Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 9

THE years that bring the philosophic mind and the ever-widening waistband had also brought to Clare a keener insight into the character and affairs of her neighbours than most people had any idea of. She noticed that Alice was distrait and out of sorts, but she said nothing, though she listened to a good deal; and, indeed, with Mrs. Burton at her elbow, she could have no excuse for ignorance of the inmost thoughts or failings of anyone within ten miles of circuit. But it was Clare’s favourite motto that we should let sleeping dogs lie. The question never occurred to her, “Are the dogs really asleep, or only shutting one eye that they may devour us more conveniently at their leisure?” Besides, Clare was in a very happy frame of mind, expecting “the captain” over to see his family in a few weeks, and it was her firm belief that there were very few things in our philosophy that Henry could not put to rights (under Pro​vidence, and guided by her own invaluable advice). However, she thought there would be no harm in seeking some relaxation in a little journey, and she accordingly proposed to Alice that they should take a run over the mountains by way of the zigzag railway, staying one night at a little town on the other side, and returning by a longer, but less romantic road over the hills. No sooner said than done. It was a great relief to at least one of the party to get away from home, even for a couple of days, and the stimulating air and change of scene raised her spirits as no other tonic could have done. It is true that we carry our own bosom-cares about with us wherever we go (as the experience of ages has put on record), but at least we can relegate them to the position of mere travelling acquaintances , not heart to heart intimates, as they insist on being at our own fireside. We can compel them to take their own ghostly railway tickets, and pay for their own invisible dinners, and as for the wearisome conversation that they insist on pouring into our inward ears, why, we can go on talking just as well with other people all the time, and no one is a bit the wiser. As they rolled along the steel road that hot, sleepy afternoon, Alice felt soothed and able to argue the matter out quite rationally with herself. ​Mrs. Granby had said that Lizzie was standing on a precipice—but what of that? No one in society ever takes any notice of such a trifle; if you were to say to one of your fellow-creatures, “Take care!” you would be considered mad, if not mischief-making. Perhaps religion teaches us otherwise, and one can’t help thinking about the good Samaritan sometimes; but after all we don’t know all the circumstances. Most likely it was the traveller’s own fault that he fell among thieves; he had no business to go by that road. As to taking him to an inn, you might be robbed and murdered yourself, or catch a fever, or something dreadful. There are always the police to call to, and, if not, then one can send a ticket to the Charity Organization Society. These reflections were lulled to a pleasant dimness by the drowsy hum of the afternoon; half awake and half asleep they slipped through the long serpentine valley, lying uncoiled in the summery blaze; past little white wooden-walled towns set down in the grassy, treeless plain; past churches and farms and countryhouses, each islanded in its own dark circle of trees from the surrounding ocean of verdure; past orchards rolling in blossom, which in a few months would be raining apples and peaches on the long grass; past sleek hayfields ​and green bays and inlets of corn, till at last they were running up close to the lower spurs of the dividing ranges, and the seven-leagued shadows of the mountains began to stretch across the wide wooded spaces and quiet plains below, and at last the train began to attack the mountain saddle in earnest, supported by one engine in front and one behind. The railroad climbs like a cat over the perpendicular wall of the pass at a great height, and the grandeur of the landscape is almost alarming at the first view. Not so lovely as some of the snow-clad Alpine passes, this summit possesses a strange, forbidding beauty all its own. The same immense mountain sides sheeted with sombre forest, where the white clematis hangs like an avalanche for an instant and then passes out of sight; the same bright rivers, darting like a thing of life far below; the same mysterious glens, and shadow-ridden summits, and purple precipices unroll before the traveller as he winds upwards farther and farther into the inmost hearth and home of the mountains. In the joyous waters of those deep-cut ravines, English trout are thriving, and lose none of their spirit under the shade of the great-crowned tree-ferns and black perpendicular cliffs. There is something lonely, even in the blaze of spring, in these fastnesses; ​but when the summit wears the wreath and veil of midwinter, and the snowstorms are blown over from the Antarctic circle to whirl and whistle on the peaks, this must indeed be solitude. As they descended the ranges in long diagonal steps, the scenery gradually became more tame and lowland in its character, and the wind brought the scent and flavour of the sea on its wings, very distinct from the breath of inland fields and valleys. Clare noticed that her companion was gradually brightening under the influence of even this one day’s travel; and she saw, too, that other people admired the graceful, pale young lady in the Redfern travelling gown.

“Alice is so much improved,” she was writing to her husband that very morning, “you would hardly know her again. She has so much more style and worldly wisdom now. Nature has endowed her with the unusual faculty of looking sad attractively. Many people ( I have a suspicion sometimes that I belong to this class myself) only manage to look cross when they are feeling mournful, just as others (I hope I am not one of them) always appear haughtily exclusive while all the time they are suffering agonies of shyness and self- distrust. But I must not allow her to practise this attraction too much. ​Something is a little awry between her and A. C. You know you are goose enough to love a love-story above everything, and I have promised you one at least from our village. I don’t quite know the beginning of this one, and no one can say what the end will be, and I am not very sure about the middle. However, we shall see what we shall see by-and-by. I don’t quite know what to make of it all. Alice has been so cold and distant to Arthur C. that he has got offended and never comes near us. The only time I talked to him about giving us up he seemed in a regular temper and growled something about ‘wretched gossip and mischiefmakers,’ which could only apply to the opinion of this little world as to his goings-on with the fair Lizzie. I could not have thought that such a gentle sort of girl as Alice could find it in her heart to ice him off as she does perpetually now. The result is that he seeks consolation with Mrs. Austin more than ever; and she, poor girl, is evidently too fond—far too fond—of his society to give him up for all the scandal-mongers in the southern hemisphere. It’s a very awkward three-cornered situation, and how we are to get it into a round hole at last I don’t quite see; but perhaps you will see your way to do something when you come over.”

​The train gradually descended towards the lowlands of the coast, and evening found the travellers slowly running along the last terrace of the ranges just as a showery sunset burned over the little new village where they were to stay for the night. Spring here was no longer the wild mountain spirit, flying over the ravines on a burst of sunshine, or dancing on the peaks to the skirl of an Antarctic snow-flurry, but the gentle mother of the fields, keeping house in wood and valley, and binding up the desolation of the newly-cleared forest with daisied turf and ever-deepening grasses. Familiar breaths of sweetness blew from the clover-bedded plains far below, and all the leaves in the valley were honeycombed with sunset, as Clare and Alice stepped out into the little wooden shed which represented the railway station of Linden. Clare was very hungry and in good spirits, and had even forgotten to take her usual dose of aconite at four o’clock, so much had the scenery excited her. She was very forgiving to the newness of the civilization around, and looked forward to the national dish of chops and tea (which might be expected to form their evening meal) with considerable anxiety.

The little wooden inn where they stopped for the night was homely and comfortable, though ​it seemed to take its pleasure sadly enough, standing alone in a wilderness of tree-stumps; and the simple meal was served with true bush hospitality by the round-faced Irish landlady, who pressed upon the two ladies all the dainties at her command—fresh trout from the mountain stream and yellow-brown scones hot from the oven, mushrooms with the delicate ortolan flavour of wild pastures, and lastly, as a special bonne bouche, a preserve made of the Cape gooseberry, which often grows wild in the bush, and, skilfully treated, turns into a delicious confection. The landlady hospitably watched every mouthful they ate, and anxiously plied them still with more and more scones and tea; and when at last convinced against her will that her guests could practically eat and drink no longer, she led the way with great pride to a little stuffy parlour upstairs, and with a smile of triumph opened a new foreign piano, which reposed in a chaste seclusion of crochet covers and photograph albums. Clare smiled, too, and looking very dignified in the eldest of the elderly black silks which Mrs. Mead allowed her to take in her travels, sat down and began to play some of her favourite Chopin, while the landlady, who evidently saw no reason for retiring, offered Alice in succession the photo albums, a heavy ​volume of the “Family Herald,” and a bound book of music, for her entertainment. At last, however, the claims of the family and lodgers downstairs could no longer be ignored, and, with a parting commendation of the piano to their attention, she disappeared.

“I wish we could do something for her,” said Alice. “She is really so very attentive. Paying the bills seems a very small return for her kindness.”

“Well, sing something for her. I often hear you practising the scales when you think I am not listening, and this would be a good beginning.”

“Ah! I found a song in this old book that I have not seen for ages. It was the song I meant to make my début with at that ill-fated concert, and poor dear old Piper always said it was my best. How patiently he used to listen to me trying it over, time after time! I often think, Clare, that the best thing I can do is to go back to London and spend the rest of my life in trying over songs with the professor. Music is a great comfort, and I should be useful to one person at all events.”

“Take care you don’t spoil your own life and some one else’s too, Alice,” said Clare, with great seriousness. “Don’t throw away your happiness for a childish pique.”

​Just at that moment a rattling of wheels, a barking of dogs, and a general bustle and commotion all over the village, announced the arrival of the mail-coach, whose weekly visit was the one excitement of life in the little community. Alice leaned out of the window and glanced at the passengers who were alighting at the hotel door, looking very dusty and discouraged after their journey. Most of them were evidently passengers by the incoming mail from England, who had preferred the rough journey over the hills to the tender mercies of a coasting steamer.

Suddenly she uttered an exclamation of surprise, “It can’t be! Yes, it is! No, it isn’t! Yes, it really is the professor!”

Clare, after requesting to be immediately informed whether her friend had suddenly gone mad, and receiving no answer, at last deigned to approach the window, and squeeze herself into the remaining space, whence a view could be obtained of the arrivals.

“For goodness sake, Alice, restrain yourself,” she murmured, craning her neck as far as possible round the corner. “Is that him?” she added, regardless of grammar, and gazing at a broad, short, middle-aged back, clothed in dustcoloured tweed, surmounted by a sun-helmet and ​a pugaree, which was bending over a mountain of portmanteau.

“Yes, that is the Master!” exclaimed Alice, joyously. “Is he not a dear old fellow? He is as broad as he is long, and as good as he is broad. I am sure he has come out to see me. Oh, I must run down and speak to him!”

“Certainly not, I forbid you to do any such thing. Do come away from the window. It’s such bad form to stare at people,” said Clare severely, while extricating herself with some difficulty from their coign of vantage. “I don’t know what this professor means by coming out to see you. It seems to me a very strange proceeding altogether.”

“Oh, no; I half expected him. He wrote last mail, and said he might be here any day, but I did not think he could get out so soon,—and here of all places in the world!”

“Why of course the coaches connect here with the railway, and most people come overland, so there is nothing so wonderful about it. I will send down my card by-and-by, and you can write a message on it, if you insist upon it; but do let the unfortunate man have his supper in peace first.”

Clare hereupon relapsed into the depths of the horsehair sofa, which treacherously offered a ​slippery and inclined plane to the unwary guest, who was gradually unseated and deposited on the floor by a sort of glacier action, as a general thing.

“You are a funny girl,” she observed at last, recovering her balance with considerable dignity for the third time, and finally gaining a victory over the sofa by bracing her feet earnestly against a chair. “I suppose you will go quite off your head now over your music.”

“I do long to have something to do again—something real, you know; not this make-believe enjoying-myself-so-much sort of life. I can’t get on by myself in music, somehow. I do such fussy, fiddling sort of things; and the more I fuss and fiddle, the worse they are. Now with a good lead, I can always follow. Perhaps it isn’t a very great sort of talent, but it’s all I have.”

“I don't know—I would rather see you happily married, if you want a lead.”

“That’s easier said than done, Clare. First catch your hare, as we used to say at the Academy, before you boil him down.”

“Don’t be flippant, Alice. It doesn’t become you to be pert. Some noses can stand it, but yours is not the right sort. And it is vexing to see you playing with your own happiness and his too. You know what I mean.”

​“That person seems to prefer the society of another lady, if I do know what you mean.”

“Because you drive him to it.”

“Oh well, if he is so easily driven as all that—and besides, I have another string to my bow, thank goodness. Yes, I mean my music. What a blessed thing art is, after all! It doesn’t quarrel with anyone, or get into a temper, or drop you all of a sudden. You know the words, ‘Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.’ I must set them to music some day. That’s just the sort of feeling I have about my music.”

“You are cross to-night, Alice; and you certainly will catch a cold in your head if you sit near that open window. What a queer lonely little corner of the world this is! Look at those dead trees over there, and that white thing starting out of the darkness. Isn’t it like a ghost?”

“Yes, it’s very like a ghost,” said Alice dreamily. “I know, for I have been one myself. It was when I went back to my old home—last year, you remember, Clare, when we stopped at Adelaide on our way out, and you were ill at the hotel. I used to go and wander about the old street by myself. No one knew me, and I hardly seemed to know myself. It is a terrible thing to be a revenant. Our old house looked so shabby ​and miserable, and the trees were cut down, and the children grown up, and I was a stranger and an outsider. It is the strangest feeling! The little shop at the corner where I used to buy teacakes (when we could afford it) was the only place I felt at home in. I never knew what ghosts felt before, but now I know and feel for them. They have my sincerest sympathy. I never shall be frightened of them again, poor things!”

“Well, let us have some music so as to soothe their feelings, if there are any about to-night. I will play the accompaniment, and you can open the door so that the landlady will hear it.”

There was a new strength and sweetness in Alice’s voice that fairly astonished her friend; and when with a genuine thrill of passion she sang—

Clare almost wiped away a tear. “I hope to goodness that the professor won’t think that she means him,” she murmured, for at that moment ​there was a knock at the door, and a sonorous foreign voice exclaimed—

“I beg ten thousand pardons for this intrusion, but may I ask if—Oh, my dear young lady, it is you! I thought I could not be mistaken. Well, well—this is indeed a joy!”

The professor was a stout middle-aged Germanic personage, chiefly noticeable for an iron-greyish harmony of colouring. His hair, abundant, but not barbaric; his beard trimmed to the proper artist’s, Henri Quatre, point of view; his small, bright, penetrating eyes, which betrayed a sort of confidential twinkle under their spectacles—all maintained the same sober and decorous tint, which was also harmonized (in a lower key) in his extremely correct travelling suit and dark grey necktie. His manner was considerate and gentle to an almost alarming degree, and he had a habit of bending forward and listening with a deferential expression to the simple remarks of very ordinary people, as if he were hanging on their words of wisdom. It was only a little trick of manner, but it had the effect on some very young and nervous students of causing them to wish themselves safely dead and buried, rather than conversing with the accomplished virtuoso.

The professor held Alice’s hand so long, and ​gazed at her so intently, that Clare thought at last it was time for her to interfere; so she graciously slipped off the sofa, with the air of dignity which she knew so well to put on, and introduced herself to the professor with all proper ceremony. He was charmed beyond measure to make the acquaintance of such a dear friend of Miss Lauder, so he declared; nevertheless, at a very early moment the two musicians were fathoms deep in the usual London musical “shop,” which is so doubly dear to the exile in the “under world.”

“You will come back with me to London, my dear friend,” he said at last, as the night was drawing on. “My cantata is coming out at last, praise to heaven! They are going to do it at Birmingham next spring, and I depend on you to sing ‘The Maid of Norway.’ It is your music, you know. You inspired it. ‘Kennst du die eignen Lieder nicht?’”

“Oh, I should love to sing it! But suppose I were to make a mess of it?”

“I think it is time for us all to go to bed,” Clare interposed at last, mildly but firmly. “We have a long journey before us to-morrow, and must be away early. Do you accompany us to Green Street, Professor?”

“With your permission, madam, I will spend ​as much time as possible with my much esteemed former pupil.”

“Always your pupil, dear master,” said Alice, gracefully pressing his hand, and the professor retired bowing to the ground, and walking backwards, as if in the presence of royalty—a proceeding which in an Englishman would have appeared too ridiculous for anything, but which a fat podgy elderly German musician could carry out with impressive dignity.

When she went to her room, Alice opened the window and for a long time gazed out into the bush. So mysterious and dreamlike it all looked, the dark restless waves of woodland sighing and stirring as in sleep, and the far-off laughter of the river rising and falling on the slow breeze, like the voice of some living creature rejoicing alone in the darkness. There was a cold sweetness in the air, and a nameless indistinct under-roll in the forest, that might have been the roar of some great city in the distance. Darkly outlined against a pale arc of sky, the enormous mountain barrier blocked out half the horizon to the east. “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!” she murmured at last, closing the window, as Canopus began to swim upwards from the Northern horizon, like some great battleship sailing among the fleet of smaller stars.