Round under the cliffs by the sea,
facing South, are warm seats in winter. The sun
that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in
a mantle. Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham
found Annette, a chalk-block for her chair, and a
mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the keen-tipped
breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth
blue water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of
gulls.
Infants are said to have their ideas,
and why not young ladies? Those who write of
their perplexities in descriptions comical in their
length are unkind to them, by making them appear the
simplest of the creatures of fiction; and most of
us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them if
they were only some bit more lightly touched.
Those troubled sentiments of our young lady of the
comfortable classes are quite worthy of mention.
Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite,
has its place in our history, nor should we any of
us miss the pathos of it were it not that so large
a space is claimed for the exposure. As it is,
one has almost to fight a battle to persuade the world
that she has downright thoughts and feelings, and
really a superhuman delicacy is required in presenting
her that she may be credible. Even then so
much being accomplished the thousands accustomed to
chapters of her when she is in the situation of Annette
will be disappointed by short sentences, just as of
old the Continental eater of oysters would have been
offended at the offer of an exchange of two live for
two dozen dead ones. Annette was in the grand
crucial position of English imaginative prose.
I recognize it, and that to this the streamlets flow,
thence pours the flood. But what was the plain
truth? She had brought herself to think she ought
to sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with
Herbert, manifested in tricks of coldness alternating
with tones of regret, ended, as they had commenced,
in a mysterious half-sullenness. She had hardly
a word to say. Let me step in again to observe
that she had at the moment no pointed intention of
marrying Tinman. To her mind the circumstances
compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and
she saw the extremity in an extreme distance, as those
who are taking voyages may see death by drowning.
Still she had embarked.
“At all events, I have your
word for it that you don’t dislike me?”
said Herbert.
“Oh! no,” she sighed.
She liked him as emigrants the land they are leaving.
“And you have not promised your hand?”
“No,” she said, but sighed
in thinking that if she could be induced to promise
it, there would not be a word of leaving England.
“Then, as you are not engaged,
and don’t hate me, I have a chance?” he
said, in the semi-wailful interrogative of an organ
making a mere windy conclusion.
Ocean sent up a tiny wave at their feet.
“A day like this in winter is
rarer than a summer day,” Herbert resumed encouragingly.
Annette was replying, “People abuse our climate ”
But the thought of having to go out
away from this climate in the darkness of exile, with
her father to suffer under it worse than herself,
overwhelmed her, and fetched the reality of her sorrow
in the form of Tinman swimming before her soul with
the velocity of a telegraph-pole to the window of
the flying train. It was past as soon as seen,
but it gave her a desperate sensation of speed.
She began to feel that this was life in earnest.
And Herbert should have been more
resolute, fierier. She needed a strong will.
But he was not on the rapids of the
masterful passion. For though going at a certain
pace, it was by his own impulsion; and I am afraid
I must, with many apologies, compare him to the skater to
the skater on easy, slippery ice, be it understood;
but he could perform gyrations as he went, and he
rather sailed along than dashed; he was careful of
his figuring. Some lovers, right honest lovers,
never get beyond this quaint skating-stage; and some
ladies, a right goodly number in a foggy climate,
deceived by their occasional runs ahead, take them
for vessels on the very torrent of love. Let
them take them, and let the race continue. Only
we perceive that they are skating; they are careering
over a smooth icy floor, and they can stop at a signal,
with just half-a-yard of grating on the heel at the
outside. Ice, and not fire nor falling water,
has been their medium of progression.
Whether a man should unveil his own
sex is quite another question. If we are detected,
not solely are we done for, but our love-tales too.
However, there is not much ground for anxiety on that
head. Each member of the other party is blind
on her own account.
To Annette the figuring of Herbert
was graceful, but it did not catch her up and carry
her; it hardly touched her: He spoke well enough
to make her sorry for him, and not warmly enough to
make her forget her sorrow for herself.
Herbert could obtain no explanation
of the singularity of her conduct from Annette, and
he went straight to her father, who was nearly as
inexplicable for a time. At last he said:
“If you are ready to quit the
country with us, you may have my consent.”
“Why quit the country?”
Herbert asked, in natural amazement.
Van Diemen declined to tell him.
But seeing the young man look stupefied
and wretched he took a turn about the room, and said:
“I have n’t robbed,” and after more
turns, “I have n’t murdered.”
He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
“But I’m, in a man’s power.
Will that satisfy you? You’ll tell me,
because I’m rich, to snap my fingers. I
can’t. I’ve got feelings. I’m
in his power to hurt me and disgrace me. It’s
the disgrace to my disgrace I say it I
dread most. You’d be up to my reason if
you had ever served in a regiment. I mean, discipline if
ever you’d known discipline in the
police if you like anything anywhere
where there’s what we used to call spiny de
cor. I mean, at school. And I’m,”
said Van Diemen, “a rank idiot double D. dolt,
and flat as a pancake, and transparent as a pane of
glass. You see through me. Anybody could.
I can’t talk of my botheration without betraying
myself. What good am I among you sharp fellows
in England?”
Language of this kind, by virtue of
its unintelligibility, set Mr. Herbert Fellingham’s
acute speculations at work. He was obliged to
lean on Van Diemen’s assertion, that he had
not robbed and had not murdered, to be comforted by
the belief that he was not once a notorious bushranger,
or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing
that is naughtily Australian and kangarooly.
He sat at the dinner-table at Elba,
eating like the rest of mankind, and looking like
a starved beggarman all the while.
Annette, in pity of his bewilderment,
would have had her father take him into their confidence.
She suggested it covertly, and next she spoke of it
to him as a prudent measure, seeing that Mr. Fellingham
might find out his exact degree of liability.
Van Diemen shouted; he betrayed himself in his weakness
as she could not have imagined him. He was ready
to go, he said go on the spot, give up Elba,
fly from Old England: what he could not do was
to let his countrymen know what he was, and live among
them afterwards. He declared that the fact had
eternally been present to his mind, devouring him;
and Annette remembered his kindness to the artillerymen
posted along the shore westward of Crikswich, though
she could recall no sign of remorse. Van Diemen
said: “We have to do with Martin Tinman;
that’s one who has a hold on me, and one’s
enough. Leak out my secret to a second fellow,
you double my risks.” He would not be taught
to see how the second might counteract the first.
The singularity of the action of his character on
her position was, that though she knew not a soul
to whom she could unburden her wretchedness, and stood
far more isolated than in her Australian home, fever
and chill struck her blood in contemplation of the
necessity of quitting England.
Deep, then, was her gratitude to dear
good Mrs. Cavely for stepping in to mediate between
her father and Mr. Tinman. And well might she
be amazed to hear the origin of their recent dispute.
“It was,” Mrs. Cavely said, “that
Gippsland.”
Annette cried: “What?”
“That Gippsland of yours, my
dear. Your father will praise Gippsland whenever
my Martin asks him to admire the beauties of our neighbourhood.
Many a time has Martin come home to me complaining
of it. We have no doubt on earth that Gippsland
is a very fine place; but my brother has his idea’s
of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been
more used to contradiction, you may believe me.
He is a lamb by nature. And, as he says, ‘Why
underrate one’s own country?’ He cannot
bear to hear boasting. Well! I put it to
you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a person?
He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest
friend. From that to blows! It’s the
way with men. They begin about trifles, they
drink, they quarrel, and one does what he is sorry
for, and one says more than he means. All my
Martin desires is to shake your dear father’s
hand, forgive and forget. To win your esteem,
darling Annette, he would humble himself in the dust.
Will you not help me to bring these two dear old friends
together once more? It is unreasonable of your
dear papa to go on boasting of Gippsland if he is
so fond of England, now is it not? My brother
is the offended party in the eye of the law. That
is quite certain. Do you suppose he dreams of
taking advantage of it? He is waiting at home
to be told he may call on your father. Rank, dignity,
wounded feelings, is nothing to him in comparison with
friendship.”
Annette thought of the blow which
had felled him, and spoke the truth of her heart in
saying, “He is very generous.”
“You understand him.”
Mrs. Cavely pressed her hand. “We will both
go to your dear father. He may,” she added,
not without a gleam of feminine archness, “praise
Gippsland above the Himalayas to me. What my Martin
so much objected to was, the speaking of Gippsland
at all when there was mention of our Lake scenery.
As for me, I know how men love to boast of things
nobody else has seen.”
The two ladies went in company to
Van Diemen, who allowed himself to be melted.
He was reserved nevertheless. His reception of
Mr. Tinman displeased his daughter. Annette attached
the blackest importance to a blow of the fist.
In her mind it blazed fiendlike, and the man who forgave
it rose a step or two on the sublime. Especially
did he do so considering that he had it in his power
to dismiss her father and herself from bright beaming
England before she had looked on all the cathedrals
and churches, the sea-shores and spots named in printed
poetry, to say nothing of the nobility.
“Papa, you were not so kind
to Mr. Tinman as I could have hoped,” said Annette.
“Mart Tinman has me at his mercy,
and he’ll make me know it,” her father
returned gloomily. “He may let me off with
the Commander-in-chief. He’ll blast my
reputation some day, though. I shall be hanging
my head in society, through him.”
Van Diemen imitated the disconsolate
appearance of a gallows body, in one of those rapid
flashes of spontaneous veri-similitude which spring
of an inborn horror painting itself on the outside.
“A Deserter!” he moaned.
He succeeded in impressing the terrible
nature of the stigma upon Annette’s imagination.
The guest at Elba was busy in adding
up the sum of his own impressions, and dividing it
by this and that new circumstance; for he was totally
in the dark. He was attracted by the mysterious
interview of Mrs. Cavely and Annette. Tinman’s
calling and departing set him upon new calculations.
Annette grew cold and visibly distressed by her consciousness
of it.
She endeavoured to account for this
variation of mood. “We have been invited
to dine at the house on the beach to-morrow. I
would not have accepted, but papa... we seemed to
think it a duty. Of course the invitation extends
to you. We fancy you do not greatly enjoy dining
there. The table will be laid for you here, if
you prefer.”
Herbert preferred to try the skill of Mrs. Crickledon.
Now, for positive penetration the
head prepossessed by a suspicion is unmatched; for
where there is no daylight; this one at least goes
about with a lantern. Herbert begged Mrs. Crickledon
to cook a dinner for him, and then to give the right
colour to his absence from the table of Mr. Tinman,
he started for a winter day’s walk over the downs
as sharpening a business as any young fellow, blunt
or keen, may undertake; excellent for men of the pen,
whether they be creative, and produce, or slaughtering,
and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters
and the butchers. He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon’s
table at half-past six. She was, as she had previously
informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook at the period
of her courting by Crickledon. That zealous and
devoted husband had made his first excursion inland
to drop over the downs to the great house, and fetch
her away as his bride, on the death of her master,
Sir Alfred Pooney, who never would have parted with
her in life; and every day of that man’s life
he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner, nor more, nor
less, but exactly that number, as if he believed there
was luck in it. And as Crickledon said, it was
odd. But it was always a pleasure to cook for
him. Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for
a mean eater. And when Crickledon said he had
never seen an acorn, he might have seen one had he
looked about him in the great park, under the oaks,
on the day when he came to be married.
“Then it’s a standing
compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did not,”
said Herbert.
He remarked with the sententiousness
of enforced philosophy, that no wine was better than
bad wine.
Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle
left by her summer lodgers, who had indeed left two,
calling the wine invalid’s wine; and she and
her husband had opened one on the anniversary of their
marriage day in October. It had the taste of
doctor’s shop, they both agreed; and as no friend
of theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were
advised, because it was called a tonic, to mix it
with the pig-wash, so that it should not be entirely
lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig.
Herbert sipped at the remaining bottle, and finding
himself in the superior society of an old Manzanilla,
refilled his glass.
“Nothing I knows of proves the
difference between gentlefolks and poor persons as
tastes in wine,” said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring
him as she brought in a dish of cutlets, with
Sir Alfred Pooney’s favourite sauce Soubise,
wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea
of love in maidens’ thoughts, albeit constituting
the element of flavour. Something of such a dictum
Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and she
repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet
sayings when transfused through the native mind:
“He said, I like as it was what
you would call a young gal’s blush at a kiss
round a corner.”
The epicurean baronet had the habit
of talking in that way.
Herbert drank to his memory.
He was well-filled; he had no work to do, and he was
exuberant in spirits, as Mrs. Crickledon knew her countrymen
should and would be under those conditions. And
suddenly he drew his hand across a forehead so wrinkled
and dark, that Mrs. Crickledon exclaimed, “Heart
or stomach?”
“Oh, no,” said he. “I’m
sound enough in both, I hope.”
“That old Tinman’s up to one of his games,”
she observed.
“Do you think so?”
“He’s circumventing Miss Annette Smith.”
“Pooh! Crickledon.
A man of his age can’t be seriously thinking
of proposing for a young lady.”
“He’s a well-kept man.
He’s never racketed. He had n’t the
rackets in him. And she may n’t care for
him. But we hear things drop.”
“What things have you heard
drop, Crickledon? In a profound silence you may
hear pins; in a hubbub you may hear cannon-balls.
But I never believe in eavesdropping gossip.”
“He was heard to say to Mr.
Smith,” Crickledon pursued, and she lowered
her voice, “he was heard to say, it was when
they were quarreling over that chiwal, and they went
at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith beat him
and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to
say, there was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith
if he but lifted his finger. They Tinmans have
awful tempers. His old mother died malignant,
though she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny
to a Christian a hour longer than it took to pay the
money. And old Tinman’s just such another.”
“Transportation!” Herbert
ejaculated, “that’s sheer nonsense, Crickledon.
I’m sure your husband would tell you so.”
“It was my husband brought me
the words,” Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with some
triumph. “He did tell me, I own, to keep
it shut: but my speaking to you, a friend of
Mr. Smith’s, won’t do no harm. He
heard them under the battery, over that chiwal glass:
‘And you shall pay,’ says Mr. Smith, and
‘I sha’n’t,’ says old Tinman.
Mr. Smith said he would have it if he had to squeeze
a deathbed confession from a sinner. Then old
Tinman fires out, ‘You!’ he says, ‘you’
and he stammered. ‘Mr. Smith,’ my
husband said and you never saw a man so shocked as
my husband at being obliged to hear them at one another
Mr. Smith used the word damn. ‘You may
laugh, sir.’”
“You say it so capitally, Crickledon.”
“And then old Tinman said, ’And
a D. to you; and if I lift my finger, it’s Big
D. on your back.”
“And what did Mr. Smith say, then?”
“He said, like a man shot, my husband says he
said, ‘My God!’”
Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.
“You tell me, Crickledon, your
husband actually heard that just those
words? the tones?”
“My husband says he heard him
say, ‘My God!’ just like a poor man shot
or stabbed. You may speak to Crickledon, if you
speaks to him alone, sir. I say you ought to
know. For I’ve noticed Mr. Smith since that
day has never looked to me the same easy-minded happy
gentleman he was when we first knew him. He would
have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but Crickledon
thought I’d better be independent, and Mr. Smith
said to me, ’Perhaps you’re right, Crickledon,
for who knows how long I may be among you?’”
Herbert took the solace of tobacco
in Crickledon’s shop. Thence, with the
story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house
on the beach.