CHAPTER IITHE ACQUAINTANCE RIPENS
Duringthe next few days Greville watched her with ever-growing interest, and diagnosed her with the cool precision but discriminating admiration which he brought to his cabinets of rarities. It was easy to understand why and how Sir Harry had picked her up and easy also to judge that her lease of his affections (if they could be so called) would be brief and terminable on the resolve of the principal party. Sir Harry would have the submission of a whipped dog, and try as she would (and she tried her best by fits and starts) the girl could not crawl to his feet. She was too full of abounding animal energy, not to speak of force of character, to be tame, and, like most women of the uneducated classes, saw no reason for controlling her tongue. Out it all came with a burst when she was moved either to anger or pleasure.
“Fetherstone can’t control her, for her awe must be founded on respect and she has no respect for him. He is too much a man of her own class in essentials. She fathoms him through and through and don’t see anything superior to herself. If she met her superior, and he with a firm hand over her, she could be modelled into something to astonish the world—the only world she can ever move in.”
So thinks Greville and in the reflections which occupied him believed he knew where that superior could be found. She was meanwhile a fascinating study. Not by any means the woman of pleasure, so he decided—not mercenary, far more impassioned on the heart than the physical side; candid to danger-point when moved; defiant to her own hurt. Rather, she impressed him as one snared far less through temperament than by circumstance and the fact of her astonishing beauty. Such a girl would be attempted, persecuted, bribed wherever she went, and not only so but condemned to something very like starvation if she refused. For instance, what wise woman would take such a Helen into her service; and if she did, how otherwise than as the merest drudge, for the girl was nearly as ignorant and untaught as the wild rabbits in the park. He ascertained that she could read and, after a fashion, write, but no more. Then what choice had she? Who could blame this poor butterfly blown down a chill wind out to sea? All her glorious gifts were natural. It would be a pursuit as interesting as any collecting to pass them in review, catalogue them, and see what they were worth in the market—a better market than the mere sale of her body to the first comer. She was capable of other reaches of beauty than this, he believed. He watched her always.
She came out with the guns sometimes, a thing no lady of breeding would have done, and tramped the deep fallows along with them, and through the copses and spinneys and the dry fern where Sir Harry’s tall deer showed branching antlers. And the hard exercise that would have made a fine lady swoon did but bring the divinest flush to the cheeks of this daughter of the hedgerows, and brightened her great limpid eyes until they beamed like stars. Greville would have given much to know what she herself made of her life, what her hopes were. The best he could see was the chance that one of Sir Harry’s boon companions might take a liking for her when the Up Park episode should finish and so start another connection. Meanwhile he was witness to the queerest scenes, in which he tried to comprehend the girl’s personality and found it baffling.
There was the evening when Squire Weldon of Harting—more than a little overseas—declared and swore he believed that no woman could own such sheaves of hair and he would wager the half of it was false.
“And for why I think so,” says he, with drunken cunning. “I observe you wear always that kind of ribbon bandage to hold it up and hide where the true joins the false—a neat little trick and becoming. Now I knew a woman in Bedford and her hair was to her knees—” and so forth, maundering on, the girl with a book of pictures on her knee pretending not to notice him.
“Emily!” commanded Sir Harry, rousing himself in his chair. “You show that gentleman he’s mistook, for I won’t have my belongings disparaged. I say you’re a perfect beauty, and if any one denies it I’ll prove him in the wrong. Take that ribbon off your head and let them see, one and all!”
He carried so much wine that Greville reflected with an inward laugh ’twas lucky he stopped at the ribbon. Would she refuse? He would like her the better if she did, and he had seen her thwart her master on a lesser matter. She might yet be a Vashti.
The men sat staring and laughing. Did she refuse? Not she! A glow coloured her face—not anger, but pleasure and pride. Her eyes glittered.
“If any one says it isn’t my own I’ll show him what God gave me!” cries she, and began unknotting her ribbon.
We all know that fillet binding her glorious auburn waves. Romney painted it, lingered over it, loved it. It was true Greece, though she never guessed it; the Bacchante’s wear when with girt-up robe she runs through the woods, shouting her wild fellows from their lairs to follow Him of the leopard skin and the thyrsus. We see it to-day in her pictures that cannot die while beauty lives.
A few swift dexterous turns of the hand and she flung down the ribbon at her feet, and pulling out a few pins stuck them in her mouth like a maid-servant, and then shook her head. Down rolled the torrent, a royal mantle, chestnut woven with gold, and so veiled her near to the ankles. She turned herself about to show the smooth undulations feathering into pure gold at the tips.
“There’s for you!” cries Sir Harry. “Has any of you a girl to match that? You may pull it if you will, Weldon, to see if it isn’t tight where it grows. Hold it out, Emily.”
She held it out like wings shining to either side, the men marvelling. There was enough and to spare of the praise and comment that fed her vanity then. But Greville said nothing, though her seeking eye turned in his direction, and presently the cards were got out and the heroine knotted the locks up with simulated carelessness and so went off to the upper end of the room with her book, forgotten in the gamble.
He stood out and followed her after a while, sitting near her out of ear-range but well within eye-shot of Sir Harry. No risks for Greville.
He asked her what pictures amused her, and to his surprise she turned the book and showed him a fine set of Flaxman’s illustrations to the Iliad and Odyssey; figures beautiful, severe, dignified; the pure and perfect line that in so much resembled her own surpassing grace. On the open page the goddess Calypso, loose robe flowing in noble folds, directed the shipwright labours of Ulysses, clear-featured, akin to heaven but bound to earth by love.
“Where on earth did you get this?” says he in astonishment.
“In the liberary,” replied Mrs. Hart, struggling with the redundant syllable.
“And do you like it? Do you understand it?”
“Not a word. But it pleases me. The women are fine to look at. I dress as near that as I can. What are they?”
“Goddesses,” condescended Mr. Greville, smiling superior.
“What’s a goddess?” was the next question.
He explained as best he could, and, unwilling to lose the opportunity for a lesson, finished with some emphasis by saying that they knew their own worth and were above the mean vanities and tempers of common women. Therefore were they loved and respected.
“You mean,” says she, as sharp as a needle, “that I shouldn’t rage the way I’m apt. I know you saw me smack Betty’s face t’other day when she let fall the tea on my muslin gownd. Well, I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known you was coming. I know, too, I anger Sir Harry, answering back, and that’ll be the worse for me. But what am I to do if I feel that way? I’m fit to burst my girdle sometimes. Things do so anger me.”
“You make a great mistake in such behaviour, since you invite my opinion.” His very voice awed her, with the clear-cut vowels and consonants and the cool distinction of phrase and manner. Sir Harry spoke like a Sussex gentleman, but Greville like a prince, she thought; there was a serene remoteness about him, as from the height of a throne, which was sufficiently alarming, but attracting also.
She was woman enough to sense his contempt of Sir Harry, and that in itself set him high. Suddenly her eyes gloomed. She grew reckless.
“And what does it matter what I do? Here to-day and gone to-morrow as the saying is? The likes of me end in a ditch mostly. A short life and a merry one, say I! I’ll go my own way, and let them that don’t like me leave me!”
Greville was in no way stirred. He turned a leaf or two and considered the illustrations. Then, with studied politeness:
“You mistake very much, madam, if you consider your career so hopeless. You have gifts that might be improved and win you a secure position. At present you throw them away—if you will allow me to be frank—in vulgar”—he hesitated delicately at the word—“tantrums that bring you to a lower level than you merit. ’Tis a great pity.”
Her mood changed again instantly.
“Oh, sir, I beseech you not call me madam. I’m but a poor country girl, and it confuses me that I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels. Call me Emily, and for God’s sake advise me, for I don’t see no end to all this, but slipping back in the mud. You must know Sir Harry’s temper is violent. Look here, bend this way. He won’t see.”
She lifted the muslin sleeve, lightly tied with ribbon, doing this with a wary eye on the other end of the room, and disclosed an arm like country cream but disfigured with black bruises above the elbow. The print showed the grip of a man’s powerful hand on the softness.
“No doubt you vexed him, yet it should not be.” Greville motioned her to pull down the sleeve. “But I would have you know, Emily—since that name is your wish—that life is a thing to be made much as we would have it. You have good looks, a voice that if trained would bring you notice, and I should not despair of an actress’s career if you was taught, but if you can’t govern yourself and take pains there’s no hope, for you can never be respected.”
He harped on this string, you observe. It was perhaps not difficult to see how she coveted applause and the general good opinion. But respect!
“Oh, sir, who could respect a girl like me?”
The beautiful forlorn grey eyes were so appealing that Greville, having carefully noted that she sat with her back to the card players, crossed his silk-clad legs indolently and unbent a little.
“There’s no position where respect can’t be won. I am acquainted with Mrs. Wells—a lady whose is the very position you hold here—and so far as she is known she is universally respected. Does she flame and quarrel with those about her? No. Does she overstrain sentiment and imagination and always consider herself slighted unless every eye is upon her? Not she! Does she make foolish and vulgar exhibitions of her charms for the pleasure of other men besides him to whom she owes her home? No, indeed. She is well-governed, discreetly alluring, diffuses a charming serenity, and has the pleasing art to retain a lover as a friend when she passes on to the next happy possessor.”
The wisdom of the Serpent, and Eve listening fascinated. Though a little beyond her in some respects, Greville’s calm enthusiasm aroused her own.
“That’s a real lady!” she said, looking down pensively, “but I fear ’tis beyond me.” Then, flashing suddenly into the personal. “How do you know her so well, sir? No, I don’t like the woman! I’ll not imitate her.”
Greville withdrew his chair by an inch. He uncrossed his legs and was dignified.
“If this were not the speech of a pettish child, I should rebuke it severely! How I knew Mrs. Wells is not of importance. But to illustrate what I wished to mark, the lady has been and is under the protection of men of the highest birth and breeding. From them she has studied good manners and—”
“Oh, Mr. Greville, answer me this only: Is she with you?”
The face was so eager and troubled that he again relaxed a little.
“Certainly not, but I have the satisfaction to meet so agreeable a person at a friend’s house occasionally and think her an excellent example for a young woman like yourself. A man must always respect discretion in a woman and if—”
Again interruption, the words bubbling out unrestrained:
“Oh, I’ll learn of her, indeed I will. She wouldn’t have pulled down her hair to let the men see. Couldn’t I tell the dislike in your eye! But whydidn’tyou approve? Tell me and I’ll do my best to comprehend you. Oh, what a friend I might have in you could I deserve it! No one in this world ever spoke to me before, nor cared a straw but to make me pass the time for ’em.”
Mr. Greville assumed his best didactic style; the one that angered many men, but, expressed in his beautiful enunciation, impressed women from duchesses downward to the mesdames Wells of his acquaintance.
“No, I could not approve. Sure you can see it is to make your favours cheap, and what is cheap is scorned. Men other than the one who protects you should be treated with a perfectly agreeable good humour, but a decent reserve, and of all things you should avoid to anger the man on whose bounties you depend.”
“Bounties!” cried the fair listener, and instantly controlled herself, with heaving bosom.
“Bounties!” repeated the instructor firmly. “He takes you to decorate his home and enhance his comforts, and though Sir Harry had not the breeding to object to that particular display you often cross him more than is proper. I don’t myself approve of his method. Were a girl of your abilities in my possession I should have her educated. I believe you might repay it.”
There was a pause. A long one. Then, softly clasping her hands and regarding him with dewy eyes, the pupil said in a whisper:
“Oh, would that I was! Would that I was!”
That ended the conversation at the moment, for Greville rose immediately, and with a light remark began studying the pictures on the wall, walking slowly round the room, his arms behind him, until he joined the card players again, and complimented Sir Harry on his possessions, when the game ended. He did not, however, allude to the most surprising of them and was guarded afterwards in his approaches to it. Yet the conversation was renewed from time to time and always on the same lines, her possibilities, faults, conduct, and the hope which might tinge the future should she deserve better.
There was a sheltered spot in an angle of the house where she sat when the sun shone, and here he would surprise her sometimes with her book—trying to master what the author would be at. Once, with writing materials, improving her writing. It was touching and the eyes looking up beneath her gipsy hat, soft in its shadow, were more touching still.
“I do my best, Mr. Greville—a poor best!” said she, raising the ill-formed characters to his notice. “Ah, if I’d but been educated, what a girl I might have been! There’s no chance without it.”
She was as pat as his echo. That was her way, though he did not understand it. She took her colourchameleonfashion from the leaf that sheltered her, and was boisterous and hoyden with Sir Harry, quiet and engaging with him, and had a hundred other qualities behind ready to match those she came across. Was there any real fixed personality under it all? God knows! Her moods were as volatile as they were passionate at the moment.
Now and always, she was the pupil to Greville’s condescension. It served her as usefully as it did him later. They fitted like a mosaic.
He looked down at the straggling letters, the blot at the top, the spelling.
“Indeed you advance, Emily, and when I leave I have no objection if you write me your news once or twice. ’Tis possible I may be here in February and renew the acquaintance.”
“Acquaintance!” she cried with warmth. “No—I don’t understand that word, Mr. Greville. You’ve given me the wish to improve, and I count you for a friend indeed. I’ll study two hours each day faithfully until I have the happiness to see you once more.”
She meant it probably at the moment, yet most certainly would not fulfil the promise with the master’s eye removed to London, but this did not occur to Greville’s estimate of his influence.
“You do yourself justice, my dear Emily. I have a sincere wish to see you improve and—”
She caught one word and caressed it with lingering sweetness.
“Your dear Emily! Can the poor unhappy girl be Greville’s dear Emily? Oh, how happy for me could that be possible, but no, it never, never will be. And do you go soon?”
“In four days, but you will not pass wholly from my mind. I shall wonder occasionally if Emily is studious and loves her work.”
“She will, she shall!” cries the pupil softly, “and when you come again you shall say, ‘Mrs. Wells is admirable, but Emily too improves and behaves as I would have her.’ Oh, Greville, Sir Harry yesterday flung his boot after me because I wouldn’t bring him t’other and Hawkins was downstairs, and indeed my temptation was to fly upon him and drive the boot at his head. But not me. I recalled your words and advanced and fetched it. ‘Sir,’ says I, politely, ‘I won’t imitate your bad manners. Here’s your boot, and I’ll desire Hawkins to come to you when I go down!’ Was that well?”
“Excellent—on the whole!” says Greville, qualifying, “but you might have left out the bad manners. Men don’t love to be reproached. A gentle endearing sweetness would have served your turn better. Again, don’t suppose I defend Sir Harry, but it is the woman to bend and adapt herself suavely to the man’s requirements.”
With tear-filled eyes she owned him in the right and promised to repay his interest by gratefully doing as he bid her.
Her docility delighted him. He knew it sincere, as indeed it was, and supposed it not so much a mere vein of gold as the basis of her nature. What he could not estimate was that the violent scenes with Sir Harry, the rollicking songs and jests with his companions, were equally natural and a part of her many-coloured temperament. She was exactly what her surroundings might be. Life, for her, was a drama and she played the part the moment allotted, boldly adapting herself to her fellow actors. She reflected their own personalities in increased vividness, eager only to catch and retain the part of prima donna, be it what it would. This was instinctive. She was ignorant that she caught Greville by his desire to instruct and prose, to express his store of maxims where they would be heard with reverence and exalt him by displaying a masterpiece of his own discovery, whether woman or crystal. Yet she did it, and had she held a chart of his mental windings, could not have done it better.
Is this the secret of the immortal siren who flashes out on us from so many conquering faces down the pages of history—to catch and repeat a lover, but with the added passion of sex and temperament on honeyed lips ripe for kisses? The Greeks, it may be, aimed at this truth in declaring that in the Trojan Helen every man beheld his heart’s delight in the form he best loved; which, we may believe, will mostly be the reflection of himself. It was no nymph, but the boy Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image in the pool, and does this eternally.
He had several brief passages with her before the four days passed, and each time she grew on him surprisingly. It was against his code to meddle with another man’s mistress, and entirely against his inclination to incur the complications it would ensure. Sir Harry would resent with loud complaint and oath any such poaching and the clubs would ring with his honest indignation. Greville, be sure, had no intention of upsetting his own quiet comfort and running the risk of making himself ridiculous for a woman of Emily Hart’s character, but was equally determined that he would not lose sight of her.
Their real parting took place the day before he left and it was in the park, where he met her returning from an errand of mercy to some old goody in the village, her basket swinging in her hand, and a furred cloak about her that made her bloom most exquisitely soft and fair. He commended her kind heart, which indeed was no more than justice, and did not mention that he had seen her from his window and had hastened down by the short cut through the garden for a last word. This would have made her too confident.
“We are to part to-morrow, Emily,” says he with a certain solemnity, “and since I cannot repeat it in public, let me hope my words will not be forgotten, for all your future must now depend on your conduct. You are not seventeen, and prosperity and security may yet be yours if you are discreet and govern your impulses.Thereis the whole secret. Impulse has been and will be your ruin unless controlled.”
It must certainly appear that this young man as he walked discoursing beside her was a finished prig, the born preacher of an immoral morality. Nature was a force he dreaded and despised, and he had carefully pruned and grafted it in his own case so that no rebellious shoots and tendrils should trouble his peace. In spite of all his wise saws and modern instances, it was in this girl to burst into a tropic luxuriance of blossom that must wreathe her with crowns undreamed of in his arid philosophy, and make the world itself marvel. Had she pruned and trimmed and clipped as she tried her best to do for his sake, that strange and brilliant future had never been.
She promised, however, passionately, and with a warmth he thought excessive, adding:
“And may I write to you, Greville, and will you despise my poor letters, and will you still interest yourself for my good and write to tell me so?”
“You may certainly write to me if the need arises, my dear Emily, for your attention to all I say convinces me you have good qualities. Naturally I cannot write to you. This would be to treat Sir Harry in a way I neither can nor will, and might have unpleasant consequences. Let me know if anything should occur to part you from him, and when that day comes I believe you may find he will make a provision for you that shall mark his esteem for your conduct.”
Provision was not in her view; the fact that Greville was passing out of her life, possibly for ever, drowned that and all else. She caught his hand, and looked at him with quivering lips.
“Oh, how shall I thank you for your divine goodness to a poor girl like me? Oh, Greville, Greville, don’t forget me! But you won’t for all you’re such a great gentleman and makes Sir Harry and all the rest look like Sussex boors. And your knowledge—What is there you don’t know? Things I never even heard tell of and can’t never hope for. Oh, if I never see you again—and Heaven forbid it, for youmustcome in February—I’ll remember you till my dying day, and say ‘Greville didn’t despise the poor Emily. He knew she had a heart to feel his words that he honoured her with—and to love him! To love him!’ ”
She was sobbing now hysterically. He looked around with swift caution and drew her into the shade of a copse of evergreens uncommanded by the windows of the house, for this emotion must not be seen. Here he exhorted her to compose herself, and in vain.
It was inevitable, since she could not, that he should put his arms about the lovely mourner. Her cheek rested against his, their lips met, the basket lay forgotten at their feet.
She was obliged to remain a while in the shade to wipe the tears from her face when he strode off to join the other gentlemen coming back from their shooting. He never looked back.
Next day in the hall, Mrs. Hart curtseyed charmingly to Mr. Greville’s bow as he said farewell, half deafened by Sir Harry’s ringing exhortations to return in February.
CHAPTER IIITHE EXPLOSION
Grevilledid not return in February. He had other and more important invitations and time a little dulled the strong impression Emily Hart had made upon him. She had written more than once, dutiful ill-spelt letters, monuments of labour—love’s labour, and not wholly lost.
He had also seen her twice, for she insisted with Sir Harry on coming up to London to visit her mother, a simple, good-natured old body, now decorated with the remarkable name of Mrs. Cadogan (Heavens knows why!) and, through Greville’s own influence, serving as cook in the family of one of the numerous Hamilton and Greville connections. He had not wholly approved of the step of coming to London. Her enthusiasm and energy, far from warming his tepid blood, rather alarmed him than otherwise. He declined to see her but in Mrs. Cadogan’s presence and, though condescending and encouraging on the moral-immoral lines, was guarded. That anxiety for her mother’s company might mislead Sir Harry but could not himself. Months passed after the last visit with a letter or two, and then a silence. It certainly did not flatter him to believe he might be forgotten and that she was adjusting herself so comfortably to Sir Harry that outside interests were fading. Yet it might be so. The brief letters certainly showed no sign of study or improvement—she must therefore value his exhortations more lightly. That irked him somehow. It touched both curiosity and vanity, and breaking his almost invariable rule he wrote her a few friendly lines—no more.
He sat one morning in his London house in his embroidered Turkish dressing-gown, arranging a small cabinet of gems and intaglios belonging to his uncle, Sir William Hamilton, for which he had made himself responsible on their arrival in London. His letter acknowledging them lay on the table beside him.
“My dear Hamilton,” it began, for so he always called this almost brother-uncle, “I never saw anything more beautiful than this Medusa on agate. Your usual good fortune always attends you—” and so forth. His whole mind was on this as he moved and replaced the beautiful fossils of antique art with delicate fingers. He wished, indeed, at least a part of them were his own, for a schedule of expenses had given him some discomfort the night before, and it was clearly a choice between cutting down certain luxuries and selling one or two treasures to make both ends meet. A younger son of a great family is often face to face with these little difficulties. It is hard to be the same flesh and blood as the elder brother and see all the money, land, and nearly all the consideration flow in that channel, leaving the younger dry.
“A rich wife? True—but then—”
The gems occupied him now. He was bending over the cabinet in deep attention when his man brought in a post letter, ill-scrawled and sealed, with drops of wax about it as if the sender had suffered from extreme haste and agitation.
It fell into that calm, retired atmosphere of extreme culture and quiet like a meteor from another and more volcanic world of upheavals, but it did not hurry Charles Greville though he knew the hand. He still continued his delicate work until all were neatly sorted, the cabinet locked and the key in his pocket. And not till then did he slit the paper with a silver knife, and spread the big sheet open before him. The postmark was Chester, which somewhat surprised him.
Good Lord!—that brutal beast Sir Harry! He was turning her loose on the world, an expectant mother and without a guinea—a girl of seventeen! Yet even before he read the rest his prudence had suggested the thought that as likely as not she had brought it on herself by some unpardonable levity. Caution—caution! That was the basis of all his thoughts as he read. It went on like the cry of a tortured, unreasoning animal, a hare caught in a gin awaiting its murderer. That would not have moved him, but this stirred him somewhat.
“Yesterday did I receve your kind letter. It put me in some spirits for believe me I am allmost distrackdid. I have never hard from Sir H and he is not at Lechster now, I am sure. I have wrote 7 letters and no anser. What shall I dow? Good God, what shall I dow? I can’t come to town for want of mony. I have not a farthing to bless myself with and I think my friends looks cooly on me. I think so. O. G. what shall I dow? Oh how your letter affected me when you wished me happiness. O. G. that I was in your possession or in Sir H’s what a happy girl would I have been! Girl indeed! What else am I but a girl in distres—in reall distres. For God’s sak, G. write the minet you get this, and only tell me what I am to dow. Direct same whay. I am allmos mad. Oh for God’s sake tell me what is to become on me. O dear Greville write to me. Write to me. G. adieu and believe yours for ever, Emily Hart. Don’t tell my mother what distres I am in, and do afford me some comfort.”
A strange letter for a man of his age to be faced with since it did not concern him personally. He sat staring at it with distaste, seasoned with pity. Girls must expect to suffer who have no safeguards in a world made for and by men, but after all she was very young, and Sir Harry, with his abounding plenty, a brute. He sat long, for there was much to consider—even more for himself than for her. He drew up two mental columns for and against what she was obviously praying for. He liked the girl after a fashion; her docility pleased him; her passionate and submissive adoration of his own greatness won him; her beauty stirred him more than any he had ever beheld. Here he paused for a swift review of the past and deciding that so it certainly was, passed on to the next consideration. Now if he were to take a little home for her in the suburbs and make it his headquarters he might well sell or let this great mansion in Portman Square and thus pass the time in modest retrenchment until he could find the exactly suitable heiress who must ultimately become the Honourable Mrs. Charles Greville and provide him with unlimited means for the purchase of articles ofvirtu. This economy might be a most valuable matter to him at the present moment. And lastly, there was pity. Greville’s heart was not as mineralogical as his collections. It must be a petrifaction through and through if he were not stirred to compassion by this hopeless plight of despairing youth. It was not that. He remembered the great impassioned eyes, dewy with tears, looking into his own in the evergreen copse. He remembered the long embrace. He remembered her almost frantic joy when she stepped from the coach in London from those visits to her mother, the so-called Mrs. Cadogan, and found him waiting for her with his superfine air of a great gentleman who dropped these favours as trifles from chilly altitudes. How lovely she had been, all sparkling, smiling, trembling, gay as a daffodil tossing on a spring breeze. And he remembered, for in this gentleman prudence was his foremost virtue, that the fact of Mrs. Cadogan’s presence in London would relieve him from much responsibility should he decide to be gracious, and furthermore that he had heard she was an unsurpassable cook. She would naturally follow her daughter’s fortunes if needful and be a faithful steward of her interests.
Yet on the other side must be set the uncertainties of such a connection. Naturally it would not reflect on his own character, but he knew Emily’s temper uncertain, and her conduct to himself while in Sir Harry’s possession certainly suggested possible levities which he would not for one moment endure. Yet again, why should he? A very modest provision would always free him, especially with Mrs. Cadogan in the background.
And though he had no money to fling about idly he had quite sufficient for discreetly conducted pleasures. Above all, he hoped and expected everything from Emily’s obedience and the amazed gratitude which any condescension now would rivet to him unmovably. He could imagine her saving every expense, waiting in tender submission on his every look, lovely, worshipping—a sweeter Eve enclosed in a Paradise no other man should enter. Would he expose her to the attentions of a set of roisterers like Sir Harry’s companions? Never!
But the final thought that clinched his resolves was that never man could own a more wonderful pupil. The more he reviewed and dissected, the more certain he became that here was an uncut jewel of many carats and facets. To cut, to polish, to make her a lady, a woman of demirep fashion, a brilliant Aspasia, singing, posing, acting, the desired of all desires—this would be fame and envy in his world, and contempt for the boor who had tossed her away like a common pebble.
At last he saw his path. He drew the paper to him, read it once more and set himself to the answer. In short, he had decided he could rule her.
“My dear Emily, I do not make apologies for Sir H.’s behaviour to you, and altho’ I advised you to deserve his esteem by your good conduct, I own I never expected better from him. It was your duty to deserve good treatment from him, and it gave me great concern to see you imprudent the first time you came from the country, as the same conduct was repeated when you was last in town, I began to despair of your happiness. To prove to you that I do not accuse you falsely I only mention five guineas and half a guinea for coach. But, my dear Emily, as you seem quite miserable now I do not mean to give you uneasiness but comfort, and tell you I will forget your bad conduct to Sir H. and myself, and will not repent my good humour if I find you have learned by experience to value yourself and preserve your friends by good conduct and affection.I will now answer your letter.You tell me your friends look coolly on you; it is therefore time to leave them; but it is necessary for you to decide some points before you come to town. You are sensible that for the next three months your situation will not admit a giddy life if you wished it. After you have told me Sir H. neither provides for you nor takes any notice of your letters, it might appear laughing at you to advise you to make Sir H. more kind and attentive. I do not think a great deal of time should be lost, for I have never seen a woman clever enough to keep a man who is tired of her. But it is a great deal more for me toadvise you neverto see him again and write only to inform him of your determination. You must, however, do either the one or the other. You may easily see, my dear Emily, why it is absolutely necessary for this point to be settled before I can move one step. If you love Sir H. you should not give him up.But besides this, my Emily, I would not be troubled with your connections (excepting your mother) and with Sir H.’s friends for the universe. My advice is then to take a steady resolution.I shall then be free to dry up the tears of my lovely Emily and give her comfort. If you do not forfeit my esteem perhaps my Emily may be happy. You know I have been so by avoiding the vexation which frequently arises from ingratitude and caprice.Nothing but your letter and your distress could incline me to alter my system, but remember I never will give up my peace or continue my connection one moment after my confidence is betrayed. If you should come to town and take my advice you should take another name. By degrees I would get you a new set of acquaintances, and by keeping your own secret I may expect to see you respected and admired. Thus far as relates to yourself. As to the child, its mother shall obtain its kindness from me and it shall never want. I enclose you some money: do not throw it away. God bless you, my dearest lovely girl, take your determination and let me hear from you once more. Adieu, my dear Emily.”
“My dear Emily, I do not make apologies for Sir H.’s behaviour to you, and altho’ I advised you to deserve his esteem by your good conduct, I own I never expected better from him. It was your duty to deserve good treatment from him, and it gave me great concern to see you imprudent the first time you came from the country, as the same conduct was repeated when you was last in town, I began to despair of your happiness. To prove to you that I do not accuse you falsely I only mention five guineas and half a guinea for coach. But, my dear Emily, as you seem quite miserable now I do not mean to give you uneasiness but comfort, and tell you I will forget your bad conduct to Sir H. and myself, and will not repent my good humour if I find you have learned by experience to value yourself and preserve your friends by good conduct and affection.
I will now answer your letter.
You tell me your friends look coolly on you; it is therefore time to leave them; but it is necessary for you to decide some points before you come to town. You are sensible that for the next three months your situation will not admit a giddy life if you wished it. After you have told me Sir H. neither provides for you nor takes any notice of your letters, it might appear laughing at you to advise you to make Sir H. more kind and attentive. I do not think a great deal of time should be lost, for I have never seen a woman clever enough to keep a man who is tired of her. But it is a great deal more for me toadvise you neverto see him again and write only to inform him of your determination. You must, however, do either the one or the other. You may easily see, my dear Emily, why it is absolutely necessary for this point to be settled before I can move one step. If you love Sir H. you should not give him up.
But besides this, my Emily, I would not be troubled with your connections (excepting your mother) and with Sir H.’s friends for the universe. My advice is then to take a steady resolution.
I shall then be free to dry up the tears of my lovely Emily and give her comfort. If you do not forfeit my esteem perhaps my Emily may be happy. You know I have been so by avoiding the vexation which frequently arises from ingratitude and caprice.
Nothing but your letter and your distress could incline me to alter my system, but remember I never will give up my peace or continue my connection one moment after my confidence is betrayed. If you should come to town and take my advice you should take another name. By degrees I would get you a new set of acquaintances, and by keeping your own secret I may expect to see you respected and admired. Thus far as relates to yourself. As to the child, its mother shall obtain its kindness from me and it shall never want. I enclose you some money: do not throw it away. God bless you, my dearest lovely girl, take your determination and let me hear from you once more. Adieu, my dear Emily.”
He read this epistle through twice (with certain passages omitted here), then folded and sealed it with his usual impeccable care. He knew it must shine like a rainbow in blackest clouds through the rain-wet eyes that would read it.
“I have three safeguards,” he reflected, as he impressed it with his seal of a flying Eros in cornelian, “money—she has none, nor prospects. The child, for who else will spend a doit on it? And gratitude—unless the old lady, her mother, urges her on to make a better market of such beauty.”
It will be observed that Greville put gratitude last. He prided himself on his knowledge of the human and especially the feminine heart. So he finally despatched his letter.
Next day he wrote to his dear Hamilton, between whom and himself ran a pleasant link of exchanged piccadilloes as well as of articles ofvirtu. He was wont to dissect the immoral in his reflections to Hamilton as well as in his own heart, and he did it now, dwelling slightly on the arrangement he contemplated and fully on his reasons for making it. He did not spare his Emily’s past. An immaculate one would have appeared as absurd in Sir William’s eyes as his own in such circumstances, and there was no thought of concealment. But it afforded an opening for the reflections on women which he privately judged worthy to be classed with the epigrams of the mighty, and, indeed, they were pretty well for a man of thirty odd. Thus he wrote of the weaker vessel.
“With women I observe they have only resource in art, and there is to them no interval between plain ground and the precipice, and the springs of action are so much in the extreme of the sublime and the low that no absolute dependence can be given by men—” and so forth—Rochefoucauld and water, but very impressive to Sir William Hamilton, who, though the elder, was deeply influenced by his handsome nephew’s worldly skill and finesse. Greville, at all events, did justice to Emily’s beauty, or as he now insisted on calling her, “Emma’s,” that name being in vogue as a romantic variant, and as such gladly adopted in the change he suggested.
“Emma,” he wrote, “is the most amazing beauty that ever my eyes lit on. I long, my dear Hamilton, for your opinion to support mine that on the whole she is quite unequalled in either of our memories. Contemplating her from the point of view of a student of the perfect standard of the antique I know no alteration I could have recommended either in face or figure unless it were possibly a little more delicacy of the hands and feet. Her masses of hair spring from a brow as low and broad as the Clytie’s, the length and roundness of her throat suggest our Roman Venus, the moulding of back and bosom the Stooping Venus, and—”
But why continue? All that he and Sir William had ever passed in delighted review in Italy was summoned to draw the fairest picture in the elder man’s mind that words could frame or memory paint. “And even this falls short of the reality,” ended the letter. “Could you imagine a man being such a ruffianly fool as to fling away such a jewel—the perfectest modern-antique that ever human eye beheld? I hope to make her a really economic housekeeper, for you know my needs are urgent and the house in Portman Square a terrible drain on my resources. I shall now proceed to let it.”
Sir William in reply expressed himself as passionately desirous to see the Renaissance beauty, as he termed her. “Your Emma reads like one of the sumptuous Venetian beauties whose calm and noble lines recall the antique dignity of the great Roman families. May it not be long ere I feast my eyes upon your choice.”
Greville could not acquiesce in the epithet, “calm.” He had met Emma at the office of the Cheshire coach a few days before and had much ado to prevent her flinging her arms about him in public in her glowing delight and enthusiasm. He warded this off, however, until they were in the hackney coach, and there, do what he would, she fell upon his shoulder sobbing and laughing in a breath.
“I knew—I knew at Up Park that something was to come of it. Oh, Greville, I knew you could not be so kind to me for nothing. Sure I was made to serve and love you, and is it really, really true I am to be with you and keep your house? Oh, indeed, you shall never have to complain of me. Every word I speak shall be considered, every action—”
He tried in vain to stem the outflow and finding that impossible submitted with patience for the length of a street and then turned the subject to her journey. Had he sent her an ample supply of money? She felt in her pocket beneath her long cloak and displayed a little, shabby purse with a half guinea and some loose shillings.
“Did I calculate so near as that? I would have sent you more had I known.” He spoke with compunction, looking at the remainder.
“Oh, Greville, you sent nobly; but there was a poor old woman in the coach, going to see her sick son at Greenwich, and a sailor too, and I couldn’t see her want for a meal and a drop of something warm to comfort her poor old heart, and I gave her—”
Greville’s cold eye arrested her. She looked up almost trembling.
“You gave hermymoney!”—with an awful pause between each word. “A guinea? Emma, you are hopeless. Indeed, I have no hopes of you. A heedless, wasteful girl!Whenwill you consider?”
A pause, her head hanging down like a flower in the rain. Not a word to say for herself.
He relented presently and she revived as quickly as a dog beaten and then received into favour. Eagerly she promised amendment.
“I must give, Greville. I can’t say no somehow, but I promise and declare to you it shall never be more than a halfpenny at one time. Will you allow that? Just one halfpenny.”
Even Greville was wrung into a smile. No, he would not mind that. It was agreed.
He left her with Mrs. Cadogan, beheld the meeting—a little awed by his stately presence—viewed with condescension the two rooms chosen at his expense, and then departed. He did not intend to see either again until the house at Edgware Row, Paddington Green should be ready for occupation, and its new mistress ready to take up her duties.
Her situation repelled his fastidiousness, though she carried it with the physical indifference and health of the peasant to whom such matters are a trifle in nature’s way, and her cloak was womanly draped about her.
By a coincidence he met Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh two nights later at Almack’s and was obliged to submit to a greeting he would have avoided if he could.
“Why, how was it you never came down this winter? I don’t know as I ever saw the birds stronger on the wing. I had the old set down and plenty good sport.”
“And hunting?” asked Greville.
“Good, take it for all. No long hard frosts. Oh!—you heard the little girl I had down there has left me, did you? Emily Hart.”
“I think I did, now you mention it.” Greville was idly looking at the dancers in the room beyond. Sir Harry could not flatter himself he was interesting his audience.
“Yes, and if you hear it spread about I was harsh with her, I beg you’d contradict it. I hear as how Weldon should say he’d have given her a home had he known the facts. Well, sir, the facts were these: That girl, she’d kick up the very devil’s own dust if you crossed her in anything, and I ask your reason, is a man to expect this from a mere slut? And then, she didn’t know how to behave to the men I brought down. Either held herself away and wouldn’t look at ’em if they didn’t please her, or was too friendly if they did. Mind, I don’t mean to accuse her of more than a hail fellow well met, but who, I ask you, was madam to indulge herself in her whims when all she was to think of was how to pleaseme?”
Greville responded in an indistinct murmur. He was undoubtedly relieved to find the indictment no heavier. It might have been one to give a blow to his dreams of quiet settlement.
“So I just upped and said we must part, and, had she shown a spark of good nature, even then might have relented—”
“Excuse me, I see a man I must speak with—urgent business. Return soon!” Greville shot out, and so away with him and left the baronet staring. The more so as he joined no man, but an extremely dignified and beautiful lady of middle age, the famous Duchess of Argyll, formerly Duchess of Hamilton and cousin of Greville’s uncle, Sir William Hamilton. Stars of such magnitude scarcely shone in Sir Harry’s personal heaven, and he looked on a little sourly while Greville, perfectly at his ease, squired the great lady into the dancing room, laughing and talking.
“I wonder now did I make any mess of what I was saying about that little spitfire!” he thought to himself. “I wouldn’t lose Greville’s good word, so I wouldn’t. But I’m glad to be rid of her for all! A man wants a new face about him and must be master and more.”
As I dismiss Sir Harry here, his future fate may be given. A pretty and virtuous girl, the daughter of one of his village labourers, caught his roving fancy next and would have none of his secret approaches. It is possible that Mrs. Hart’s adventures, well known in the village, served as a beacon in dangerous seas. She rebuffed him quietly but firmly, and the more he floundered, the deeper the hook pierced his gills. He was a man who could not endure defeat, but must have the victory however ruinous the cost. His friends watched the struggle with an interest chiefly expressed in heavy wagers, yet even this circumstance, though perfectly well known to him, could not save him from a much happier fate than he deserved. For the girl married him and made him an excellent wife and Lady Fetherstonehaugh, and a sensible, well-conducted mistress of his great house, in breeding and temper matching him far better than a lady of quality. A man who has erred less has often been less happily suited than this gentleman who did not get his deserts.
Greville, however, never used her ladyship as an example of instruction for his Emma, considering that this amazing circumstance might excite hopes of an order the very last he wished to enter her mind, and it was not till many years later she knew the fate of her ancient admirer. She could laugh at it then for reasons Greville could never in his wildest dreams have anticipated.
So events drew on. The “little Emma” was born and despatched to her mother’s distant village of Hawarden for tending, and that her neighbourhood might not inconvenience her young mother’s protector.
And thus Mrs. Hart became Greville’s housekeeper in Edgware Row, with Mrs. Cadogan’s invaluable aid in the background.