A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but size is always something, and, if Mrs. Redmain's had not harmony, it had gilding—a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on which about as much taste had been expended as on the fattening of a prize-pig. Happily there is as little need as temptation to give any description of it, with its sheets of glass and steel, its lace curtains, crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and glittering chandeliers of a thousand prisms. Everybody knows the kind of room—a huddle of the chimera ambition wallowing in the chaos of the commonplace—no miniature world of harmonious abiding. The only interesting thing in it was, that on all sides were doors, which must lead out of it, and might lead to a better place.
It was about eleven o'clock of a November morning—more like one in March. There might be a thick fog before the evening, but now the sun was shining like a brilliant lump of ice—so inimical to heat, apparently, that a servant had just dropped the venetian blind of one of the windows to shut his basilisk-gaze from the sickening fire, which was now rapidly recovering. Betwixt the cold sun and the hard earth, a dust-befogged wind, plainly borrowed from March, was sweeping the street.
Mr. and Mrs. Redmain had returned to town thus early because their country-place was in Cornwall, and there Mr. Redmain was too far from his physician. He was now considerably better, however, and had begun to go about again, for the weather did not yet affect him much. He was now in his study, as it was called, where he generally had his breakfast alone. Mrs. Redmain always had hers in bed, as often with a new novel as she could, of which her maid cut the leaves, and skimmed the cream. But now she was descending the stair, straight as a Greek goddess, and about as cold as the marble she is made of—mentally rigid, morally imperturbable, and vacant of countenance to a degree hardly equaled by the most ordinary of goddesses. She entered the drawing-room with a slow, careless, yet stately step, which belonged to her, I can not say by nature, for it was not natural, but by ancestry. She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a low, soft, shiny chair almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed listlessly into the fire. In a minute she rose and rang the bell.
"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.
The woman came.
"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
"Let her know I am in the drawing-room."
This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.
There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a reflector, and there was not much behind the eyes that looked into it for that fire to reflect. Hesper was no dreamer—the more was the pity, for dreams are often the stuff out of which actions are made. Had she been a truer woman, she might have been a dreamer, but where was the space for dreaming in a life like hers, without heaven, therefore without horizon, with so much room for desiring, and so little room for hope? The buz that greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy she knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence. And even upon these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of having a husband. I can not say she was tired of marriage, for she had loathed her marriage from the first, and had not found it at all better than her expectation: she had been too ignorant to forebode half its horrors.
Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she had never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by nature, she was gradually becoming stupid. People who have plenty of money, and neither hope nor aspiration, must become stupid, except indeed they hate, and then for a time the devil in them will make them a sort of clever.
Miss Yolland came undulating. No kiss, no greeting whatever passed between the ladies. Sepia began at once to rearrange a few hot-house flowers on the mantel-piece, looking herself much like some dark flower painted in an old missal.
"This day twelve months!" said Hesper.
"I know," returned Sepia.
"If one could die without pain, and there was nothing to come after!" said Hesper. "What a tiresome dream it is!"
"Dream, or nightmare, or what you will, you had better get all you can out of it before you break it," said Sepia.
"You seem to think it worth keeping!" yawned Hesper.
Sepia smiled, with her face to the glass, in which she saw the face of her cousin with her eyes on the fire; but she made no answer. Hesper went on.
"Ah!" she said, "your story is not mine. You are free; I am a slave. You are alive; I am in my coffin."
"That's marriage," said Sepia, dryly.
"It would not matter much," continued Hesper, "if you could have your coffin to yourself; but when you have to share it—ugh!"
"If I were you, then," said Sepia, "I would not lie still; I would get up and bite—I mean, be a vampire."
Hesper did not answer. Sepia turned from the mirror, looked at her, and burst into a laugh—at least, the sound she made had all the elements of a laugh—except the merriment.
"Now really, Hesper, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried. "You to put on the pelican and the sparrow, with all the world before you, and all the men in it at your feet!"
"A pack of fools!" remarked Hesper, with a calmness which in itself was scorn. "I don't deny it—but amusing fools—you must allow that!"
"They don't amuse me."
"That's your fault: you won't be amused. The more foolish they are, the more amusing I find them."
"I am sick of it all. Nothing amuses me. How can it, when there is nothing behind it? You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on water an inch deep, and then the mud!"
"I declare, misery makes a poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable peck, I hope."
"I don't mind mud so long as you can keep out of it. But when one is over head and ears in it, I should like to know what life is worth," said Hesper, heedless that the mud was of her own making. "I declare, Sepia," she went on, drawling the declaration, "if I were to be asked whether I would go on or not—"
"You would ask a little time to make up your mind, Hesper, I fancy," suggested Sepia, for Hesper had paused. As she did not reply, Sepia resumed.
"Which is your favorite poison, Hesper?" she said.
"When I choose, it will be to use," replied Hesper.
"Rhyming, at last!" said Sepia.
But Hesper would not laugh, and her perfect calmness checked the laughter which would have been Sepia's natural response: she was careful not to go too far.
"Do you know, Hesper," she said, with seriousness, "what is the matter with you?"
"Tolerably well," answered Hesper.
"You do not—let me tell you. You are nothing but a baby yet. You have no heart."
"If you mean that I have never been in love, you are right. But you talk foolishly; for you know that love is no more within my reach than if I were the corpse I feel."
Sepia pressed her lips together, and nodded knowingly; then, after a moment's pause, said:
"When your hour is come, you will understand. Every woman's hour comes, one time or another—whether she will or not."
"Sepia, if you think that, because I hate my husband, I would allow another man to make love to me, you do not know me yet."
"I know you very well; you do not know yourself, Hesper; you do not know the heart of a woman—because your own has never come awake yet."
"God forbid it ever should, then—so long as—as the man I hate is alive!"
Sepia laughed.
"A good prayer," she said; "for who can tell what you might do to him!"
"Sepia, I sometimes think you are a devil."
"And I sometimes think you are a saint."
"What do you take me for the other times?"
"A hypocrite. What do you take me for the other times?"
"No hypocrite," answered Hesper.
With a light, mocking laugh, Sepia turned away, and left the room.
Hesper did not move. If stillness indicates thought, then Hesper was thinking; and surely of late she had suffered what might have waked something like thought in what would then have been something like a mind: all the machinery of thought was there—sorely clogged, and rusty; but for a woman to hate her husband is hardly enough to make a thinking creature of her. True as it was, there was no little affectation in her saying what she did about the worthlessness of her life. She was plump and fresh; her eye was clear, her hand firm and cool; suffering would have to go a good deal deeper before it touched in her the issues of life, or the love of it. What set her talking so, was in great part the ennui of endeavor after enjoyment, and the reaction from success in the pursuit. Her low moods were, however, far more frequent than, even with such fatigue and reaction to explain them, belonged to her years, her health, or her temperament.
The fire grew hot. Hesper thought of her complexion, and pushed her chair back. Then she rose, and, having taken a hand-screen from the chimney-piece, was fanning herself with it, when the door opened, and a servant asked if she were at home to Mr. Helmer. She hesitated a moment: what an unearthly hour for a caller!
"Show him up," she answered: anything was better than her own company.
Tom Helmer entered—much the same—a little paler and thinner. He made his approach with a certain loose grace natural to him, and seated himself on the chair, at some distance from her own, to which Mrs. Redmain motioned him.
Tom seldom failed of pleasing. He was well dressed, and not too much; and, to the natural confidence of his shallow character, added the assurance born of a certain small degree of success in his profession, which he took for the pledge of approaching supremacy. He carried himself better than he used, and his legs therefore did not look so long. His hair continued to curl soft and silky about his head, for he protested against the fashionable convict-style. His hat was new, and he bore it in front of him like a ready apology.
It was to no presentableness of person, however, any more than to previous acquaintance, that Tom now owed his admittance. True, he had been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said, that she could no longer endure a tete-a-tete with one she knew so little as herself, and whose acquaintance she was so little desirous of cultivating.
Tom had been to a small party at the house a few evenings before, brought thither by the well-known leader of a certain literary clique, who, in return for homage, not seldom, took younger aspirants under a wing destined never to be itself more than half-fledged. It was, notwithstanding, broad enough already so to cover Tom with its shadow that under it he was able to creep into several houses of a sort of distinction, and among them into Mrs. Redmain's.
Nothing of less potency than the presumption attendant on self-satisfaction could have emboldened him to call thus early, and that in the hope not merely of finding Mrs. Redmain at home, but of finding her alone; and, with the not unusual reward of unworthy daring, he had succeeded. He was ambitious of making himself acceptable to ladies of social influence, and of being known to stand well with such. In the case of Mrs. Redmain he was the more anxious, because she had not received him on any footing of former acquaintance.
At the gathering to which I have referred, a certain song was sung by a lady, not without previous manoeuvre on the part of Tom, with which Mrs. Redmain had languidly expressed herself pleased; that song he had now brought her—for, concerning words and music both, he might have said with Touchstone, "An ill-favored thing, but mine own." He did not quote Touchstone because he believed both words and music superexcellent, the former being in truth not quite bad, and the latter nearly as good. Appreciation was the very hunger of Tom's small life, and here was a chance!
"I ought to apologize," he said, airily, "and I will, if you will allow me."
Mrs. Redmain said nothing, only waited with her eyes. They were calm, reposeful eyes, not fixed, scarcely lying upon Tom. It was chilling, but he was not easily chilled when self was in the question—as it generally was with Tom. He felt, however, that he must talk or be lost.
"I have taken the liberty," he said, "of bringing you the song I had the pleasure—a greater pleasure than you will readily imagine—of hearing you admire the other evening."
"I forget," said Hesper.
"I would not have ventured," continued Tom, "had it not happened that both air and words were my own."
"Ah!—indeed!—I did not know you were a poet, Mr.—"
She had forgotten his name.
"That or nothing," answered Tom, boldly.
"And a musician, too?"
"At your service, Mrs. Redmain."
"I don't happen to want a poet at present—or a musician either," she said, with just enough of a smile to turn the rudeness into what Tom accepted as a flattering familiarity.
"Nor am I in want of a place," he replied, with spirit; "a bird can sing on any branch. Will you allow me to sing this song on yours? Mrs. Downport scarcely gave the expression I could have desired.—May I read the voices before I sing them?"
Without either intimacy or encouragement, Tom was capable of offering to read his own verses! Such fools self-partisanship makes of us.
Mrs. Redmain was, for her, not a little amused with the young man; he was not just like every other that came to the house.
"I should li-i-ike," she said.
Tom laid himself back a little in his chair, with the sheet of music in his hand, closed his eyes, and repeated as follows—he knew all his own verses by heart:
"Lovely lady, sweet disdain!
Prithee keep thy Love at home;
Bind him with a tressed chain;
Do not let the mischief roam.
"In the jewel-cave, thine eye,
In the tangles of thy hair,
It is well the imp should lie—
There his home, his heaven is there.
"But for pity's sake, forbid
Beauty's wasp at me to fly;
Sure the child should not be chid,
And his mother standing by.
"For if once the villain came
To my house, too well I know
He would set it all aflame—
To the winds its ashes blow.
"Prithee keep thy Love at home;
Net him up or he will start;
And if once the mischief roam,
Straight he'll wing him to my heart."
What there might be in verse like this to touch with faintest emotion, let him say who cultivates art for art's sake. Doubtless there is that in rhythm and rhyme and cadence which will touch the pericardium when the heart itself is not to be reached by divinest harmony; but, whether such women as Hesper feel this touch or only admire a song as they admire the church-prayers and Shakespeare, or whether, imagining in it some tour de force of which they are themselves incapable, they therefore look upon it as a mighty thing, I am at a loss to determine. All I know is that a gleam as from some far-off mirror of admiration did certainly, to Tom's great satisfaction, appear on Hesper's countenance. As, however, she said nothing, he, to waive aside a threatening awkwardness, lightly subjoined:
"Queen Anne is all the rage now, you see."
Mrs. Redmain knew that Queen-Anne houses were in fashion, and was even able to recognize one by its flush window-frames, while she had felt something odd, which might be old-fashioned, in the song; between the two, she was led to the conclusion that the fashion of Queen Anne's time had been revived in the making of verses also.
"Can you, then, make a song to any pattern you please?" she asked.
"I fancy so," answered Tom, indifferently, as if it were nothing to him to do whatever he chose to attempt. And in fact he could imitate almost anything—and well, too—the easier that he had nothing of his own pressing for utterance; for he had yet made no response to the first demand made on every man, the only demand for originality made on any man—that he should order his own way aright.
"How clever you must be!" drawled Hesper; and, notwithstanding the tone, the words were pleasant in the ears of goose Tom. He rose, opened the piano, and, with not a little cheap facility, began to accompany a sweet tenor voice in the song he had just read.
The door opened, and Mr. Redmain came in. He gave a glance at Tom as he sang, and went up to his wife where she still sat, with her face to the fire, and her back to the piano.
"New singing-master, eh?" he said.
"No," answered his wife.
"Who the deuce is he?"
"I forget his name," replied Hesper, in the tone of one bored by question. "He used to come to Durnmelling."
"That is no reason why he should not have a name to him."
Hesper did not reply. Tom went on playing. The moment he struck the last chord, she called to him in a clear, soft, cold voice:
"Will you tell Mr. Redmain your name? I happen to have forgotten it."
Tom picked up his hat, rose, came forward, and, mentioning his name, held out his hand.
"I don't know you," said Mr. Redmain, touching his palm with two fingers that felt like small fishes.
"It is of no consequence," said his wife; "Mr. Aylmer is an old acquaintance of our family."
"Only you don't quite remember his name!"
"It is not my friends' names only I have an unhappy trick of forgetting. I often forget yours, Mr. Redmain!"
"My good name, you must mean."
"I never heard that."
Neither had raised the voice, or spoken with the least apparent anger.
Mr. Redmain gave a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so that he vanished with something of the look of a hairless tiger.
The moment he disappeared, Tom's gaze, which had been fascinated, sought Hesper. Her lips were shaping the word brute! —Tom heard it with his eyes; her eyes were flashing, and her face was flushed. But the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm—
"Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr. Helmer?" she said. "Or—" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible choking—it was only of anger—in the throat.
Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman was in question. He forgot entirely that she had given quite as good, or as bad, as she received, and was hastening to say something foolish, imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a lovely and unhappy wife and was almost in her confidence, when Sepia entered the room, with a dark glow that flashed into dusky radiance at sight of the handsome Tom. She had noted him on the night of the party, and remembered having seen him at the merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had not been introduced to her. A minute more, and they were sitting together in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two corvettes, though their cartridges were often blank enough, while Hesper, never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her bedroom.
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