Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 7

IT always seems to me that the sweetest time of the year comes when the days and nights are equal—seedtime and harvest. The apple-trees are all out under my windows, and they open their delicate cups like eggshells and show the pink lining inside. The snow is melting from the mountains, and the grass is almost too green on the plains, in contrast to the sombre forests and the dark buttresses of the lower ranges. When I ride up to the little church on the hill now I hear the plaintive vibrating cry of the ewes and lambs thrilling the silent plains with its tremulous symphony. Every flowerbell has a bee, every tree a nest, and the green leaves rustle over it, and the old tree sings and waves and cradles it to rest as patiently as a mother rocks her first baby to sleep. The hyacinths are breaking from their green swaddling bands, and ​the scarlet geraniums stand in rows like grenadiers. I have just brought in a basket of lilac, which fills the whole room with the flavour of spring. This is a pleasant, long-shaped, lattice-windowed room, not much more than an attic, but furnished with two lovely views. One low window opens over the ever-blue glades of the bay, flawed and veined here and there with a moving network of light that seems to float upwards from the quivering depths of sea below. The other is shaded by two sighing pine-trees, which murmur their ‘perpetual benedictions’ over my head. I love the voice of the pines; but for real musical, sympathetic melancholy give me the wind-harp of our Australian casuarinas. Do you remember that indescribable long-drawn sighing cadence that whispered night and day all over the vast, solitary, sun- beaten plains of our youth?

“We have done wonders in our arrangement of the ‘studio,’ as the servants insist on calling my room. The ceiling follows the natural gable of the roof, and is lined with a sort of cedarwood native to this country. It has a yellow satiny effect, and harmonizes with the red curtains, with my little store of books, and the etchings in their narrow black frames. Two stout timber beams undisguisedly traverse the roof, and from one we hang a basket of trailing ​ferns; from the other, my little green friend the paroquet depends, and swings in state in his brass cage. There is a wide open brick fireplace, with logs of wood ready to hand, and if you want a fire it is the easiest thing in the world (in theory) to be your own Cinderella and build it up. When I come home from my afternoon ride I often come upstairs and practise, for I have a private piano up here. Clare is generally lying down before dinner (her health requires it, especially if she has a new novel), and I find that good Mrs. Mead has lit my fire and put the tea-things in the window and boiled the kettle on my own hearth, and it all looks so comfortable and homely that I don't know whether I am a hopeless sybarite or a comfortable hermit in the desert. A bed of violets is in full blossom under the windows, and as for the neighbours, they are reduced to a condition of silent despair by the appearance of Clare’s auricula beds. Some people call these pretty prim blossoms ‘dusty millers,’ but to my mind they are more like very fine ladies in powder and plush and patches, who have come to make a formal call on their country cousins.

“In our little community it generally happens that any bit of news is introduced as a secret. This has much the same effect as writing ‘urgent’ ​on a telegram; or perhaps it adds to the value of the information, as smuggled goods are more attractive than others. One of these state secrets is going round our circle just now with a rapidity that leaves the post-office out of sight. It is to the effect that the Klingenders are going to give a large ball shortly, but you mustn’t tell anybody! They live at a distance of ten miles of bad road, on a large station (station, so called from estancia, as in South America), and although we speak of a simple ball, I understand the festivities will last for three days at least. I must tell you all about it when it comes off. At present I don't feel much in the mood for dancing. I am getting older, and the world is out of tune with me sometimes. I am in that hateful transition stage—all the inferiority of youth without the compensations of middle life. Youth wears tight shoes a size too small for it, and trembles at shadows, and believes that the eye of the world is upon it; middle-age sits with his feet on the fender, and reads the newspapers, and finds excuses for not going out on wet nights. Youth is a stormy ball, middle-age a dinner party. On the whole, I am tired of this stage; but courage, we shall soon be over it! I foresee what I shall be in the future: a very nice person, who smiles at the right moment, agrees with everything that ​everybody says, and generally wears a black alpaca—the sort of friend you like to have in your house when anyone is ill, or you have a lot of fruit to preserve. I dare say I shall like this rôle when I get used to it. However . . . .

“It is generally supposed in Green Street that Arthur Campbell will soon be engaged to the youngest Miss Granby, the one with a pet dog and a giggle. Nothing wears you out like a giggle in the long run, and I should think he would be perfectly miserable under those circumstances, even if the pet dog could be got rid of; but it can't be helped. Others among the more charitably disposed can easily foresee that he will end by running away with Mrs. Austin, or vice versa. I don’t think myself that he has any idea of taking flight in either direction. He often comes here and talks with Clare, and the children look upon him as a friend of the family who may be made use of in the direction of chocolate creams or other unconsidered trifles. He looks tired and careworn sometimes, and he often asks me to play ‘something soothing.’ He would sit there for hours if Clare would allow the soothing process to go on indefinitely; but though she has a real love of music, there are limits to her patience, and her hospitality prefers a lunch or dinner to the piano alone. . . . .

​“The elms have heard the whisper of spring already, and have told the secret to the oaks; these, however, as become trees of royal birth, are slow in coming out, and like to keep the procession waiting. I understand from Tennyson, who has taught our generation so much natural history, that the shy ash-tree is the last to appear—‘delaying as the tender ash delays.’ We don’t happen to have an English ash within calling distance, but I see the horse-chestnut at the gate opening out his crumpled green sleeves in the sunshine; and as for the willows, they are positively swimming in delicate foliage. I opened my window this morning, and could not imagine where the hum of hundreds of bees was coming from. It sounded like a crowd of spinning-wheels all softly spinning together, and looking about I found the sound came from a weeping willow, covered with catkins and full of bees.

“Clare is talking about having a little dinner party still. She has been talking about it for the last three months, but, if the truth must be told, Mrs. Mead’s temper has not been of the sunniest, and to go into action without her consent would be foolhardy, if not atheistical. Mrs. Mead is one of those cooks that men would not willingly let die, and when she is in the right mood you fear no foe whom you invite to dinner; ​but there is another rock in the entertaining channel. Ladies abound in Green Street; but where is there a single eligible being whom one can ask to meet them? It is a charming village, but this is the fatal drawback. Every paradise has its peculiar trial, and we, alas! are not exempt. I had almost written that the trouble was that we had no serpent; it is, at all events, a sad truth that we have no men. Of course we have plenty of men in the abstract, and very pleasant, exemplary men, too. As far as regards the ordinary duties of life, men may be found in the ranks of husbands, fathers, brothers, and uncles, that any place would be proud of; but there are literally no men to marry. (Of course there is always Arthur Campbell, but he is an outsider, and we can’t ask him every time.)

“‘Why should we have a party at all?’ I inquired at last, with the air of Columbus crushing his eggshell.

“‘Why, indeed!’ replied Clare, scathingly. ‘Why does the earth turn round from west to east, or east to west, whichever it is? Why does washing-day always fall on a Monday, and throw a gloom over whole families ever since the creation of the world? Why do the wrong people always accept, and the right people have to go into mourning or get an attack of chicken​pox? Why are one’s monthly bills ever so much larger than one expects, and why is one’s bank book always on the wrong side? The answer to these questions lies in the constitution of things. They can’t be explained, and the best way is just to accept the inevitable. Men or no men, I’m going to have a dinner party next week, and we will write out the invitations this evening.’

“‘Perhaps we might ask some people from Newchurch,’ I suggested at last. Newchurch is the great place of our district. As far as we go here, everyone considers that our tone is very high in Green Street. Other places may have more population (as a matter of detail, a great many have), more shops, more bustle; but if you want really good society, fresh air, early services, the feast of reason and the flow of soul, you must come to Green Street. Of course, if you want excitement, you can go to town. You can get plenty of balls and theatres there. In mentioning this it is customary to curl the tip of one’s nose up with just the merest shadow of a sneer. It is a little difficult to manage at first, but you soon get into the way of it. Perhaps I ought to add that a good many of us do go to Newchurch (whenever we can afford it), but we always delight in coming back to our peaceful, ​intellectual, non-gossiping homes, and we make it a point of honour to go round next day and call on our friends and profess loudly that we would not live in that noisy, rattling, dusty, windy place for anything you could give us.

“The children are very happy and sunburnt, and growing by inches every week, it seems to me. Toto wishes us to give up calling him by this pet diminutive, and give him his full title of Reginald. His foible is to appear a big grown-up schoolboy, who understands all the rules of cricket, and never cuts his fingers even with his new knife of two blades. The big boy next door is quite the sporting man, and must be nearly twelve years old. His air of command when he rides up on his pony, whistles for his dog, and throws the bridle to Reggy, is worthy of a ‘’Varsity eight’ man. Good little Dulcie always hangs meekly round the boys, and is occasionally promoted to feed the pony with apples. She is sweet and kind to all living creatures, especially kittens, and, when not following her brother about, is always doing some charitable action. Sometimes she nurses a broken-legged doll, or tries to keep the chickens quiet in her lap, or sits in the sun with the old grey cat; or, if no other hospital work offers, she gathers up the weeds that have been thrown out on the ​walk and compassionately plants and waters them again. She is very seldom naughty, but if she gets into a temper she disappears under the table and kicks at nothing in particular for a few minutes, and emerges calm and peaceful. I could wish that more of my acquaintances would work off their feelings in the same way when they are entertaining the legendary black dog unawares.

“On the other side of the street I often see another little boy, a delicate only child of studious habits. He comes to see me sometimes, but stands in great awe of the Damon children. He often comes over when I am playing, and stands by the window to listen. This led me to make use of him in a gentle way. We have all got some private weakness. Human nature is frail at the best. ‘I myself am not exempt,’ alas! In fact, if it must be told, I have a great love of composing tunes—hymn tunes mostly, they are the easiest. The difficulty of all artists at first is to find an audience fit though few; and one day it occurred to me that the new boy—Bertie by name—might, for a small consideration, act the part of art-critic. I might try my tunes on him, as it were, as one tries a new bonnet on a friend. This has answered admirably so far. His terms are not high—indeed, ​with a generosity not uncommon among children, he often waives the question of payment, declaring that he really doesn’t mind it, i.e. the musical inspirations, much. But with Spartan firmness I always insist on his taking the price of his leisure, whether in the shape of copper coins of the realm or peppermint rock, as the case may be. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and Bertie is always anxious to be complimentary.

“Last Saturday I managed to keep him to tea to meet the other children. They were all very solemn at first, but presently Dulcie invited him to visit her own private cemetery in a corner of the garden, where she has two dolls, a canary, and half a goldfish (the cat ate the rest) interred in suitable mausoleums; and as they trotted away I heard her ask the inevitable introductory question of childhood, ‘How old is you?’ It’s a pity we can’t carry on this simple system in maturer life—it would clear up so many difficulties. Afterwards I heard Herbert growing quite conversational, and confiding to Dulcie that he was making up ‘a sort of a story,’ and he gave an outline in which tigers, Red Indians, elephants and the prophet Jonah seemed to play most sensational parts.

“Altogether we lead a very quiet friendly ​existence in this sunshiny corner of the world. So quiet and dreamy it often seems to me that I feel as if I were living through a sort of ‘Entr’acte’ in which we listen to the music and look at the spectators, but feel no particular anxiety about the play. What will be in the next act? This question often occurs to me, but I put off answering it, like a tiresome letter, from one day to another. I must wait to see what the next few weeks will bring forth in the way of light and leading.

“A curious thing happened to me the other day which gave me new heart and hope for the future. Last Sunday afternoon I took the two children for a long walk over the hills behind the village, leading the pony in case anyone of our company knocked up. The road turns its back to the sea, and, winding up a steep bit of hill, suddenly falls into a quiet green pastoral valley, which looks as if it were fast asleep and had never waked since the beginning of the world. It was a grey, still, windless afternoon, wintry in tone and colouring, but mild; underneath all the stillness you seemed to hear faintly, and at a great distance, the triumphal march and merry music of the coming summer. The green smooth pasture slopes downward with soft restful curves for three or four miles of the valley, and then ​rises more abruptly on the other side into the wilder ridges of the dark—almost black—native forest. I sat down in a warm nook, sheltered by the rough gold-work of the furze, and took out a book, while the children scattered about looking for the tiny milk-hued parasols of mushrooms, and the pony browsed contentedly close at hand. I almost think I must have been asleep, like the valley. I thought I was in church; I seemed to hear voices, or rather a voice of someone preaching at a little distance, and after a few moments I turned round and saw Reggie and his sister standing close together and listening open-mouthed to the address of an itinerant preacher, who had collected half-a-dozen listeners from the furze-embossed slopes and small farms about. They were probably Scandinavians (commonly called Scandys), who have a small settlement hereabout, and they all listened with a stolid, but respectful attention, like that of intelligent collie dogs in church, to his discourse. The children were evidently fascinated, whether by the Bohemian style of church service or from an inward conviction that these religious exercises might be forbidden by authority, I cannot say; but they gazed on the preacher—a dark-bearded sailor-looking old man, with a fine, worn face, hair ‘sable-silvered,’ and a wooden leg—as if he were ​a missionary indeed to their souls. I drew nearer, but kept behind the furze bushes, according to our national terror of joining in other people’s worship. Presently the old man raised his hand with a fine natural gesture, and leaning on his crutch, exclaimed, in the words of the Son of David—

“‘Hear in Heaven thy dwelling-place! And when thou hearest, forgive!’

“It really was rather affecting; but I felt terribly alarmed when the old preacher fixed his eye upon me, and, without moving, observed, ‘My brethren, we will now sing a hymn. Young lady, will you raise the tune?’ in a voice of mild command. I felt turned into stone. He held a book towards me, and I mechanically took it, while the Scandys turned their mild, calm, ruminating eyes on me, with no appearance of surprise. Devoutly hoping that no one I knew could see me, I looked at the hymn he had pointed out, and tried to begin the dear mournful tune of ‘Belmont.’ But the nervous impediment which had laid an embargo on my music for so long asserted itself with all its strength. I could not utter a single note, and I remained dumb and stupidly petrified in this still green pasture before half-a-dozen simple country-folk. I felt terribly disappointed, and the old man, ​seeing I did not begin, cast a look of reproof on me, and started off in a high-pitched wavering voice that seemed to have had all its fulness blown away by wear and tear of storms and toil at sea. I felt so sorry for him—for his weather-beaten face, and his worn old voice, and his wooden leg,—above all, he sang so terribly out of tune, that all at once, without my knowing it, a voice that surely never belonged to me—it was so delightfully sweet and full of power—took up the words and sang

from beginning to end, to the astonishment of the fields and the dark forest slopes which heard the solemn words for the first time in their lives. While we were singing, as if an angel of life moved over the land, a great gold wing of sunlight swept over the hills and then faded away into the still, grey, mild, over-clouded evening, more like autumn than spring.

“But I feel spring stirring in my heart now! I can sing again. George Eliot says somewhere, ‘The soul that was born again to music might wake again to love’—or something to that effect. I can well believe it!

“I found this letter at the bottom of my blotting-case; I am glad it was not posted in the proper time, for I must tell you something more. Something rather uncomfortable has happened—not happened, rather, but hinted. However, you shall hear all, and then you must absolve me from any imprudent interest in the affairs of my neighbours, for that is just where Clare is a little deficient. She fancies I get myself into scrapes by knowing people too easily,—not being English enough, in fact. You shall be the judge on this occasion.

“We had the dinner party last Friday, with a little reception afterwards. Clare belongs to the straitest sect of dinner-givers—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a dinner for a dinner, is her system of retribution; consequently the first part of the entertainment was middle-aged and slightly deaf, for the most part, as she was determined to invite back all those who had asked her, through good report or evil report. I fell to the lot of Mr. Austin, and thanked my stars it was no worse. The Austins go back to town for the winter, but they often come here for a few days’ holiday with their friends. Their house is kept in readiness for them at any ​moment. We do hear strange stories of these holiday escapades—races on the sands barefoot, which Mrs. Austin always wins, games of Aunt Sally, and if there is anything worse than Aunt Sally you may be sure it is provided. Clare piously thanks Providence that it is too cold for bathing parties, yet awhile. However, at dinner there was Lizzie sitting opposite to me, and looking radiant, while A. C. discoursed to her quite happily, and I listened sympathetically to the well-informed prosing of her husband. After dinner we had the whole adult society of Green Street, and every man who could pass the census, young or old, was brought into Clare’s conscription from highways and byways, besides several imported direct from town. The little party seemed to go off as well as could be expected on the whole, and we had music and conversation, and strawberries and cream, and some of Mrs. Mead’s most ethereal coffee—the sort of coffee they used to have in the ‘Arabian Nights;’ and altogether it was rather a successful little party.

“At one end of the little hall there is a three-cornered den which is used generally for the children’s books, and spades, etc. Mead (who understands these things) had judiciously arranged this corner with a shaded lamp, a screen, ​a small table covered with photographs, and two discreet chairs. Here about the middle of the evening I found myself sitting beside the neat grey whiskers of Mr. Austin, of all whiskers in the world! I have not the least idea how I got there. I supposed at the moment that I was entertaining him as a matter of duty, but it has since occurred to me that he may have guided my unconscious steps to a quiet corner where he could say something he had to say, uninterruptedly. I was not paying much attention to his conversation, but dreamily gathered its import mixed with the sound of music and the hum of voices in the different rooms. Clare was playing some of Beethoven’s waltzes in the drawing-room, and whenever I hear that particular waltz I have a curious visionary recollection of a scene in my very early childhood, which, however, has no earthly connection with the music. So many years ago I was driving with my father over one of the boundless inland plains of Australia. It was evening of a sultry day. One huge camel-shaped mountain lay like some Titanic shape crouched darkly against the sunset, guarding the empty crater and grassgrown hearth of the ancient volcano. The dry warm wind blew endlessly over the plains, and faintly rustled the carpet of white everlast​ing-flowers—those curious Australian daisies, with lifeless silvery blossoms and strange sabbatic fragrance. I remember how the wheels whistled over the dry foliage of the immortelles, and how the ground seemed to roll away visibly before us, in the billowy volcano-formed barrows which we call ‘dead men’s graves’ over there. I don’t know what particular cupboard of the brain holds our earliest associations, but ‘as long as life shall hold’ that sad floating music will bring back to my mind the white-flowered, balsam-scented plain—once rained over with a fiery deluge, and covered still with fragments of lava as thick as shells on the seashore; the dark abrupt precipices and cliffs of the one great mountain on the horizon; the flaming gorgeous sunset, opening its wings in the west and fleeing away over the desert; and the intense loneliness, the Sabbath-like blank of all sign of man’s daily labour, the strange indescribable sense of tragedy and solitude, still soothes my memory with a draught of opiate sweetness. All the while I thus listened to the inward voice of the charmer, seeing visions and dreaming dreams of long past days, I was conscious of the various disconnected fragments of conversation borne in on our ears from various resting-places in the hall or reception rooms. I could hear Mrs. ​Granby’s deep cathedral voice intoning to her neighbours, ‘Yes, I can assure you, it is quite threepence a yard cheaper there than at any other place in town,’ and her youngest daughter from the opposite doorway exclaiming, with her intermittent giggle, ‘Oh, we had such fun! You can’t think! It will make you die of laughing! Giggle—giggle—giggle!’ while from the other side of the screen came in lower pitched but perfectly distinct accents, ‘Yes, I know he was there quite four hours this afternoon! Of course, you won’t mention it to anyone, but really———’ . . . . ‘How well Mrs. Austin is looking tonight!’ I broke in suddenly in needlessly loud tones, for I did not desire my neighbour to overhear any more of our social secrets. ‘She always reminds me of a picture of Spring. You ought to get her painted by a really good artist,’ I went on hurriedly, determined to leave no blanks in our conversation.

“‘You admire my wife! Yes, and if I may say so, with justice, Miss Lauder. She has a lovely countenance. Perhaps it would not be too indiscreet in me to say that she reciprocates your feeling. She is much admired, I am aware of that, but few people know what goodness, what a guileless simplicity of nature is hers. She is almost too unworldly and———’

​“‘Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here!’ said a cheerful young voice in our neighbourhood. But the question was not addressed to either of us, and after a pause Mr. Austin went on, in the same monotonous undertone:

“‘I never allow myself to forget that Elizabeth is many years younger than I am, and I do not in any way seek to trammel her enjoyments. She chooses her own friends, and perhaps, impulsive as undoubtedly she is, these friends are not always the wisest of mankind. You know one of these friends, Miss Lauder; he is highly esteemed, I doubt not, by your circle; as far as I am concerned, I find him a courteous and well-informed gentleman. He is an accomplished traveller, but———’ Here Mr. Austin lifted the large magnifying glass by whose aid he had been examining the photographs on the table before him, and raised it mechanically, so that the glass circle seemed to fix an accusing gaze on me, like a huge Cyclopean eye, while he dropped his voice and said slowly, ‘but I wish he would not come so much to my house.’

“The murder is out now! and I am the person who has to pursue it, I thought to myself, and really I was so confused at the moment that I hardly knew what I said next, or even ​what Mr. Austin’s droning voice was explaining so laboriously to me. Why on earth should he choose me for a confidante in such a delicate matter? What have I done that I should be mixed up in their affairs? It is impossible, grotesque! They must all be mad to talk of such a thing. But by degrees I gathered some indications of what he was trying to bring about. I am expected to hint to Mr. Campbell that he is de trop in the Austin household. Yes, I—myself—Alice Lauder, spinster, being of sound mind and body—am supposed to take this bombshell up in my new six-button tan gloves, and calmly deposit it somewhere out of the way of the children. It is a joke, but rather too practical for my taste! I heard vaguely some disjointed murmurs about ‘your old friendship,’ ‘more influence than anyone else,’ ‘your practical good sense,’ and other unmeaning observations. When anyone talks about my well-known good sense, I always give it up, and fly as from a pestilence to the uttermost parts of the earth.

“I remember nothing more except that the unwinking glare of the magnifying glass was fixed on me for apparently untold ages, while I remained in a state of stupefaction, gazing earnestly at my fan and seeking counsel from the lowest depths of the Turkey carpet, while Mr. ​Austin explained and expatiated, apologized and meandered, and explained it all over again. But no—nothing on earth shall move me from my standing-point. I know nothing, absolutely nothing of the matter, and I shall not know, not for all the Austins and Campbells and Green Street gossips in creation.