The Vicar's Daughter, George MacDonald [important books to read .txt] 📗

asked Roger to what Percivale referred. His reply was, that, having been requested by a certain person who had a school for young ladies—probably she called it a college—to give her pupils a few lectures on physiology, he could not go far in the course without finding it necessary to make a not unfrequent use of the word, explaining the functions of the organ to which the name belonged, as resembling those of a mill. After the lecture was over, the school-mistress took him aside, and said she really could not allow her young ladies to be made familiar with such words. Roger averred that the word was absolutely necessary to the subject upon which she had desired his lectures; and that he did not know how any instruction in physiology could be given without the free use of it. “No doubt,” she returned, “you must recognize the existence of the organ in question; but, as the name of it is offensive to ears polite, could you not substitute another? You have just said that its operations resemble those of a mill: could you not, as often as you require to speak of it, refer to it in the future as the mill?” Roger, with great difficulty repressing his laughter, consented; but in his next lecture made far more frequent reference to the mill than was necessary, using the word every time—I know exactly how—with a certain absurd solemnity that must have been irresistible. The girls went into fits of laughter at the first utterance of it, and seemed, he said, during the whole lecture, intent only on the new term, at every recurrence of which their laughter burst out afresh. Doubtless their school-mistress had herself prepared them to fall into Roger’s trap. The same night he received a note from her, enclosing his fee for the lectures given, and informing him that the rest of the course would not be required. Roger sent back the money, saying that to accept part payment would be to renounce his claim for the whole; and that, besides, he had already received an amount of amusement quite sufficient to reward him for his labor. I told him I thought he had been rather cruel; but he said such a woman wanted a lesson. He said also, that to see the sort of women who sometimes had the responsibility of training girls must make the angels weep; none but a heartless mortal like himself could laugh where conventionality and insincerity were taught in every hint as to posture and speech. It was bad enough, he said, to shape yourself into your own ideal; but to have to fashion yourself after the ideal of one whose sole object in teaching was to make money, was something wretched indeed.

I find, besides, that several intentions I had when I started have fallen out of the scheme. Somehow, the subjects would not well come in, or I felt that I was in danger of injuring the persons in the attempt to set forth their opinions.

 

CHAPTER XXXVII.

MRS. CROMWELL COMES.

 

The moment the legacy was paid, our liabilities being already nearly discharged, my husband took us all to Hastings. I had never before been to any other seacoast town where the land was worthy of the sea, except Kilkhaven. Assuredly, there is no place within easy reach of London to be once mentioned with Hastings. Of course we kept clear of the more fashionable and commonplace St. Leonard’s End, where yet the sea is the same,—a sea such that, not even off Cornwall, have I seen so many varieties of ocean-aspect. The immediate shore, with its earthy cliffs, is vastly inferior to the magnificent rock about Tintagel; but there is no outlook on the sea that I know more satisfying than that from the heights of Hastings, especially the East Hill; from the west side of which also you may, when weary of the ocean, look straight down on the ancient port, with its old houses, and fine, multiform red roofs, through the gauze of blue smoke which at eve of a summer day fills the narrow valley, softening the rough goings-on of life into harmony with the gentleness of sea and shore, field and sky. No doubt the suburbs are as unsightly as mere boxes of brick and lime can be, with an ugliness mean because pretentious, an altogether modern ugliness; but even this cannot touch the essential beauty of the place.

On the brow of this East Hill, just where it begins to sink towards Ecclesbourne Glen, stands a small, old, rickety house in the midst of the sweet grass of the downs. This house my husband was fortunate in finding to let, and took for three months. I am not, however, going to give any history of how we spent them; my sole reason for mentioning Hastings at all being that there I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Cromwell. It was on this wise.

One bright day, about noon,—almost all the days of those months were gorgeous with sunlight,—a rather fashionable maid ran up our little garden, begging for some water for her mistress. Sending her on with the water, I followed myself with a glass of sherry.

The door in our garden-hedge opened immediately on a green hollow in the hill, sloping towards the glen. As I stepped from the little gate on to the grass, I saw, to my surprise, that a white fog was blowing in from the sea. The heights on the opposite side of the glen, partially obscured thereby, looked more majestic than was their wont, and were mottled with patches of duller and brighter color as the drifts of the fog were heaped or parted here and there. Far down, at the foot of the cliffs, the waves of the rising tide, driven shorewards with the added force of a south-west breeze, caught and threw back what sunlight reached them, and thinned with their shine the fog between. It was all so strange and fine, and had come on so suddenly,—for when I had looked out a few minutes before, sea and sky were purely resplendent,—that I stood a moment or two and gazed, almost forgetting why I was there.

When I bethought myself and looked about me, I saw, in the sheltered hollow before me, a lady seated in a curiously-shaped chair; so constructed, in fact, as to form upon occasion a kind of litter. It was plain she was an invalid, from her paleness, and the tension of the skin on her face, revealing the outline of the bones beneath. Her features were finely formed, but rather small, and her forehead low; a Greek-like face, with large, pale-blue eyes, that reminded me of little Amy Morley’s. She smiled very sweetly when she saw me, and shook her head at the wine.

“I only wanted a little water,” she said. “This fog seems to stifle me.”

“It has come on very suddenly,” I said. “Perhaps it is the cold of it that affects your breathing. You don’t seem very strong, and any sudden change of temperature”—

“I am not one of the most vigorous of mortals,” she answered, with a sad smile; “but the day seemed of such indubitable character, that, after my husband had brought me here in the carriage, he sent it home, and left me with my maid, while he went for a long walk across the downs. When he sees the change in the weather, though, he will turn directly.”

“It won’t do to wait him here,” I said. “We must get you in at once. Would it be wrong to press you to take a little of this wine, just to counteract a chill?”

“I daren’t touch any thing but water,” she replied, “It would make me feverish at once.”

“Run and tell the cook,” I said to the maid, “that I want her here. You and she could carry your mistress in, could you not? I will help you.”

“There’s no occasion for that, ma’am: she’s as light as a feather,” was the whispered answer.

“I am quite ashamed of giving you so much trouble,” said the lady, either hearing or guessing at our words. “My husband will be very grateful to you.”

“It is only an act of common humanity,” I said.

But, as I spoke, I fancied her fair brow clouded a little, as if she was not accustomed to common humanity, and the word sounded harsh in her ear. The cloud, however, passed so quickly that I doubted, until I knew her better, whether it had really been there.

The two maids were now ready; and, Jemima instructed by the other, they lifted her with the utmost ease, and bore her gently towards the house. The garden-gate was just wide enough to let the chair through, and in a minute more she was upon the sofa. Then a fit of coughing came on which shook her dreadfully. When it had passed she lay quiet, with closed eyes, and a smile hovering about her sweet, thin-lipped mouth. By and by she opened them, and looked at me with a pitiful expression.

“I fear you are far from well,” I said.

“I’m dying,” she returned quietly.

“I hope not,” was all I could answer.

“Why should you hope not?” she returned. “I am in no strait betwixt two. I desire to depart. For me to die will be all gain.”

“But your friends?” I ventured to suggest, feeling my way, and not quite relishing either the form or tone of her utterance.

“I have none but my husband.”

“Then your husband?” I persisted.

“Ah!” she said mournfully, “he will miss me, no doubt, for a while. But it must be a weight off him, for I have been a sufferer so long!”

At this moment I heard a heavy, hasty step in the passage; the next, the room door opened, and in came, in hot haste, wiping his red face, a burly man, clumsy and active, with an umbrella in his hand, followed by a great, lumbering Newfoundland dog.

“Down, Polyphemus!” he said to the dog, which crept under a chair; while he, taking no notice of my presence, hurried up to his wife.

“My love! my little dove!” he said eagerly: “did you think I had forsaken you to the cruel elements?”

“No, Alcibiades,” she answered, with a sweet little drawl; “but you do not observe that I am not the only lady in the room.” Then, turning to me, “This is my husband, Mr. Cromwell,” she said. “I cannot tell him your name.”

“I am Mrs. Percivale,” I returned, almost mechanically, for the gentleman’s two names had run together and were sounding in my head: Alcibiades Cromwell! How could such a conjunction have taken place without the intervention of Charles Dickens?

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Mr. Cromwell, bowing. “Permit my anxiety about my poor wife to cover my rudeness. I had climbed the other side of the glen before I saw the fog; and it is no such easy matter to get up and down these hills of yours. I am greatly obliged to you for your hospitality. You have doubtless saved her life; for she is a frail flower, shrinking from the least breath of cold.”

The lady closed her eyes again, and the gentleman took her hand, and felt her pulse. He seemed about twice her age,—she not thirty; he well past fifty, the top of his head bald, and his gray hair sticking out fiercely over his good-natured red cheeks. He laid her hand gently down, put his hat on the table and his umbrella in a corner, wiped his face again, drew a chair near the sofa, and took his place by her side. I thought it better to leave them.

When I re-entered after a while, I saw from the windows, which looked sea-ward,