CHAPTER V. – MARBLES
Six weeks seem a great deal longer to sixteen than to six-and-forty, and Gillian groaned and sighed to herself as she wrote her letters, and assured herself that so far from her having done enough in the way of attention to the old soldier’s family, she had simply done enough to mark her neglect and disdain.
‘Grizzling’ (to use an effective family phrase) under opposition is a grand magnifier; and it was not difficult to erect poor Captain White into a hero, his wife into a patient sufferer, and Alethea’s kindness to his daughter into a bosom friendship; while the aunts seemed to be absurdly fastidious and prejudiced. ‘I don’t wonder at Aunt Ada,’ she said to herself; ‘I know she has always been kept under a glass case; but I thought better things of Aunt Jane. It is all because Kalliope goes to St. Kenelm’s, and won’t be in the G.F.S.’
And all the time Gillian was perfectly unaware of her own family likeness to Dolores. Other matters conduced to a certain spirit of opposition to Aunt Jane. That the children should have to use the back instead of the front stair when coming in with dusty or muddy shoes, and that their possessions should be confiscated for the rest of the day when left about in the sitting-rooms and hall, were contingencies she could accept as natural, though they irritated her; but she agreed with Valetta that it was hard to insist on half an hour’s regular work at the cushion, which was not a lesson, but play. She was angered when Aunt Jane put a stop to some sportive passes and chatter on the stairs between Valetta and Alice Mount, and still more so when her aunt took away Adam Bede from the former, as not desirable reading at eleven years old.
It was only the remembrance of her mother’s positive orders that withheld Gillian from the declaration that mamma always let them read George Eliot; and in a cooler moment of reflection she was glad she had abstained, for she recollected that always was limited to mamma’s having read most of Romola aloud to her and Mysie, and to her having had Silas Marner to read when she was unwell in lodgings, and there was a scarcity of books.
Such miffs about her little sister were in the natural order of things, and really it was the ‘all pervadingness,’ as she called it in her own mind, of Aunt Jane that chiefly worried her, the way that the little lady knew everything that was done, and everything that was touched in the house; but as long as Valetta took refuge with herself, and grumbled to her, it was bearable.
It was different with Fergus. There had been offences certainly; Aunt Jane had routed him out of preparing his lessons in Mrs. Mount’s room, where he diversified them with teaching the Sofy to beg, and inventing new modes of tying down jam pots. Moreover, she had declared that Gillian’s exemplary patience was wasted and harmful when she found that they had taken three-quarters of an hour over three tenses of a Greek verb, and that he said it worse on the seventh repetition than on the first. After an evening, when Gillian had gone to a musical party with Aunt Ada, and Fergus did his lessons under Aunt Jane’s superintendence, he utterly cast off his sister’s aid. There was something in Miss Mohun’s briskness that he found inspiring, and she put in apt words or illustrations, instead of only rousing herself from a book to listen, prompt, and sigh. He found that he did his tasks more thoroughly in half the time, and rose in his class; and busy as his aunt was, she made the time not only for this, but for looking over with him those plates of mechanics in the Encyclopaedia, which were a mere maze to Gillian, but of which she knew every detail, from ancient studies with her brother Maurice. As Fergus wrote to his mother, ‘Aunt Jane is the only woman who has any natural scence.’
Gillian could not but see this as she prepared the letters for the post, and whatever the ambiguous word might be meant for, she had rather not have seen it, for she really was ashamed of her secret annoyance at Fergus’s devotion to Aunt Jane, knowing how well it was that Stebbing should have a rival in his affections. Yet she could not help being provoked when the boy followed his aunt to the doors of her cottages like a little dog, and waited outside whenever she would let him, for the sake of holding forth to her about something which wheels and plugs and screws were to do. Was it possible that Miss Mohun followed it all? His great desire was to go over the marble works, and she had promised to take him when it could be done; but, unfortunately, his half-holiday was on Saturday, when the workmen struck off early, and when also Aunt Jane always had the pupil-teachers for something between instruction and amusement.
Gillian felt lonely, for though she got on better with her younger than her elder aunt, and had plenty of surface intercourse of a pleasant kind with both, it was a very poor substitute for her mother, or her elder sisters, and Valetta was very far from being a Mysie.
The worst time was Sunday, when the children had deserted her for Mrs. Hablot, and Aunt Ada was always lying down in her own room to rest after morning service. She might have been at the Sunday-school, but she did not love teaching, nor do it well, and she did not fancy the town children, or else there was something of opposition to Aunt Jane.
It was a beautiful afternoon, of the first Sunday in October, and she betook herself to the garden with the ‘Lyra Innocentium’ in her hand, meaning to learn the poem for the day. She wandered up to the rail above the cliff, looking out to the sea. Here, beyond the belt of tamarisks and other hardy low-growing shrubs which gave a little protection from the winds, the wall dividing the garden of Beechcroft Cottage from that of Cliff House became low, with only the iron-spiked railing on the top, as perhaps there was a desire not to overload the cliff. The sea was of a lovely colour that day, soft blue, and with exquisite purple shadows of clouds, with ripples of golden sparkles here and there near the sun, and Gillian stood leaning against the rail, gazing out on it, with a longing, yearning feeling towards the dear ones who had gone out upon it, when she became conscious that some one was in the other garden, which she had hitherto thought quite deserted, and looking round, she saw a figure in black near the rail. Their eyes met, and both together exclaimed—
‘Kalliope!’—‘Miss Gillian! Oh, I beg your pardon!’
‘How did you come here? I thought nobody did!’
‘Mr. White’s gardener lets us walk here. It is so nice and quiet. Alexis has taken the younger ones for a walk, but I was too much tired. But I will not disturb you—’
‘Oh! don’t go away. Nobody will disturb us, and I do so want to know about you all. I had no notion, nor mamma either, that you were living here, or—’
‘Or of my dear father’s death!’ said Kalliope, as Gillian stopped short, confused. ‘I did write to Miss Merrifield, but the letter was returned.’
‘But where did you write?’
‘To Swanage, where she had written to me last.’
‘Oh! we were only there for six weeks, while we were looking for houses; I suppose it was just as the Wardours were gone to Natal too?’
‘Yes, we knew they were out of reach.’
‘But do tell me about it, if you do not mind. My father will want to hear.’
Kalliope told all in a calm, matter-of-fact way, but with a strain of deep suppressed feeling. She was about twenty-three, a girl with a fine outline of features, beautiful dark eyes, and a clear brown skin, who would have been very handsome if she had looked better fed and less hardworked. Her Sunday dress showed wear and adaptation, but she was altogether ladylike, and even the fringe that had startled Aunt Ada only consisted of little wavy curls on the temples, increasing her classical look.
‘It was fever—at Leeds. My father was just going into a situation in the police that we had been waiting for ever so long, and there were good schools, and Richard had got into a lawyer’s office, when there began a terrible fever in our street—the drains were to blame, they said—and every one of us had it, except mother and Richard, who did not sleep at home. We lost poor little Mary first, and then papa seemed to be getting better; but he was anxious about expense, and there was no persuading him to take nourishment enough. I do believe it was that. And he had a relapse—and—’
‘Oh, poor Kalliope! And we never heard of it!’
‘I did feel broken down when the letter to Miss Merrifield came back,’ said Kalliope. ‘But my father had made me write to Mr. James White—not that we had any idea that he had grown so rich. He and my father were first cousins, sons of two brothers who were builders; but there was some dispute, and it ended by my father going away and enlisting. There was nobody nearer to him, and he never heard any more of his home; but when he was so ill, he thought he would like to be reconciled to “Jem,” as he said, so he made me write from his dictation. Such a beautiful letter it was, and he added a line at the end himself. Then at last, when it was almost too late, Mr. White answered. I believe it was a mere chance—or rather Providence—that he ever knew it was meant for him, but there were kind words enough to cheer up my father at the last. I believe then the clergyman wrote to him.’
‘Did not he come near you?’
‘No, I have never seen him; but there was a correspondence between him and Mr. Moore, the clergyman, and Richard, and he said he was willing to put us in the way of working for ourselves, if—if—we were not too proud.’
‘Then he did it in an unkind way,’ said Gillian.
‘I try to think he did not mean to be otherwise than good to us. I told Mr. Moore that I was not fit to be a governess, and I did not think they could get on without me at home, but that I could draw better than I would do anything else, and perhaps I might get Christmas cards to do, or something like that. Mr. Moore sent a card or two of my designing, and then Mr. White said he could find work for me in the mosaic department here; and something for my brothers, if we did not give ourselves airs. So we came.’
‘Not Richard?’ said Gillian, who remembered dimly that Richard had not been held in great esteem by her own brothers.
‘No; Richard is in a good situation, so it was settled that he should stay on there.’
‘And you—’
‘I am in the mosaic department. Oh, Miss Gillian, I am so grateful to Miss Merrifield. Don’t you remember her looking at my little attempts, and persuading Lady Merrifield to get mother to let me go to the School of Art? I began only as the girls do who are mere hands, and now I have to prepare all the designs for them, and have a nice little office of my own for it. Sometimes I get one of my own designs taken, and then I am paid extra.’
‘Then do you maintain them all?’
‘Oh no; we have lodgers, the organist and his wife,’ said Kalliope, laughing, ‘and Alexis is in the telegraph office, at the works; besides, it turned out that this house and two more belong to us, and we do very well when the tenants pay their rents.’
‘But Maura is not the youngest of you,’ said Gillian, who was rather hazy about the family.
‘No, there are the two little boys. We let them go to the National School for the present. It is a great trial to my poor mother, but they do learn well there, and we may be able to do something better for them by the time they are old enough for further education.’
Just then the sound of a bell coming up from the town below was a warning to both that the conversation must be broken off. A few words—‘I am so glad to have seen you,’ and ‘It has been such a pleasure’—passed, and then each hastened down her separate garden path.
‘Must I tell of this meeting?’ Gillian asked herself. ‘I shall write it all to mamma and Alethea, of course. How delightful that those lessons that Kalliope had have come to be of so much use! How pleased Alethea will be! Poor dear thing! How much she has gone through! But can there be any need to tell the aunts? Would it not just make Aunt Ada nervous about any one looking through her sweet and lovely wall? And as to Aunt Jane, I really don’t see that I am bound to gratify her passion for knowing everything. I am not accountable to her, but to my own mother. My people know all about Kalliope, and she is prejudiced. Why should I be unkind and neglectful of an old fellow-soldier’s family, because she cannot or will not understand what they really are? It would not be the slightest use to tell her the real story. Mrs. White is fat, and Kalliope has a fringe, goes to St. Kenelm’s, and won’t be in the G.F.S., and that’s enough to make her say she does not believe a word of it, or else to make it a fresh ground for poking and prying, in the way that drives one distracted! It really is quite a satis-faction to have something that she can’t find out, and it is not underhand while I write every word of it to mamma.’
So Gillian made her conscience easy, and she did write a long and full account of the Whites and their troubles, and of her conversation with Kalliope.
In the course of that week Fergus had a holiday, asked for by some good-natured visitor of Mrs. Edgar’s. He rushed home on the previous day with the news, to claim Aunt Jane’s promise; and she undertook so to arrange matters as to be ready to go with him to the marble works at three o’clock. Valetta could not go, as she had her music lesson at that time, and she did not regret it, for she had an idea that blasting with powder or dynamite was always going on there. Gillian was not quite happy about the dynamite, but she did not like to forego the chance of seeing what the work of Kalliope and Alexis really was, so she expressed her willingness to join the party, and in the meantime did her best to prevent Aunt Ada from being driven distracted by Fergus’s impatience, which began at half-past two.
Miss Mohun had darted out as soon as dinner was over, and he was quite certain some horrible cad would detain her till four o’clock, and then going would be of no use. Nevertheless he was miserable till Gillian had put on her hat, and then she could do nothing that would content him and keep him out of Aunt Ada’s way, but walk him up and down in the little front court with the copper beeches, while she thought they must present to the neighbours a lively tableau of a couple of leopards in a cage.
However, precisely as the clock struck three, Aunt Jane walked up to the iron gate. She had secured an order from Mr. Stebbing, the managing partner, without which they would not have penetrated beyond the gate where ‘No admittance except on business’ was painted.
Mr. Stebbing himself, a man with what Valetta was wont to call a grisly beard, met them a little within the gate, and did the honours of the place with great politeness. He answered all the boy’s questions, and seemed much pleased with his intelligence and interest, letting him see what he wished, and even having the machinery slacked to enable him to perceive how it acted, and most delightful of all, in the eyes of Fergus, letting him behold some dynamite, and explaining its downward explosion. He evidently had a great respect for Miss Mohun, because she entered into it all, put pertinent questions, and helped her nephew if he did not understand.
It was all dull work to Gillian, all that blasting and hewing and polishing, which made the place as busy as a hive. She only wished she could have seen the cove as once it was, with the weather-beaten rocks descending to the sea, overhung with wild thrift and bramble, and with the shore, the peaceful haunts of the white sea-birds; whereas now the fresh-cut rock looked red and wounded, and all below was full of ugly slated or iron-roofed sheds, rough workmen, and gratings and screeches of machinery.
It was the Whites whom she wanted to see, and she never came upon the brother at all, nor on the sister, till Mr. Stebbing, perhaps observing her listless looks, said that they were coming to what would be more interesting to Miss Merrifield, and took them into the workrooms, where a number of young women were busy over the very beautiful work by which flowers and other devices were represented by inlaying different coloured marbles and semi-precious stones in black and white, so as to make tables, slabs, and letter-weights, and brooches for those who could not aspire to the most splendid and costly productions.
Miss Mohun shook hands with ‘the young ladies’ within the magic circle of the G.F.S., and showed herself on friendly terms of interest with all. From a little inner office Miss White was summoned, came out, and met an eager greeting from Gillian, but blushed a little, and perhaps had rather not have had her unusual Christian name proclaimed by the explanation—
‘This is Kalliope White, Aunt Jane.’
Miss Mohun shook hands with her, and said her niece had been much pleased at the meeting, and her sister would be glad to hear of her, explaining to Mr. Stebbing that Captain White had been a brother-officer of Sir Jasper Merrifield.
Kalliope had a very prettily-shaped head, with short hair in little curls and rings all over it. Her whole manner was very quiet and unassuming, as she explained and showed whatever Mr. Stebbing wished. It was her business to make the working drawings for the others, and to select the stones used, and there could be no doubt that she was a capable and valuable worker.
Gillian asked her to show something designed by herself, and she produced an exquisite table-weight, bearing a spray of sweet peas. Gillian longed to secure it for her mother, but it was very expensive, owing to the uncommon stones used in giving the tints, and Mr. Stebbing evidently did not regard it with so much favour as the jessamines and snowdrops, which, being of commoner marbles, could be sold at a rate fitter for the popular purse. Several beautiful drawings in her office had been laid aside as impracticable, ‘unless we had a carte blanche wedding order,’ he said, with what Gillian thought a sneer.
She would gladly have lingered longer, but this was a very dull room in Fergus’s estimation, and perhaps Aunt Jane did not desire a long continuance of the conversation under Mr. Stebbing’s eyes, so Gillian found herself hurried on.
Mr. Stebbing begged Miss Mohun to come in to his wife, who would have tea ready, and this could not be avoided without manifest incivility. Fergus hoped to have been introduced to the haunts of his hero, but Master George was gone off in attendance on his brother, who was fishing, and there was nothing to relieve the polite circle of the drawing-room—a place most aesthetically correct, from cornice to the little rugs on the slippery floor. The little teacups and the low Turkish table were a perfect study to those who did not—like Fergus—think more of the dainty doll’s muffins on the stand, or the long-backed Dachshund who looked for them beseechingly.
Mrs. Stebbing was quite in accordance with the rest, with a little row of curls over her forehead, a terra-cotta dress, and a chain of watch cocks, altogether rather youthful for the mother of a grown-up son, engaged in his father’s business.
She was extremely civil and polite, and everything went well except for a certain stiffness. By and by the subject of the Whites came up, and Mr. Stebbing observed that Miss Merrifield seemed to know Miss White.
‘Oh yes,’ said Gillian eagerly; ‘her father was in my father’s regiment, the Royal Wardours.’
‘A non-commissioned officer, I suppose,’ said Mrs. Stebbing.
‘Not for a good many years,’ said Gillian. ‘He was lieutenant for six years, and retired with the rank of captain.’
‘I know they said he was a captain,’ said Mrs. Stebbing; ‘but it is very easy to be called so.’
‘Captain White was a real one,’ said Gillian, with a tone of offence. ‘Every one in the Royal Wardours thought very highly of him.’
‘I am sure no one would have supposed it from his family,’ said Mrs. Stebbing. ‘You are aware, Miss Mohun, that it was under disgraceful circumstances that he ran away and enlisted.’
‘Many a youth who gets into a scrape becomes an excellent soldier, even an officer,’ said Miss Mohun.
‘Exactly so,’ said Mr. Stebbing. ‘Those high-spirited lads are the better for discipline, and often turn out well under it. But their promotion is an awkward thing for their families, who have not been educated up to the mark.’
‘It is an anomalous position, and I have a great pity for them,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘Miss White must be a very clever girl.’
‘Talented, yes,’ said Mr. Stebbing. ‘She is useful in her department.
‘That may be,’ said Mrs. Stebbing; ‘but it won’t do to encourage her. She is an artful, designing girl, I know very well—’
‘Do you know anything against her?’ asked Miss Mohun, looking volumes of repression at Gillian, whose brown eyes showed symptoms of glaring like a cat’s, under her hat.
‘I do not speak without warrant, Miss Mohun. She is one of those demure, proper-behaved sort that are really the worst flirts of all, if you’ll excuse me.’
Most thankful was Miss Mohun that the door opened at that moment to admit some more visitors, for she saw that Gillian might at any moment explode.
‘Aunt Jane,’ she exclaimed, as soon as they had accomplished their departure, ‘you don’t believe it?’
‘I do not think Miss White looks like it,’ said Miss Mohun. ‘She seemed a quiet, simple girl.’
‘And you don’t believe all that about poor Captain White?’
‘Not the more for Mrs. Stebbing’s saying so.’
‘But you will find out and refute her. There must be people who know.’
‘My dear, you had better not try to rake up such things. You know that the man bore an excellent character for many years in the army, and you had better be satisfied with that,’ said Miss Jane for once in her life, as if to provoke Gillian, not on the side of curiosity.
‘Then you do believe it!’ went on Gillian, feeling much injured for her hero’s sake, and wearing what looked like a pertinacious pout.
‘Truth compels me to say, Gillian, that the sons of men, even in a small way of business, are not apt to run away and enlist without some reason.’
‘And I am quite sure it was all that horrid old White’s fault.’
‘You had better content yourself with that belief.’
Gillian felt greatly affronted, but Fergus, who thought all this very tiresome, broke in, after a third attempt—
‘Aunt Jane, if the pulley of that crane—’
And all the way home they discussed machinery, and Gillian’s heart swelled.
‘I am afraid Gillian was greatly displeased with me,’ said Miss Mohun that evening, talking it over with her sister. ‘But her captain might have a fall if she went poking into all the gossip of the place about him.’
‘Most likely whatever he did would be greatly exaggerated,’ said Adeline.
‘No doubt of it! Besides, those young men who are meant by nature for heroes are apt to show some Beserkerwuth in their youth, like Hereward le Wake.’
‘But what did you think of the girl?’
‘I liked her looks very much. I have seen her singing in the choruses at the choral society concert, and thought how nice her manner was. She does justice to her classical extraction, and is modest and ladylike besides. Mrs. Stebbing is spiteful! I wonder whether it is jealousy. She calls her artful and designing, which sounds to me very much as if Master Frank might admire the damsel. I have a great mind to have the two girls to tea, and see what they are made of.’
‘We had much better wait till we hear from Lily. We cannot in the least tell whether she would wish the acquaintance to be kept up. And if there is anything going on with young Stebbing, nothing could be more unadvisable than for Gillian to be mixed up in any nonsense of that sort.’