Chapter VI: The Captain of the Eleven

A bright July day, early in the month, with London still full, and all the world weary yet toiling on, more or less, in the treadmill work of society; such a day as revives the toilers in that everlasting round, and breathes into hundreds of worn-out minds an air of freshness, waking them up from the fatigue of their pleasures and of their disgust. Stands all round, with ladies ranged one row above another like banks of flowers, carriages thronging twenty deep, and crowds standing in a deep inner ring. But it is not a race-course, like Ascot or Epsom. It is in the heart of London; and all these thousands of fine people surround a green smooth lawn, on which a set of lads are playing--no such great matter, one would suppose, and little comprehensible to a foreigner. Yet surely this is one of the most innocent, the kindliest of all freaks of fashion. The fine ladies are turned as by magic into mothers and sisters. They have their parasols and their dresses and their horses’ heads trimmed with symbolical ribbons. Many of the younger ones watch the game with an anxiety as great as if the welfare of the kingdom depended upon it; and the men, world-worn men from all sorts of unlikely places, men from the clubs and the public offices, and Parliament, and business, carry their ensigns too, if not so openly, in some snip of blue somewhere about them, a forget-me-not in a button-hole, a tassel to an umbrella. And this is all, need I say, for Eton against Harrow, the Public Schools Match. Not to a hundredth part of these crowds is it given to have a personal interest in the sublime band on either side. But as every smallest imp, with his knot of blue ribbon, feels himself Eton or Harrow impersonated against all the world, so all the elder people stand by the school to which they are vaguely attached in the person of that smallest of schoolboys, with as much fervor as if they belonged to the Captain of the Eleven. But those who do belong to the Captain of the Eleven--those who can with exultant yet anxious eyes follow the apparition of that demigod, as he comes and goes--who can describe the feelings that agitate their bosoms? Such feelings had full sway on the special occasion to which we refer, in a certain modest carriage, holding two ladies, which occupied one of the places in the front rank at Lord’s, carefully placed there before daylight to make sure of a good view. The elder lady in it took but little interest in what was going on, but then, though the elder, she was the least important, and her young companion was entirely absorbed in the scene. She was but sixteen, dressed in the simplest demure costume of white, and sometimes whiter still than her dress with agitation, sometimes all flushed and rose-red with excitement. Her eyes, her whole soul, her whole heart were fixed on the game and the players. Her young bosom gave a great throb whenever there was a good hit on her own side. Her heart sank when the good hit was on the other. She had neither sight, nor hearing, nor understanding for anything else. And who will wonder? She was the sister of the Captain of the Eleven. It is unnecessary to say which of the blues that captain wore. Tremenheere had played once before for his school, but as this was almost by an accident, and not known until the last moment, “his people” did not have the glory of it as they ought; but with full announcement and preparation the once backward Eddy, the boy whom his mother had spoilt, burst suddenly upon the world now. And everything else was dwarfed to Vera by this event. All other honors and delights grew dim before it. She watched her brother (whom she scarcely knew) with a strange enthusiasm, and eagerness, and anxiety which it is impossible to describe. How could she bear to see him beaten? If life and death had been on it she could not have taken it more seriously. Her hand was on the door of the carriage, sometimes trembling, sometimes holding it tight with agony when the other side seemed to be making progress; the pretty girlish figure bent a little forward, her eyes intent, never losing a movement, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, unaware who came near her, who passed, even who spoke to her,--and all this for a cricket match! But then it was much more than a cricket match for Vera. Her brother seemed to her the very foremost young man in England. Had not he and his comrades eclipsed all other incidents in busy London on this hot day? Parliament itself was diminished. There was nobody in the Row; afternoon teas were as good as done away with; telegrams from hour to hour appeared in all the papers; the streets were full of the two different blues. What wonder that Vera, only sixteen, should think her brother the very greatest personage that ever girl belonged to? She looked at the card in her hand now and then when Edward was not playing, to read his name with a thrill of fresh excitement. “Tremenheere, captain.” If he had come to this honor and glory when he was only eighteen, what prizes must not life hold for such a hero?

“Vera, my dear, I think you should put down your veil? People are remarking you. I don’t think it is nice to be so absorbed in anything. You forget yourself altogether, my dear.”

“Why should I remember myself?--there is nothing in me to remember,” she said, in her excitement. Then coming to herself, “Oh please, Miss Campbell, I do so hate a veil. It gets in one’s eyes, and one can’t see.”

“Dear, how often must I tell you that a well-bred girl expresses herself much more quietly. Take the opera-glass, then, that conceals the face.”

“But I can see very well without it. I can see Eddy quite plain. Look, Miss Campbell! I can always make him out. There! four for us!”

“I don’t understand the interest you all take in this game,” said Miss Campbell. “In Scotland the gentlemen play golf, which they tell me is much finer exercise. All this I think is very bad for the boys. All London coming out to look at them hitting a ball with a stick. And bad for you too, Vera. If you get so very much excited I think I must take you away.”

Vera knew that this could not be done, and therefore heard the threat calmly. Fortunately, after a while, Miss Campbell got engrossed with something else, and with a sigh of relief she let the glass drop, thus revealing her moving animated countenance all at once to two people to whom the sight of it was like something from heaven. The one was a middle-aged woman, no more or less than Vera’s mother; the other a young man. Let us keep the more interesting personage to the last. Mrs. Tremenheere has the best right to come forward. She stood at a little distance among the crowd looking at her child. She had always called Vera by this name. After years of virtual separation--though there never had been any personal objection made on either side to either parent seeing the children when he or she pleased--here was the child she had left, grown into a woman. I cannot describe the feelings with which her mother regarded her, gazing at the young absorbed countenance. Little Vera, the baby, the plaything, the amusement of the house, the little bud of life whom she had left behind, not knowing what was to come of her!

“Look, Elinor!” she said, grasping the arm of her inseparable companion, and leaning on her with a trembling which she could not command.

“I see her,” said Miss Meadows, cheerfully. “Hasn’t she grown up pretty? Come and speak to her, Ada. She must be looking for you.”

“She is looking for her brother, nothing else,” said Mrs. Tremenheere. “Wait a little, Nelly; I feel like a divorced woman, with no right to go near my child. God help us! what those wretched beings must suffer! I never thought of it before.”

“One never does think of other people’s sufferings till one shares them,” said Elinor, oracularly. “Thank heaven, you are not so bad as that! Come along. Shall I go first and tell her.”

“Wait a little.”

Mrs. Tremenheere, though she was a strong-minded woman, trembled for the meeting. What would the child think of the mother who had deserted her? If she had been only a child! but a woman with a mind and judgment--who could understand and perhaps condemn. She stood by and looked at this creature of sixteen with her heart in a flutter. The judgment of a child is a terrible tribunal. One can face the world and one’s equals, knowing all that is in one’s favor, and feeling the full force of one’s rights. But the secret verdict of a boy or girl, whom natural respect will prevent from expressing it or even defining it to themselves--what a thing that is to encounter! Very seldom do fathers or mothers encounter this judgment in so dramatically distinct a manner as Mrs. Tremenheere had to do; and she trembled and held back. What if she should read dislike, disapproval, the pained and wondering sentence of the innocent in Vera’s eyes?

In the meantime the other individual of whom I have spoken had gone past again, gazing furtively at the carriage. “Jove! how pretty she is,” he was saying to himself. “How absorbed she is, not seeing me nor any one! That’s what I like in a girl; never to see you if you stare like a madman. Why should she? The ones that are thinking of themselves see you fast enough. She is not thinking of herself, bless her. I wonder who she’s thinking of? one of those fellows in their flannels? Idiots! with nothing but hits to leg, and catches got, or missed, in their empty heads. I beg your pardon, Miss Meadows, I am very sorry. I hope I did not hurt a ribbon or a feather.”

“You are very saucy to talk of feathers and ribbons. You have hurt _me_. Where are you going with your head over your shoulder? Who are you gazing at?”

“Look here,” cried the young man, drawing her aside. “Look at that girl’s face. What is she, a St. Cecilia or a rapt young Madonna intent upon the angel? No, perhaps she is not exactly beautiful. I don’t care for your beautiful faces, all feature and nothing else.”

“Oswald! when you do nothing but rave about form. Greek, forsooth! As if good English flesh and blood was not finer than your marbles!”

“Miss Meadows, you were always a woman of the most just ideas. Precisely what I think. Look at her! the features are not much, but the expression is divine. I should like to paint her, I should like to carry her off! I should like to----”

“Not eat her I hope, though your eyes look like it--for, hush! here is her mother,” cried Elinor. Mr. Oswald Fane started, and grew red, and drew back a step. He turned to the other face behind him in which he was not so interested; and yet that, too, if painting had been all that he was thinking of! Mrs. Tremenheere had not heard what was going on between the others. She, too, was absorbed, thinking only of one thing,--how Vera would look at her, what she should see in the child’s eyes. The young man gave a glance at her, then turned back to the first object of his admiration.

“Is it only that they resemble each other,” he whispered, “or what gives them both that rapt look? It is interesting.--Do you know them?--I should like to be you. I wonder if that girl is like her face.”

“If you are patient and wait, perhaps I may introduce you,” said Elinor. “I don’t know that she is like her face. That is one side of her. Wait--I must introduce her mother to her first.”

“Introduce--her mother!”

“Hush! It’s a story. I’ll tell it you afterwards.--Ada, come! you are wasting all the morning, and I tell you she expects you. That is what she is looking for.”

“She is looking for her brother,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, “and it is quite right; I don’t complain. Stand by me, Nelly. I feel very silly, as if I might make a scene.”

“Don’t make a scene, whatever you do!” cried Elinor. “Nonsense; there is nothing so dreadful about it. Come!”

Vera’s attention was aroused a moment after by the shock of finding a hand laid upon hers. She looked up quickly with a start, and saw the mother of whom she had seen so little, and whom at the first moment she scarcely recognised, standing beside her. The girl’s heart gave a violent jump--sudden tears came into her eyes and a choking in her throat.

“Mamma?” she said, interrogatively. The shock brought all the blood to her heart. She looked wistfully, anxiously at this sudden claimant. Miss Campbell sat looking on, somewhat uneasy. She had never believed in the pretence about Mrs. Tremenheere’s separation from her husband. Incompatibility! It was no use telling a woman of her experience this. She looked at the stranger with a mixture of disapproval and dislike, and bent forward across the carriage, as if to ask what she wanted, pretending she did not know.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, taking her daughter’s hand between her own, and holding it closely, “I have been looking for you, Vera.”

What was in Vera’s face? Her eyes were not so limpid, so frankly and tenderly eager as when she gazed at her brother; a shadow was over the young countenance--but what? Mrs. Tremenheere could not tell what it was that clouded her eyes.

“Oh, mamma! you will get into the carriage, won’t you?” she said, trying to open the door.

“I will stand here and talk to you a little. Stoop down and give me a kiss, Vera, my darling,” cried the poor woman.

Vera put down her soft, youthful face, upon which the same doubtful, wondering, troubled expression still hung. She did not know what to think. Her brother--yes, that was right, that was nature. But her mother? Could she sit here and let her stand by her. Should not she get out, and follow her, and cease to be a stranger to her; or should she be cold and keep back and take papa’s part? Vera did not know what to do. The triumphant satisfaction died out of her face. Eddy was the sunshine of this picture, but her mother was the inevitable shadow. She put her soft face down to meet Mrs. Tremenheere’s kiss, but raised it again tingling with blushes, as if it had been a stranger who had kissed her. She could not look at her brother again, with this figure at her elbow. Ought she not to give her entire attention to the new-comer? So many emotions chased each other over her face that the young man in the crowd who was still looking at her groped in his pockets instinctively for a pencil, and then laughed at himself. “Draw all that--a whole volume in two lines?” he said to himself. “What a fool I am.”

“Vera, you have grown almost a woman----”

“Yes, mamma.” She made a little pause, panting in her agitation and bewilderment, which poor Mrs. Tremenheere feared was reluctance to give her that title. This went to her heart, but she would not show it. She began bravely again.

“And Eddy is almost a man. You are like each other; he has grown stronger and taller than I expected. You are pleased to see him, Vera? and of course you have got his colors. Poor boy, I suppose he is very happy with all these people staring at him; and that pleases you too?”

“Pleases me! oh, more than that! I am so proud I don’t know what to say--no word is strong enough. Are not you proud and happy, too, mamma?”

“I proud and happy? I don’t know, my darling, I do not use such words. I am pleased that you are all pleased----”

“Oh, mamma! What could you wish, what could you have more?” said Vera, indignant with fire in her eyes.

“Vera, I beg you will not be so vehement. It is quite out of place,” said Miss Campbell with dignity, “in a well-bred girl.”

The blood rushed to Mrs. Tremenheere’s face. She felt herself stung to the very heart. Of all that had happened to her this reproof, addressed by another woman to her child in her presence, was, I think, the very hardest blow she had yet had to bear. She made a strenuous effort to command herself. “I must beg pardon,” she said, “for forgetting Miss Campbell in the agitation of seeing Vera for the first time after a long separation; and I owe you many, many thanks for your good offices to my child.” She held out her hand across Vera. Miss Campbell touched the tips of her fingers with reluctance. All very well to talk of incompatibility! She, an experienced woman, felt sure that there was more in it than that, and she did not like to touch the erring woman, even with her finger tips.

“I wish Vera would profit more by my lessons; but it is a thankless task,” she said.

“Mamma,” said Vera, “it is impossible that I can sit here and see you standing there; either you must come into the carriage or I must get down; this sort of thing cannot be!”

At this moment, however, another personage came suddenly on the scene, whose appearance stilled Vera and had the strangest effect upon her mother,--Mr. Tremenheere, with Edward’s colors in his button-hole, and a glow of pleasure on his face which smoothed away all harshness from it. He came up to his wife with outstretched hands. “How do you do, Ada? I am very glad to see you looking so well,” he said heartily, “though here you are, triumphing over me with your boy.”

“Triumphing over you? I had no such meaning.” It seemed impossible not to contradict him, do what she would. She saw this, and her voice sank a little. Then she said with a smile: “He is your boy as well as mine.”

“I am taking all the credit of him, I assure you,” he said. “I never thought Eddy would have turned out so well. He does you credit. The most prominent young person in England for the moment; to be sure it won’t last long, but still it is always something. Look at Vera, as proud as a little peacock!”

“What an idiot the man is!” whispered Oswald Fane, behind backs, to Elinor Meadows; for they were all within hearing, and quite innocently so in consequence of the crowd, “he means like a little white dove.”

“Not such a dove either,” said Elinor. “Vera has a spirit--but she has a dragon by her side, and is kept down dreadfully, poor little darling.”

“I wish mine might be the hand to free her.”

“What do you say? Oswald, she is too young to flirt.--Promise me you will attempt no flirtation if I introduce you. She is only a child, and you are, as you know, not so----”

“Angelic as I ought to be,” he answered, laughing. “No, I promise you, on my honor, there shall be no flirtation, properly so-called. But stop--If I can make her like me? I won’t deceive you----”

“Then I shan’t introduce you at all,” said Elinor, putting back from her forehead those gray curls, like a child’s, which the wind kept ruffling out.

“I want mamma to come into the carriage, please,” said Vera.

“Of course, she must,” Mr. Tremenheere cried, opening the door, “and you are coming home with us, the boy and you? Nobody can have so good a claim upon you. Where are you staying--with Elinor Meadows? Well, she shall come too; and you will tell me, Ada, if you approve of my work as much as I approve of yours. Come, Vera will be unhappy otherwise--and so shall I.”

Mrs. Tremenheere kept asking herself all this time whether the nerves of a woman like herself, always strong and steady, as she liked to think them, were to be less under command than the nerves of a man. If he took it as a matter of course, must not she do the same? But it cost her an effort--for sentiment, perhaps, in all circumstances has more power, whether she will own it or not, over a woman than over a man. She answered, however, cheerfully, after that struggle.

“To be sure--it is the natural arrangement. Eddy will be very glad to spend an evening with his sister--and I----”

Nobody heard the end of the sentence. Her husband had given her his hand to help her into the carriage; where she sat down by the side of prim Miss Campbell, who did not budge, and who kept thinking to herself with _naïve_ disregard of grammar--“Me to be sitting by the side of a woman compromised!” And there Mrs. Tremenheere sat for the first half hour in a sort of dream, Vera opposite to her, all apparently as it might have been had she never deserted her home; apparently--yet without any reality in the appearance. By and by old friends began to find her out, and one brought another to greet and congratulate her.

“All made up, I suppose?” these visitors whispered to Elinor Meadows as they passed. “Absurd business altogether?” But no one was prim except Miss Campbell, who scarcely condescended to notice the mother of her charge. As for Mr. Tremenheere, he went about among the crowd radiant. “Tremenheere must be a relative of yours,” his friends said to him. “Yes;--only my son,” he said, his countenance expanding. Eddy might have attained a much more substantial success without pleasing him half so much. Pride very often puts on the very guise of love, so that one cannot tell them apart. Mr. Tremenheere had thought but little of Eddy hitherto; he took all the credit, as he said, and really felt that he had everything to do with the boy. A boy who had put himself in the front so easily, and was for the moment the observed of all observers, the very centre to which was directed the gaze of society, was indisputably a son of whom every parent was entitled to be proud.