The string of episodes which discovered before the autumn was over the heart of Mr. Cyrus Worthington at her feet hardly deserves record in her history but for the fillip which it gave to her spirits. Tribute is tribute, and Mr. Worthington was a warrantable gentleman. The tarnish she had discerned upon her armour, the foxmarks upon her fair page, dispersed under his ardent breath; she realised herself desirable and loveworthy; she arose from the thicket in which she cowered with the light of triumph prophetic in her eyes, the flush of victory after victory prophetic in her cheeks. Therefore Mr. Worthington's career in the Charles Street lists shall be chronicled.
He was a portly widower, a banker, a father, who made his bow to Lady Maria some three times a year when he dined in Charles Street. In return, he received her ladyship once during a summer at his mansion of Fallowlea, Walton-on-Thames. On such occasions the Misses Worthington and their cousins, the Pascoe girls, who lived at Esher, would enact a pastoral play in the shrubberies with various entangled curates, with young Sam Worthington from Oxford and friends of his. Mr. Worthington himself, master of the difficult art of declining verse as if it were bad prose, rehearsed the Prologue and Epilogue in a master's gown and mortarboard, which he would retain for the rest of the afternoon. It was in that guise that, his caution deserting him, he allowed himself to dwell upon Sanchia's beauty.
Lady Maria had taken her down to Walton in mid-July; she had chanced to meet Melusine there, and the two had embraced as sisters should. It is to be owned that her adoption by Charles Street had restored her credit with her family more certainly than any white sheet and taper which she could have supported would have done. Her mother was highly gratified, though she affected a shrug when good Mr. Percival, in the simplicity of his heart, overflowed with the joy of it. “Sancie in Berkeley Square—where Lord Rosebery lives: think of that, my dear!” And Mrs. Percival, who knew where Lord Rosebery lived as well as anybody, would reply, “These things will be balanced hereafter. Neither you nor I, Welbore, are assessing angels, I believe. I pray to God that she has made her peace with our Church.”
“Chapel Royal,” said Mr. Percival, “will be her ladyship's ticket—or St. James's, Piccadilly. They tell me that the great world go there now in the evenings, dressed for dinner.” Privately he vowed that, should his Sancie be one of those immaculate worshippers, she should not fail in toilet. And he had not missed the point so far as you might think. Philippa Tompsett-King, who had been present when these things were discussing, had lifted an inflamed face over the dinner-table. “I only know,” she had said, “that I would rather live in Bloomsbury than have her conscience. Cynicism has always seemed to me the sin against the Holy Ghost.” But Melusine Scales, the gentle creature, had written meekly of her joy; and Vicky Sinclair said to her husband, the captain—“Sancie always tumbles on her feet. She always did—like a sweet cat.” Shrewd and affectionate at once, she alone had discerned the god's prerogative immanent in the youngest daughter of Thomas Welbore Percival.
But the picture of Sanchia and Melusine, two fair girls, standing together embraced under the cedarn shade had smitten deep into the well-cased heart of Cyrus Worthington. He had come upon them at a pretty moment, when Melusine, the willowy and tall, having opened her arms to the dear truant, one arm still about her, with her free hand touched her cheek that lips might meet lips. “Darling, I'm so glad—so very glad,” she was whispering, and Sanchia, with the same light laughing in her eyes, “Dear old Melot—how sweet you are to me.” Mr. Worthington pushed back his mortarboard and revealed the crimson chevron which it had bitten into his bald brow. “A charming scene—two charming young ladies! Mrs. Gerald Scales and her sister, I think. Lady Maria's adoption—charming, charming!” A right instinct sent him tiptoe over his lawn, another made him doff his mortarboard.
“Mrs. Scales, we begin. The hunt is up. Poesy calls, 'Follow, follow, follow!' Your sister, I think?”
Sanchia played the rogue. “Oh, Mr. Worthington, have you forgotten already? Lady Maria explained me half-an-hour-ago. Must Melusine introduce me again?”
“Not for the world, Miss Percival, not for the world!” the banker protested. “I was in a sense explaining myself. Pray, do not suppose that I forget either you or my manners so completely. No, no. But I am a little near-sighted, I fear; there is a little difficulty of focussing; nothing organic, no loss of function.” He cleared his throat, and to give himself assurance, jingled half-crowns with his plunged hand. “No loss of function whatever.” He took the thing a little more seriously than he need, was in danger of labouring it. Melusine turned the talk. He invited them to the play, as “master of the revels,” and walked between them, looking a very decent figure of a don on a college lawn, substantial, serene, and with an air of displaying his possessions: “Parva sed apta mihi; Deus nobis haec otia fecit!” He still possessed the rags of his Latin. “This little bay-tree will interest you, Miss Percival. It was planted many years ago by the late Lord Meeke—the uncle of the present peer. We had had some business relations; they were happily cemented into something more intimate by this little fellow.” He touched it tenderly. “A sturdy growth! Like my affection for my noble but departed friend. Dear me! Labuntur anni, indeed!” His fig tree, which some one else had planted, his laburnum—a slip from one at Rickmansworth, the seat of the late Lord Mayor Burgess—a catalpa seedling from Panshanger, which the late Lady Cowper did him the honour to present with her own hands: as Sanchia said afterwards to Melot, his garden was rather like a cemetery of dead friendships....
Then they sat to witness the revels. Sanchia's fancy, uplifted by her contentment, played with the play, and suggested flights undreamed of for many a year. She sat by Melusine and her husband, and Mr. Worthington watched her in the long intervals of his duty. Charming indeed, and most high-bred: now where did old Welbore Percival, whom he met daily in Throgmorton Street, fetch up such a strain of blood? His wife, too, Kitty Blount, as she had been—what had Kitty Blount been but a high-coloured, bouncing romp of a girl when they had all been paddling together at Broadstairs? Extraordinary! And now here was one of his girls sister-in-law of a county baronet—none of your city knights, mind you—and the other, with the lift of a princess and the clear sight which is hers by title. Extraordinary!
And there was another thing: where had old Welbore and Kitty Blount kept her all this time? And why wasn't she married, a girl like that? She came next to Mrs. Scales, he supposed. Well, but there was another, younger still, married only the other day—to an army man. He remembered Welbore chirping about it at a Board meeting. What was that in the Bible—what was it? Ha!—“But thou hast kept the good wine until now.” By George, he must remember that for old Welbore. And now he came to think of it, old Jack Etherington had come in one morning full of Percival's daughter—“A lovely gal”—he had said, that old Jack—“colour of a Mildred Grant—quiet as the truth.”
Such were the ruminations of Cyrus Worthington at his own garden-party, and he pursued them at favoured moments—with his glass of port at dessert, with his last cigar, with his whisky night-cap. In the city next day he rallied Thomas Welbore, who betrayed unlimited relish for the diversion; and within a few days more he left a card in Charles Street and took a late train to Walton-on-Thames. Asked in due course to dinner, he handed Sanchia to the table, and spent the evening by her side. He begged her better acquaintance with his daughters, made the most of that which he had with Melusine Scales, and ended a successful adventure by winning Lady Maria's acceptance “for herself and her young friend,” of a banquet at the Cooper's Company of which he was warden. The occasion was a great one-a foreign potentate, the Prime Minister, Lord Mayor, and Sheriffs. The Coopers were to distinguish themselves, or be extinguished. He could promise them of the best. Sanchia, new to courtship, was quietly elated, and her amusement did nothing to diminish her elation. She had never been wooed before: there had been nothing of the kind in those shuddering days when she and Ingram, trembling in each other's sight, had mutely cried across the waste of London for balm upon their wounds. The flattery of attentions had never been hers, nor the high credit of admiration so respectful as the good merchant's. He esteemed her the fairest and holiest of women, was as timid as a boy in her company, gasped like a fish and grew unmannerly hot; but I defy a young woman to be anything but gratified. Miranda shunned Caliban; but had she not rather he had been there to be shunned?
Thus, under Lady Maria's watchful eye, the thing proceeded, and Mr. Worthington, within an ace of committing himself, scared his family. The climax was reached at Kissingen, whither the infatuated gentleman had followed his charmer.
She was very kind to him, but perfectly clear that she could not, and would not, make him the happiest of men. She said that she was flattered, which I believe to have been true, though he deprecated the phrase. “My dear young lady—ha! I must really be allowed—I assure you that you overwhelm me. Flattered—oh, Lord!” He limped the conclusion, and left for England that night.
She felt the thing to have been rather ridiculous, and yet she was pleased. She was gently elated, and had a kindly eye for herself as she dressed before her glass. Power lay with her; she could choose and weigh, accept or refuse. She was loveworthy yet. In spite of her disaster, a man had sought her. Others would do that same, moved by what had moved him. Shining eyes, body's form, softness, roundness—she had hardly thought of these things before, nor looked at them with an eye to their value. Mr. Worthington's ardent glances had illuminated her own, and by-and-by she found, oddly enough, that they threw a backward beam, and illuminated others. She found herself smiling tenderly as she thought of Jack Senhouse, and repeating some of that poetry which he had literally poured into her lap. It was so long ago! But when she remembered how much it had puzzled her, she now found that she was not puzzled by it at all.
Your eyes are twin mountain lakes, and the lashes of them
Like the swishing sedge
That hideth the water's edge....
Were her eyes, then, so fair! Mr. Worthington had found them so. Others would—others had.
“Thy face drinketh the light,”—he had written that of her—and now she knew that he had believed it. Had Nevile felt these things? Could Nevile—as she knew him? Her lip curved back. If she could not think of herself without thinking of Nevile—who wanted to mangle her—better take the veil.
But she felt the strange reality behind that wild and adoring passion of Jack Senhouse's, which had made him so incalculable a mixture. He advised her, and adored, he received her confidences, and emptied verses out of his heart into her lap. And she had had nothing to give him, who had given her all! All indeed; for now she saw that he had loved her beyond measure, reason, or stint.
There had been that last of his letters—a despairing cry from Chanctonbury, written when she was Nevile's shadow, and he hers. She felt stabbed to the heart to remember how perfunctorily she had read that. How did it go? What had he said? She could not recall the words, but their sense beat upon her. Oh, he had set her too high! He had called her Artemis—the chaste, the bright. Artemis the Bright had been one of his names for her—and Queen Mab another. He had set her too high! And how far had she fallen? She bowed her burning head, and even as she did so, remembered another phrase of his, sent with flowers—a line from the Anthology, begging her to grant his rose “the grace of a fair breast.” No longer fair, no longer fair—except to Nevile, who craved it—and to a Mr. Worthington.
The bravest gentleman, a poet, a thinker, a man like a beacon-fire, had loved her and cried her aloud as a goddess out of his reach. “Farewell, Sanchia, too dear for my possessing!” She had the words. And she had passed him by for Nevile, who made her a housekeeper, and loved her when he wanted solace. What more had Jack said? What, indeed, had he not said? That her life was like the scent of bean-flowers over a hedgerow—a fragrance caught in passing by wayfarers, whereby men and women might thank God for a fair sight who had chanced upon her in the street. Praise indeed! But he had loved her, and saw her so—and all that was gone for ever. He had left her because he dared not do otherwise, and now he was happy without her. Her new-found elation was like to die in self-pity. It required more than the complacency inspired by Mr. Worthington to clear her eyes.
Thus were the flowers laid up for her by an honest merchant changed for a wreath of rue as he was reminded of his better—his better and (she thought) hers, alas! A wave of desire to catch back at far-off things played her a trick. She found herself yearning for her childhood, found herself crying for her innocence, for the sweet scent of opening life. Even as she longed and strained, she knew herself vain. But the temptation for the semblance of what was gone was strong and took a subtle form. If she could not have the thing, she would have the thing's name; if she could not be innocent again, she would ape innocency. Prodigal of Pity as she has been, she could say to Senhouse's ghost, I am no more worthy of thee; and from that to being worthy was but a short step. The rest of her sojourn abroad was preparation for what was to be done on her return home.
Her treasure lay hidden there, in a desk in her room: three portly packets of letters, tied with ribbon, and labelled “Jack to Me.” Stained and yellow, she now turned over the pages, and inhaled the faint, sweet scent of them—a scent as of lavender and tears. Her eyes filled, her heart beat; but she read on and on. Impossible praises! Love beyond reason, without bounds—immeasurable homage! Did any man ever—save Dante—love a woman so greatly, set her so high? So presently she was caught up into a kind of heaven of wonder, and spent a night with the past.... From that she arose clear-eyed to meet the future. If she had been so loved, so served by man so generous and so fine, the rest of her life might well be spent in testimony. Her single aim now should be to recover herself, to be what he had once seen her. And for all this high remembrance and high hope—thanks to Mr. Cyrus Worthington!
Lady Maria, as the weeks went by, watched her carefully, and marked the change. Sanchia was very subdued, and now went to church. This to the old lady, who did not, was remarkable. She was not aware, naturally, of a passage in a letter which pictured her in church—with her “dear obsequious head, bowed in a fair place to a fair emblem.” She could not have understood, if she had had it explained, that the girl, conscious of her stiff neck, was teaching herself obsequiousness for the sake of him who had seen her so and found her dear. None of these things were for Lady Maria's comprehension; but she reflected aloud upon church-going, and got her young friend to explanations.
“Yes,” Sanchia said, “I do go to church. For a long time, you see, I couldn't—but now I feel that I can. We were all brought up to go to church.”
“So was I,” said Lady Maria, “and that, I take it, is why I don't go now. I was taught to take it as physic.”
Sanchia's explanation, which she yielded on pressure, of why she had stopped, was very artless. “I wanted to do something that they thought wicked, but which I thought quite good. If I went to confession, I should have been told that I was wicked. So I couldn't go. It was a difference of opinion, you see.”
“Beg pardon,” said Lady Maria, “but I don't see. What you mean is that, if you'd told your priest you were going off with Ingram, he'd have said, Don't, and put you under the necessity of disobeying him.” She owned to it. And then she owned to something more. If the difficult choice came before her again, she would think twice. “I can't see, even now, that I was wrong in what I did. I am sure it must be right, somehow, to follow your own conscience. But I do see that it's a pity to break rules. Yes, I see that.”
“I didn't suppose myself religious,” Lady Maria had replied, “but if that is what your religion tells you, I agree with it. It's common sense. What's a heart or two compared with peace and quietness? And how, pray, is a child of eighteen to know what her conscience is worth?”
“It is all she has to go upon,” said Sanchia; but the old lady retorted, “Nothing of the kind. She's got the experience of all Nature behind her, from the poultry-yard to the House of Lords. You'll find that the Ten Commandments are rigidly enforced among the cocks and hens. If a member of the zenana breaks bounds there, she rues it. How else do you suppose this world is to be peopled? Read the history of marriage, my dear. You'll find that the more primitive your man the more complicated his marriage laws. Why, bless my soul, I don't need the Church to tell me that I mustn't run away with a married man. I can learn that from the pigeons in the piazza at Venice. But I suppose I'm an old pagan. Now, you run away to your priest and make a clean breast of it.”
Perhaps Lady Maria was fanciful, but she put down this return to the Church's knees to the fact that Mr. Worthington had gone upon his. “The child finds that she's a valuable article,” she said to herself; “so she locks herself up in the cupboard, like the best china.” Sanchia's resolution persisted, and enthusiasm followed its growth. She frequented the churches early in the mornings, and one fine day presented herself in the vestry of one of them. Upon her knees, but with unbent head and eyes fixed steadily to the grille, she rehearsed her tale from the beginning, neither faltering nor losing countenance. What followed upon that was not communicated to her protectress, nor do I care to pry. I imagine that she had always said her prayers, but that now she was answering them.
That is, when one thinks upon it, the first office of prayer.
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