too much truth in it to be denounced--nay, if we are not

alert and quick of wit, we shall be deceived by it, and wonder in the

end, as the fool does, why heaven struck that final blow; concluding that

it was but another whimsy of the Gods. The ladies prayed to their mother.

They were indeed suffering vile torture. Ethereal eyes might pardon the

unconscious jugglery which made their hearts cry out to her that the step

they were about to take was to save her children from seeming to

acquiesce in a dishonour to her memory. Some such words Adela's tongue

did not shrink from; and as it is a common habit for us to give to the

objects we mentally address just as much brain as is wanted for the

occasion, she is not to be held singular.

Colonel Pierson promised to stay a week on his return from Ireland. "Will

that person be here?" he designated Mrs. Chump; who, among other things,

had reproached him for fighting with foreign steel and wearing any

uniform but the red.

The ladies and Colonel Pierson were soon of one mind in relation to Mrs.

Chump. Certain salient quiet remarks dropped by him were cherished after

his departure; they were half-willing to think that he had been directed

to come to them, bearer of a message from a heavenly world to urge them

to action. They had need of a spiritual exaltation, to relieve them from

the palpable depression caused by the weight of Mrs. Chump. They

encouraged one another with exclamations on the oddness of a visit from

their mother's brother, at such a time of tribulation, indecision, and

general darkness.

Mrs. Chump remained on the field. When Adela begged her papa to tell her

how long the lady was to stay, he replied: "Eh? By the way, I haven't

asked her;" and retreated from this almost too obvious piece of

simplicity, with, "I want you to know her: I want you to like her--want

you to get to understand her. Won't talk about her going just yet."

If they could have seen a limit to that wholesale slaughter of the Nice

Feelings, they might have summoned patience to avoid the desperate step

to immediate relief: but they saw none. Their father's quaint kindness

and Wilfrid's treachery had fixed her there, perhaps for good. The choice

was, to let London come and see them dragged through the mire by the

monstrous woman, or to seek new homes. London, they contended, could not

further be put off, and would come, especially now that the season was

dying. After all, their parting from one another was the bitterest thing

to bear, and as each seemed content to endure it for the good of all, and

as, properly considered, they did not bury their ambition by separating,

they said farewell to the young delicious dawn of it. By means of Fine

Shades it was understood that Brookfield was to be abandoned. Not one

direct word was uttered. There were expressions of regret that the

village children of Ipley would miss the supervizing eyes that had

watched over them--perchance! at any rate, would lose them. All went on

in the household as before, and would have continued so, but that they

had a chief among them. This was Adela Pole, who found her powers with

the occasion.

Adela thought decisively: "People never move unless they are pushed." And

when you have got them to move ever so little, then propel; but by no

means expect that a movement on their part means progression. Without

propulsion nothing results. Adela saw what Cornelia meant to do. It was

not to fly to Sir Twickenham, but to dismiss Mr. Barrett. Arabella

consented to write to Edward Buxley, but would not speak of old days, and

barely alluded to a misunderstanding; though if she loved one man, this

was he. Adela was disengaged. She had moreover to do penance, for a wrong

committed; and just as children will pinch themselves, pleased up to the

verge of unendurable pain, so do sentimentalists find a keen relish in

performing secret penance for self-accused offences. Thus they become

righteous to their own hearts, and evade, as they hope, the public

scourge. The wrong committed was (translated out of Fine Shades), that

she had made love to her sister's lover. In the original tongue--she had

innocently played with the sacred fire of a strange affection; a child in

the temple!--Our penitent child took a keen pinching pleasure in

dictating words for Arabella to employ toward Edward.

And then, recurring to her interview with Wilfrid, it struck her:

"Suppose that, after all, Money!..." Yes, Mammon has acted Hymen before

now. Nothing else explained Mrs. Chump; so she thought, in one clear

glimpse. Inveterate sentimental habit smeared the picture with two

exclamations--"Impossible!" and "Papa!" I desire it to be credited that

these simple interjections absolutely obscured her judgement. Little

people think either what they are made to think, or what they choose to

think; and the education of girls is to make them believe that facts are

their enemies-a naughty spying race, upon whom the dogs of Pudeur are to

be loosed, if they surprise them without note of warning. Adela silenced

her suspicion, easily enough; but this did not prevent her taking a

measure to satisfy it. Petting her papa one evening, she suddenly asked

him for ninety pounds.

"Ninety!" said Mr. Pole, taking a sharp breath. He was as composed as

possible.

"Is that too much, papa, darling?"

"Not if you want it--not if you want it, of course not."

"You seemed astonished."

"The sum! it's an odd sum for a girl to want. Ten, twenty, fifty--a

hundred; but you never hear of ninety, never! unless it's to pay a debt;

and I have all the bills, or your aunt has them."

"Well, papa, if it excites you, I will do without it. It is for a

charity, chiefly."

Mr. Pole fumbled in his pocket, muttering, "No money here--cheque-book in

town. I'll give it you," he said aloud, "to-morrow morning--morrow

morning, early."

"That will do, papa;" and Adela relieved him immediately by shooting far

away from the topic.

The ladies retired early to their hall of council in the bedchamber of

Arabella, and some time after midnight Cornelia went to her room; but she

could not sleep. She affected, in her restlessness, to think that her

spirits required an intellectual sedative, so she went down to the

library for a book; where she skimmed many--a fashion that may be

recommended, for assisting us to a sense of sovereign superiority to

authors, and also of serene contempt for all mental difficulties.

Fortified in this way, Cornelia took a Plutarch and an Encyclopaedia

under her arm, to return to her room. But one volume fell, and as she

stooped to recover it, her candle shared its fate. She had to find her

way back in the dark. On the landing of the stairs, she fancied that she

heard a step and a breath. The lady was of unshaken nerves. She moved on

steadily, her hand stretched out a little before her. What it touched was

long in travelling to her brain; but when her paralyzed heart beat again,

she knew that her hand clasped another hand. Her nervous horror calmed as

the feeling came to her of the palpable weakness of the hand.

"Who are you?" she asked. Some hoarse answer struck her ear. She asked

again, making her voice distincter. The hand now returned her pressure

with force. She could feel that the person, whoever it was, stood

collecting strength to speak. Then the words came--

"What do you mean by imitating that woman's brogue?"

"Papa!" said Cornelia.

"Why do you talk Irish in the dark? There, goodnight. I've just come up

from the library; my candle dropped. I shouldn't have been frightened,

but you talked with such a twang."

"But I have just come from the library myself," said Cornelia.

"I mean from the dining-room," her father corrected himself hastily. "I

can't sit in the library; shall have it altered--full of draughts. Don't

you think so, my dear? Good-night. What's this in your arm? Books! Ah,

you study! I can get a light for myself."

The dialogue was sustained in the hard-whispered tones prescribed by

darkness. Cornelia kissed her father's forehead, and they parted.

At breakfast in the morning it was the habit of all the ladies to

assemble, partly to countenance the decency of matin-prayers, and also to

give the head of the household their dutiful society till business called

him away. Adela, in earlier days, had maintained that early rising was

not fashionable; but she soon grasped the idea that a great rivalry with

Fashion, in minor matters (where the support of the satirist might be

counted on), was the proper policy of Brookfield. Mrs. Chump was given to

be extremely fashionable in her hours, and began her Brookfield career by

coming downstairs at ten and eleven o'clock, when she found a desolate

table, well stocked indeed, but without any of the exuberant smiles of

nourishment which a morning repast should wear.

"You are a Protestant, ma'am, are you not?" Adela mildly questioned,

after informing her that she missed family prayer by her late descent.

Mrs. Chump assured her that she was a firm Protestant, and liked to see

faces at the breakfast-table. The poor woman was reduced to submit to the

rigour of the hour, coming down flustered, and endeavouring to look

devout, while many uncertainties as to the condition of the hooks of her

attire distracted her mind and fingers. On one occasion, Gainsford, the

footman, had been seen with his eye on her; and while Mr. Pole read of

sacred things, at a pace composed of slow march and amble, this unhappy

man was heard struggling to keep under and extinguish a devil of

laughter, by which his human weakness was shaken: He retired from the

room with the speed of a voyager about to pay tribute on high seas. Mr.

Pole cast a pregnant look at the servants' row as he closed the book; but

the expression of his daughters' faces positively signified that no

remark was to be made, and he contained himself. Later, the ladies told

him that Gainsford had done no worse than any uneducated man would have

been guilty of doing. Mrs. Chump had, it appeared, a mother's feeling for

one flat curl on her rugged forehead, which was often fondly caressed by

her, for the sake of ascertaining its fixity. Doubts of the precision of

outline and general welfare of this curl, apparently, caused her to

straighten her back and furtively raise her head, with an easy upward

motion, as of a cork alighted in water, above the level of the

looking-glass on her left hand--an action she repeated, with a solemn

aspect, four times; at which point Gainsford gave way. The ladies

accorded him every extenuation for the offence. They themselves, but for

the heroism of exalted natures, must have succumbed to the gross

temptation. "It is difficult, dear papa, to bring one's mind to religious

thoughts in her company, even when she is quiescent," they said. Thus, by

the prettiest exercise of charity that can be conceived, they pleaded for

the man Gainsford, while they struck a blow at Mrs. Chump; and in

performing one of the virtues laid down by religion, proved their enemy

to be hostile to its influences.

Mrs. Chump was this morning very late. The office of morning reader was

new to Mr. Pole, who had undertaken it, when first Squire of Brookfield,

at the dictate of the ladies his daughters; so that, waiting with the

book before him and his audience expectant, he lacked composure, spoke

irritably in an under-breath of 'that woman,' and asked twice whether she

was coming or not. At last the clump of her feet was heard approaching.

Mr. Pole commenced reading the instant she opened the door. She stood

there, with a face like a petrified Irish outcry. An imploring sound of

"Pole! Pole!" issued from her. Then she caught up one hand to her mouth,

and rolled her head, in evident anguish at the necessitated silence. A

convulsion passed along the row of maids, two of whom dipped to their

aprons; but the ladies gazed with a sad consciousness of wicked glee at

the disgust she was exciting in the bosom of their father.

"Will you shut the door?" Mr. Pole sternly addressed Mrs. Chump, at the

conclusion of the first prayer.

"Pole! ye know that money ye gave me in notes? I must speak, Pole!"

"Shut the door."

Mrs. Chump let go the door-handle with a moan. The door was closed by

Gainsford, now one of the gravest of footmen. A chair was placed for her,

and she sat down, desperately watching the reader for the fall of his

voice. The period was singularly protracted. The ladies turned to one

another, to question with an eyelid why it was that extra allowance was

given that morning. Mr. Pole was in a third prayer, stumbling on and

picking himself up, apparently unaware that he had passed the limit. This

continued until the series of ejaculations which accompanied him waxed

hotter--little muffled shrieks of: "Oh!--Deer--Oh, Lard!--When will he

stop? Oh, mercy! Och! And me burrstin' to speak!--Oh! what'll I do? I

can't keep 't in!--Pole! ye're kill'n me--Oh, deer! I'll be sayin'

somethin' to vex the prophets presently. Pole!"

If it was a race that he ran with Mrs. Chump, Mr. Pole was beaten. He

came to a sudden stop.

Mrs. Chump had become too deeply absorbed in her impatience to notice the

change in his tone; and when he said, "Now then, to breakfast, quick!"

she was pursuing her lamentable interjections. At sight of the servants

trooping forth, she jumped up and ran to the door.

"Ye don't go.--Pole, they're all here. And I've been robbed, I have.

Avery note I had from ye, Pole, all gone. And my purse left behind, like

the skin of a thing. Lord forbid I accuse annybody; but when I get up, my

first rush is to feel in my pocket. And, ask 'em!--If ye didn't keep me

so poor, Pole, they'd know I'm a generous woman, but I cann't bear to be

robbed. And pinmoney 's for spendin;' annybody'll tell you that. And I

ask ye t' examine 'em, Pole; for last night I counted my notes, wantin'

change, and I thought of a salmon I bought on the banks of the Suir to

make a present to Chump, which was our onnly visit to Waterford together:

for he naver went t' Ireland before or after--dyin' as he did! and it's

not his ingrat'tude, with his talk of a Severrn salmon-to the deuce with

'm! that makes me soft-poor fella!--I didn't mean to the deuce;--but

since he's gone, his widde's just unfit to bargain for a salmon at all,

and averybody robs her, and she's kept poor, and hatud!--D'ye heer, Pole?

I've lost my money, my money! and I will speak, and ye shann't interrupt

me!"

During the delivery of this charge against the household, Mr. Pole had

several times waved to the servants to begone; but as they had always the

option to misunderstand authoritative gestures, they preferred remaining,

and possibly he perceived that they might claim to do so under

accusation.

"How can you bring this charge against the inmates of my house--eh? I

guarantee the honesty of all who serve me. Martha! you must be mad,

mad!--Money? why, you never have money; you waste it if you do."

"Not money, Pole? Oh! and why? Becas ye keep me low o' purpose, till I

cringe like a slut o' the scullery, and cry out for halfpence. But, oh!

that seventy-five pounds in notes!"

Mr. Pole shook his head, as one who deals with a gross delusion: "I

remember nothing about it."

"Not about--?" Mrs. Chump dropped her chin. "Ye don't remember the givin'

of me just that sum of seventy-five, in eight notes, Pole?"

"Eh? I daresay I have given you the amount, one time or other. Now, let's

be quiet about it."

"Yesterday mornin', Pole! And the night I go to bed I count my money,

and, says I, I'll not lock ut up, for I'll onnly be unlockin' again

to-morrow; and doin' a thing and undoin' ut's a sign of a brain that's

addled--like yours, Pole, if ye say ye didn't go to give me the notes."

Mr. Pole frowned at her sagaciously. "Must change your diet, Martha!"

"My dite? And what's my dite to do with my money?"

"Who went into Mrs. Chump's bedchamber this morning?" asked Mr. Pole

generally.

A pretty little housemaid replied, with an indignant flush, that she was

the person. Mrs. Chump acknowledged to being awake when the shutters were

opened, and agreed that it was not possible her pockets could have been

rifled then.

"So, you see, Martha, you're talking nonsense," said Mr. Pole. "Do you

know the numbers of those notes?"

"The numbers at the sides, ye mean, Pole?"

"Ay, the numbers at the sides, if you like; the 21593, and so on?"

"The 21593! Oh! I can't remember such a lot as that, if ever I leave off

repeatin' it."

"There! you see, you're not fit to have money in your possession, Martha.

Everybody who has bank-notes looks at the numbers. You have a trick of

fancying all sorts of sums in your pocket; and when you don't find them

there, of course they're lost! Now, let's have some breakfast."

Arabella told the maids to go out. Mr. Pole turned to the

breakfast-table, rubbing his hands. Seeing herself and her case

abandoned, Mrs. Chump gave a deplorable shout. "Ye're crool! and young

women that look on at a fellow-woman's mis'ry. Oh! how can ye do ut! But

soft hearts can be the hardest. And all my seventy-five gone, gone! and

no law out of annybody. And no frightenin' of 'em off from doin' the like

another time! Oh, I will, I will have my money!"

"Tush! Come to breakfast, Martha," said Mr. Pole. "You shall have money,

if you want it; you have only to ask. Now, will you promise to be quiet?

and I'll give you this money--the amount you've been dreaming about last

night. I'll fetch it. Now, let us have no scenes. Dry your eyes."

Mr. Pole went to his private room, and returned just as Mrs. Chump had

got upon a succession of quieter sobs with each one of which she

addressed a pathetic roll of her eyes to the utterly unsympathetic ladies

respectively.

"There, Martha; there's exactly the sum for you--free gift. Say thank

you, and eat a good breakfast to show your gratitude. Mind, you take this

money on condition that you let the servants know you made a mistake."

Mrs. Chump sighed heavily, crumpling the notes, that the crisp sweet

sound might solace her for the hard condition.

"And don't dream any more--not about money, I mean," said Mr: Pole.

"Oh! if I dream like that I'll be living double." Mrs. Chump put her hand

to the notes, and called him kind, and pitied him for being the loser.

The sight of a fresh sum in her possession intoxicated her. It was but

feebly that she regretted the loss to her Samuel Bolton Pole. "Your

memory's worth more than that!" she said as she filled her purse with the

notes. "Anyhow, now I can treat somebody," and she threw a wink of

promise at Adela. Adela's eyes took refuge with her papa, who leaned over

to her, and said: "You won't mind waiting till you see me again? She's

taken all I had." Adela nodded blankly, and the next moment, with an

angry glance toward Mrs. Chump, "Papa," said she, "if you wish to see

servants in the house on your return, you must yourself speak to them,

and tell them that we, their master and mistresses, do not regard them as

thieves." Out of this there came a quarrel as furious as the ladies would

permit it to be. For Mrs. Chump, though willing to condone the offence

for the sum she had received, stuck infamy upon the whole list of them.

"The Celtic nature," murmured Cornelia. And the ladies maintained that

their servants should be respected, at any cost. "You, ma'am," said

Arabella, with a clear look peculiar to her when vindictive--"you may

have a stain on your character, and you are not ruined by it. But these

poor creatures..."

"Ye dare to compar' me--!"

"Contrast you, ma'am."

"It's just as imp'dent."

"I say, our servants, ma'am..."

"Oh! to the deuce with your 'ma'am;' I hate the word. It's like fittin' a

cap on me. Ye want to make one a turbaned dow'ger, ye malicious young

woman!"

"Those are personages that are, I believe, accepted in society!"

So the contest raged, Mrs. Chump being run clean through the soul twenty

times, without touching the consciousness of that sensitive essence. Mr.

Pole appeared to take the part of his daughters, and by-and-by Mrs.

Chump, having failed to arouse Mrs. Lupin's involuntary laugh (which

always consoled her in such cases), huffed out of the room. Then Mr.

Pole, in an abruptly serious way, bashfully entreated the ladies to be

civil to Martha, who had the best heart in the world. It sounded as if he

were going to say more. After a pause, he added emphatically, "Do!" and

went. He was many days absent: nor did he speak to Adela of the money she

had asked for when he returned. Adela had not the courage to allude to

it.