CHAPTER II
THE ACQUAINTANCE RIPENS
DURING the 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 why didn’t you 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 colour chameleon fashion 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. There is 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 you must come 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.