Heart and Cross

“Why on earth do you want to go to the House of Commons?” cried his father, when his laughter permitted him to speak.

“It’s in the Bible that the people used to come to tell everything to the king,” said Derwie, a little peevishly; “and isn’t the House of Commons instead of the king in this country? and doesn’t everybody go to the House of Commons when they want anything? I should like to see them all coming and telling their stories—what fun it must be! That’s why you go there, I suppose, every night? but I don’t know why you never should take mamma or me.”

“It would never do to let the ladies come in,” said Derwent, with mock seriousness; “you know they would talk so much that we could never hear what the people had to say.”

“Mamma does not talk very much,” said Derwie, sharply; “nor Alice either. Old Mrs. Sedgwick, to be sure—but then it’s some good when she talks; it isn’t all about books or things I can’t understand, it’s about people—that’s real talk, that is. Before I go to school—just till this session is over—oh, papa, will you give me that key?”

“My boy,” said Derwent, with the love and the laughter rivalling each other in his eyes, “they don’t give me any key, or you should have it—there’s a turnkey at the door, who opens it to let the poor people out and in; but some day you and mamma shall go and be shut up in a cage we have for the ladies, and hear all that’s said. I’m afraid, Derwie, when you’ve once been there you won’t want to go again.”

“Yes, I shall!” cried Derwie, all his face glowing with eagerness; when there suddenly appeared a solemn and silent apparition at the door, namely Nurse, under whose iron rule the young gentleman, much resisting, was still held, so far at least as his toilette was concerned. That excellent woman said not a word. She opened the door with noiseless solemnity, came in, and stood smoothing down her spotless apron by the wall. No need for words to announce the presence of that messenger of fate; Derwie made some unavailing struggles with destiny, and at last resigned himself and marched off defiantly, followed by the mighty Nemesis. When the door closed upon the well-preserved skirts of that brown silk gown, in which, ever since little Derwie emerged from babyhood, nurse had presented herself in the dining-room to fetch him to bed, Mr. Crofton and I once more looked at each other with those looks of fondness and praise and mutual congratulation which our boy had brought to our eyes. We had already exhausted all the phrases of parental wonder and admiration; we only looked at each other with a mutual tender delight and congratulation. Nobody else, surely, since the beginning of the world, ever had such a boy!

CHAPTER IV

The next day after, being the Saturday, our little Easter party assembled; first our neighbors the Sedgwicks, who were a party in themselves. Ten years before, Hugh Sedgwick had been the finest gentleman in our neighborhood, which he filled with amazement and consternation when he chose to fall in love with and marry little Clara Harley, whom, in the most literal sense of the word, he married out of the school-room, and who was just seventeen years old. But now that five children had followed this marriage, nobody could have supposed or believed in the existence of any such great original contrast between the husband and wife. Either Mr. Sedgwick had grown younger, or Clara older, than their years. He who now called Maurice Harley a prig, had been himself the prince of prigs—according to the estimate of the country gentlemen, his neighbors—in his day; but that day was long departed. Hugh Sedgwick, fastidious, dilettante fine gentleman, as he had been, was now the solicitous father of little children, and not above giving very sound advice upon measles and hooping-cough—while Clara, who had gradually blossomed out into fuller and fuller bloom, had scarcely yet attained the height of her soft beauty, despite the little flock of children round her. Nobody in the county made such a toilette as little Mrs. Sedgwick. I suspect she must have had carte blanche as to her milliner’s bills; and when they entered the Hilfont drawing-room, Clara, with her pretty matronly self-possession, her graceful little figure, round and full as one of her own babies, and her lovely little face, with all its cloudless lilies and roses—nobody could have believed in the time when his good neighbors shrugged their shoulders and laughed at Hugh Sedgwick’s choice. She sat down, I remember, by Miss Polly Greenfield—dear old Miss Polly in her primeval drapery—that crimson satin gown which I had known all my life. Such a contrast they made in the bright youth and pale age of the two faces, which came together lovingly in a kiss of greeting! Since her brother, Sir Willoughby, had married, Miss Polly’s habits had changed greatly. She had thrown aside her old brown riding-dress and the stiff man’s hat she used to wear when she rode with Sir Willoughby. And when her old horse and her old groom were old enough to be pensioned off in their respective paddock and cottage, Miss Polly set up a pony-carriage, more suitable to her years. Her niece, a young widow of twenty, a poor, little, disconsolate soul, who was all the trouble in the world to Miss Polly, had made a second marriage, and left her two little children to the care of their grandaunt. They were little girls both, and the tender old woman was very happy in their society—happier a hundred times than when she had been mistress of Fenosier Hall. But to hear how little Clara, who once had stood somewhat in awe of Miss Polly, talked to her now!—advising her how to manage little Di and Emmy, telling how she regulated her own Clary, who, though a good deal younger, was very far on for her age—with what a sweet touch of superiority and simplicity the dear little matron looked down from her wifely and motherly elevation upon pale old Miss Polly, who was neither mother nor wife! Clara was quite ready at the same moment to have bestowed her matronly counsels upon me.

After the Sedgwicks, Alice Harley, all by herself, as became one who felt herself at home, and was all but a daughter of the house, came into the room. Alice was plain in her dress to the extreme of plainness. That she assumed an evening dress at all was somewhat against her convictions, and in compassion to my weakness and prejudice; but the dress was of dark colored silk, made with a studied sobriety of cut, and lack of ornament. Instead of sharing Clara’s round soft loveliness, Alice had grown slender and pale. Unimaginative people called her thin. Out of her girlish beauty had come a face full of thoughtfulness and expression, but not so pretty as some people expected—perhaps, because somehow or other, the ordinary roselight of youth had failed to Alice. Half by choice, half by necessity, she had settled down into the humdrum useful existence which the eldest daughter of a large family, if she does not elude her fate by an early marriage, so often falls into. Various “offers” had been made to her, one of which Mrs. Harley, divided between a mother’s natural wish to see her daughter properly “settled,” and a little reluctance, not less natural, to part with her own household counsellor and helper, had given a wavering support to. Alice, however, said No, coldly, and not, as I thought, without the minutest possible tinge of bitterness answered the persuasions which were addressed to her. She was rather high and grandiloquent altogether on the subject of marriage, looking on with a half-comic, disapproving spectator observation at little Clara’s loving tricks to her husband, whom that little matron had no awe of now-a-days, and discoursing more than seemed to me entirely necessary upon the subject. Alice was somewhat inclined to the views of those philosophers (chiefly feminine, it must be confessed) who see in the world around them, not a general crowd of human creatures, but two distinct rows of men and women; and she was a little condescending and superior, it must also be admitted, to that somewhat frivolous antagonistic creature, man. The ideal man, whom Alice had never—so she intimated—had the luck to light upon, was a demigod; but the real male representatives of the race were poor creatures—well enough, to be sure, but no more worthy of a woman’s devotion than of any other superlative gift. With sentiments so distinct and prononcés, Alice had not lived all these years without feeling some yearning for an independent sway and place of her own, as one may well suppose—which tempted her into further speculations about women’s work, and what one could do to make a place for one’s self, who had positively determined not to be indebted for one’s position to one’s husband. Such was the peculiar atmosphere out of which Alice Harley revealed herself to the common world. She was deeply scornful of that talk about people which pleased my boy so much, and so severe upon gossip and gossips, that I had on more than one occasion seriously to defend myself. There she stood in her dark-brown silk dress beside little Clara’s flowing toilette and vivacious nursery talk, casting a shadow upon pale Miss Polly in her crimson satin. Alice was as much unlike that tender old soul, with her old maidenly restraints and preciseness, her unbounded old womanly indulgence and kindness, as she was unlike her matronly younger sister; and I confess that to myself, in all her perverseness, knowing as I did what a genuine heart lay below, there was quite a charm of her own about the unmarried woman. She was so conscious of her staid and sober age, so unconscious of her pleasant youth, and the simplicity which, all unknown to herself, lay in her wisdom. Such was my Alice; the same Alice who, keeping silent and keeping her brothers and sisters quiet in the nursery, while she knew her father lay dying many a long year ago, adjured me with unspeakable childish pathos—“Oh, don’t be sorry for me! I mustn’t cry!”

I do not know how it was that, while I contemplated Alice on her first appearance with a kind of retrospective glance at her history, there suddenly appeared above her the head of Mr. Reredos. He was a middle-sized, handsome man, with a pale complexion and dark hair—very gentlemanly, people said—a man who preached well, talked well, and looked well, and who, even to my eyes, which were no way partial, had no particular defect worth noticing, if it were not the soft, large, white hands without any bones in them, which held your fingers in a warm, velvety clasp when you shook hands with the new rector. I don’t know how he had managed to come in without my perceiving him. And strong must have been the attraction which beguiled Mr. Reredos to neglect the duty of paying his respects to his hostess, even for five minutes. It was not five minutes, however, before he recollected himself, and came with his soft white hand and his sister on his arm. His sister was so far like himself that she was very pale, with very black hair, and an “interesting” look. She did not interest me very much; but I could not help hoping that perhaps in this sentimental heroine Maurice Harley, for the time being, might meet his fate. I thought that would be rather a comfortable way of shelving those members of our party; for Maurice, though he was a very fine gentleman, not to say Fellow of his College, afflicted my soul with a constant inclination to commit a personal assault upon him, and have him whipped and sent to bed.

However, to be sure, we had all the elements of a very pleasant party about us—people who belonged to us, as one may say. Derwent, who liked to see a number of cheerful faces about him, was in the lightest spirits; he paid Clara Sedgwick compliments on her toilette, and “chaffed” (as he called it—I am not responsible for the word) Alice, whom he had the sincerest affection for, but loved to tease, and took Miss Polly in to dinner, while little Derwie did the honors of the nursery to a party almost as large, and quite as various. I fear we made rather a night of feasting than a penitential vigil of that Easter Eve.

CHAPTER V

When we returned to the drawing-room after dinner, we found, hidden in a distant corner, with books and portfolios, and stereoscopes blocking up the table near him, Johnnie Harley. I have said little of this boy. He was the proxy which the handsome, healthy family had given for their singular exemption from disease and weakness—the one sufferer, among many strong, who is so often found in households unexceptionably healthful, as if all the minor afflictions which might have been divided among them had concentrated on one and left the rest free. When Johnnie was a child he had only been moved in the little wheeled chair, got for him in his father’s lifetime, when they were rich. Now he was better, and able to move about with the help of a crutch, but even now was a hopeless cripple, with only his vigorous mind and unconquerable spirits to maintain him through private hours of suffering. Partly from his infirmities—partly from his natural temperament—the lad had a certain superficial shyness, which, though it was easily got over, made it rather difficult to form acquaintance with him. He could not be induced to dine with us that first night—but he was in the drawing-room, showing the stereoscope to Miss Polly’s little nieces, Di and Emmy, when we came back from dinner; the other little creatures were playing at some recondite childish game in another part of the room; but Emmy and Di were very proper little maidens, trained to take judicious care of their white India muslin frocks, the spare dimensions of which contrasted oddly enough with Clary’s voluminous little skirts and flush of ribbons. Clary was like a little rose, with lovely rounded cheeks and limbs like her mother, dimpled to the very finger-points, while Di and Emmy, though by no means deficient in good looks, were made up quite after Miss Polly’s own model, in a taste which was somewhat severe for their years. Johnnie Harley veiled himself behind these little maidens till we were safely settled in the room. He was twenty, poor fellow, and did not know what was to become of him. He was sometimes very melancholy, and sometimes very gay; he was in rather a doubtful mood to-night.

“Look here, Mrs. Crofton,” he said, drawing me shyly aside. “I’ve put this one in a famous light—do tell me if you like it. I did it myself.”

I looked, of course, to please him. It was a pretty view of my own house at Estcourt, with the orphan children who lived there playing on the terrace—very pretty, and very minute—so clear that I fancied I could recognize the children. It pleased me mightily.

“You did it, Johnnie,” cried I, much gratified. “I am very much pleased; but I never knew you were a ‘photographic artist’ before.”

“No more I was,” said Johnnie, who rather affected a little roughness of speech, “till they got me a camera the other day. Of course I know it was Alice, and that somehow or other she’s spared it off herself. Do you know whether there’s anything she ought to have had that she hasn’t, Mrs. Crofton? One can never find Alice out. She doesn’t go when she’s made a sacrifice for you and keep hinting and hinting to let you know, as some people do; but look here—isn’t it horrible to think I’m grown up and yet have to stay at home like a girl, and can’t do anything. Now that I’m able to do these slides, I’d give my ears if I could sell them. I’d go and stand in the market at Simonborough. But of course it’s no use speaking. Don’t you think, Mrs. Crofton, that there’s surely something in the world that could be done by a cripple like me?”

“I have no doubt a dozen things,” said I, boldly; “but have a little patience, Johnnie. Maurice is ten years older than you are, and he does nothing that I can see. Besides, it is holiday time—I forbid you to think of anything but the new camera to-night. Is it a good one? What a pleasure it must be for all of you,” I continued, looking once more into the stereoscope, where, most singular of optical delusions, I certainly saw a pretty new winter bonnet, the back of which, in the wardrobe of Alice, I had already made a memorandum of, floating over the picture of my old house.

“Ah,” said Johnnie, with a sigh, “if I were a fellow like Maurice!—but here, Di, you have not seen this,” he added, transferring another slide into that wooden box. Grave little Di looked at it, and summoned her sister with a little scream of delight.

“It’s Miss Harley and Baby Sedgwick,” said Di, “and I do believe if any one was little enough they could go round behind her in the picture. Oh! let me tell Derwent and Clara, Mr. John!”

Mr. John was very graciously pleased to exhibit his handiwork to any number of spectators, and shortly we all gathered round the stereoscope. Alice stood looking on very demurely, while we were examining her in that pretty peep-show; she listened to all the usual observations with due calm, while Johnnie, quite in a flush of pleasure, produced the pictures, at which I understood afterwards the poor youth had been working all day long, one by one out of the box.

“My love,” said Miss Polly, in a mild aside, “I’d like to see you just so in a house of your own, my dear.”

Alice colored slightly; very slightly—it was against her principles to blush—and made no answer, except a slight shake of her head.

“Such a sweet baby,” said Miss Reredos, “I think one might bear anything for such a darling! Oh, don’t you think so, Miss Harley? I think it’s so unnatural for a lady not to love children. I think if dear Clement had but a family I should be so happy.”

“But, dear, shouldn’t you be happier,” said Clara, opening her bright eyes a little wider, with a laughing humor which now-a-days that young lady permitted herself to exercise pretty freely, “if you had a family of your own?”

“Oh! Mrs. Sedgwick, how can you speak so? I am so glad the gentlemen are not here,” said the Rector’s sister. Alice stood looking at her with a half vexed, half amused expression. Alice was a little afraid for the honor of (most frightful of phrases!) her sex.

“As for Alice,” said Clara, laughing, “do you know she thinks it rather improper to be married? She would not allow she cared for anybody, not for the world.”

“I think women ought to be very careful,” said Alice, responding instantly to the challenge with a little flush and start; “I think there are very few men in the world worthy of being loved. Yes, I do think so, whatever you choose to say. They’re well enough for their trades, but they’re not good enough to have a woman’s heart for a plaything. Of course there may be some—I do not deny that; but I never”–

Here Alice paused—perhaps she was going to tell a fib—perhaps conscience stopped her—I will not guess; but Clara clapped her hands in triumph.

“Ah, but if you did ever,” said Clara, laughing, “would you marry him, Alice?”

“If he asked me it is very likely I should,” said Alice, with great composure; “but not for a house of my own, as Miss Polly says—nor for fun, like some other people.”

“My love, it’s very natural to like a house of one’s own,” said Miss Polly, with a little sigh. “I don’t mind saying it now that I am so old: once in my life I almost think I would have married for a home—not for a living, remember, Alice—but for a place and people that should belong to me, and not to another—that’s what one wishes for, you know; but I never talked about it either now or then; my dear, I wouldn’t if I were you.”

At this address Alice blushed crimson—blushed up to the hair, and patted her foot upon the ground in a very impatient, not to say angry, way. She cast a somewhat indignant side-look at me, to express her conviction that I was at the bottom of this, and had suggested the mild condemnation of Miss Polly—which, so far as agreeing thoroughly in her sentiments went, I confess I might have done. Then Alice went off abruptly to the piano, and began playing to the children, who gathered round her; before long her voice was pleasantly audible in one of those immemorial songs with a fox or a robin for a hero, which always delight children; and when the song was finished there ensued as pretty a scene as I have ever looked at. Clara gathered the children in a ring, which danced round and round, with a dazzle of little rosebud faces, flying white frocks and ribbons, to Alice’s accompaniment. Such scenes I have no doubt were of nightly occurrence in the big, grand drawing-room at Waterflag Hall; and little Derwie took his part so heartily, and joined in the chant with which they went round with lungs and will so unmistakable, that, for my part, I was quite captivated. Miss Polly and I sat down to watch them. Little Di, too shy and too big to join them, being twelve years old and a grandmother among these babes, stood wistfully behind us, envying Emmy, who was only ten and a half, and “not too old for such a game.” Di, a long way older and graver than Mrs. Clare, stood nodding and smiling to encourage her little sister every time she whisked past. Miss Reredos behind us was examining Johnnie’s pictures and talking sentiment in a soft half-whisper to that defenceless boy, while Miss Polly and I sat on a sofa together, looking on.

“It is strange,” said Miss Polly, “but yet I’m sure I am very glad. I thought of asking you, Clare, whether anything had occurred to disturb that dear girl? I don’t like when I hear young women talk like that, my dear—it looks to me as if they had something on their mind, you know. Once I thought there might perhaps be something between Bertie Nugent and Alice—that would have been a very nice match; but somehow these nice matches never come about—at least, not without a deal of trouble; and I suppose it was nothing but an old woman’s fancy, Clare.”

“I suppose not, indeed,” said I, rather ruefully, looking at that prettiest spectacle before me, and recognizing, as by intuition, that Mr. Reredos had just come in, and was standing at the door in a glow of delight and approbation, looking at Alice, and deciding not to delay his proposal for an hour longer than it should be absolutely necessary to keep silent. Ah, me! there was some hope for us in Alice’s philosophical moods; but when she played to her little nieces and nephews in that shockingly happy, careless, and easy manner, I was in despair.

“It’s very sad when people won’t see what’s most for their advantage,” said Miss Polly, with a ghost of humor in her pale old face. “I daresay, Clare, my dear, Bertie’s just as happy. I heard from Lady Greenfield the other day—one of her letters, you know—that the dear boy was getting on very well, but breaking his heart to get home that he might go to the Crimea to the war.”

“So he tells me,” said I, “but I rather think I am very glad he has not the chance of dying on that dreadful hill.”

“My dear, that’s very true,” said Miss Polly; “one faints at the thought of it, to be sure, for one’s own; but if I could be philosophical—which—dear, dear, it isn’t to be expected from an old woman! I’d say it was wrong to be sorry for the dear young creatures, God bless them! Think what they’re spared, my dear child. I don’t know but what it’s a great saving of the labor and the sorrow when they die young.”

“Miss Polly, this is not like you,” I cried in surprise.

“Perhaps it isn’t; but, dear, we’re always learning something,” said Miss Polly; “there’s Elinor now, and poor Emmy, the unfortunate little soul! but hush, here’s your new rector coming—I’ll tell you another time.”

CHAPTER VI

“I am surprised,” said Mr. Reredos, as he drank his coffee beside me, “to hear from Mr. Maurice Harley that he’s not in orders. I really felt so sure that he must be that I did not think of asking. He’s had his fellowship this long time, has not he? and really a clergyman’s son, and with the excellent connections he has—I am surprised!”

“Ah, so is everybody,” said Miss Polly, significantly. Miss Polly was an old-fashioned woman, and had little sympathy with those delicate conscientious scruples which kept our friend Maurice out of the Church.

“My dear,” continued Miss Polly, turning aside to me, with some energy, as Mr. Reredos, always polite, took her empty cup from her, “I could believe in it if he were doing anything or thinking of doing anything; but if you’ll believe me, Clare, it’s nothing but idleness—that’s what it is. When a young man’s idle, if he doesn’t fall in love with the first girl he meets, he falls in love with himself, which is a deal worse. The Rector here will be trying to help Maurice out of his doubts, I shouldn’t wonder. His doubts, indeed! If he lost his fellowship and had to work hard for his living, I shouldn’t be afraid of his doubts, for my part.”

“Well,” said I, “but if the loss of his fellowship dispersed poor Maurice’s dilettante scepticism, and forced him into orders, it might be better for himself, Miss Polly, but I doubt if it would be better for the Church. When his conscience keeps him outside, we have no reason to find fault, but if he came in against his conscience–”

“Conscience! stuff!” said Miss Polly, with some heat. “Child, that’s not what I meant. I meant—for being his father’s and mother’s son I can’t think he’s a bad boy at the bottom—I meant a little trouble and fighting would soon put those idle vagaries out of his head. Now, Mr. Reredos, mind you don’t go and argue with Maurice Harley. I’m an old woman, and I’ve seen such before, many’s the time. Wait till he’s got something to do and something to bear in this world, as he’s sure to have, sooner or later. Ah, Life’s a wonderful teacher! When a man sits among his books, or a woman at her needle—and there isn’t such a great difference as you might suppose—they get mazing themselves with all kinds of foolish questions, and think themselves very grand too for doing it; but only wait till they find out what God means them to do and to put up with in this world—it makes a deal of difference, Clare.”

“Miss Polly, you are a philosopher, and we never knew it!” said I, while Mr. Reredos stood looking on, much annoyed, and in no small degree contemptuous of the pale old woman who took upon her to direct so perfect a person as himself—for Mr. Reredos was not unlike Maurice Harley, though after his different fashion; he thought he could do a great deal with his wisdom and his words.

“I am not a philosopher; but I have been alone with the dear children since my niece Emmy left me,” said Miss Polly, “and not so able to stir about as I once was; and you know, my dear, one can’t say out everything in one’s mind to children at their age; so, somehow the thoughts come up as if I had been gathering them all my life, and never had time to look at them before.”

“I suspect that is how most of the thoughts that are worth remembering do come,” said I. Mr. Reredos did not say anything. He stood, with a faint smile on his lip, which he did not mean us to suspect, much less understand—and while he bent his handsome head towards the mistress of the house, gravely attentive, as it was his duty to be, his eyes turned towards Maurice and Alice Harley. Did not I know well enough what was in his mind? He thought we were a couple of old women dozing over our slow experiences. He was still in the world where words and looks produce unspeakable results, and where the chance of a moment determines a life. His eyes turned to those other young people who, like himself, were speculating upon all manner of questions—he would not laugh at us, but a faint gleam of criticism and superiority just brightened upon his lip. I liked him none the worse, for my own part.

“This reads like a Newdigate,” said Maurice Harley. “I suppose Sedgwick brought the book to you, Clara, for a sugar-plum. Listen, how sweetly pretty! These prize poets are really too delicious for anything.”