Chapter VII

HOW MRS. HILLIARD AND CATHERINE JUDGED THE LAST SAINT GEORGE OF
FRIARTON.

AT last Mrs. Hilliard came briskly into the room still wearing her hat. She could not, although she had tried, have walked otherwise than briskly; and if she had been a duchess, her buxom and florid good looks, a little overblown, would still have recalled a dairy-maid. But as Mrs. Hilliard was perfectly aware of the association, and, instead of attempting to smother it by all lawful and unlawful means, faced it courageously and acknowledged it openly, she succeeded in surmounting it; by not pretending to be what she was not, she remained herself in all essentials. She looked what she had always been—a lady in spite of excessive plumpness, a decided inclination to redness, and an exuberant, lasting elasticity and quickness of carriage and step—the reverse of Catherine’s listlessness—which would have been more becoming in early youth, and which had small connection with the sober-mindedness, not to say the stateliness and dignity, of mature years.

The only sensitiveness which Mrs. Hilliard betrayed as to her personal style, was that while she was by implication resigned to, nay, reasonably consoled for, the death of her husband, whom she had married after the shortest of wooings, and of whom she had not seen much during their brief married life, she continued faithful to her widow’s black, though it was twelve years since she had been a wife. At the same time she could not get over her cousin’s eccentricity of taste when Catherine could have fluttered so fitly, in every respect, in white or in the palest of pinks, blues, or primroses. For a girl to be addicted to sobriety in anything, before her time, was incomprehensible to Louisa Hilliard, save in the light of affectation, if not hypocrisy, on the girl’s part. But though Mrs. Hilliard did not believe much in most people—young or old, she had still faith in Catherine’s odd childish simplicity.

‘Have I kept you long waiting, my dear?’ asked Mrs. Hilliard as she subsided, buoyantly still, into her own low chair, and, untying her hat, tilted it unceremoniously, for greater coolness, on the back of her profuse brown hair. Her action made conspicuous, what was a marked feature in her round face, the great expanse of white forehead—round like the face itself, and big enough to have been, so far as size was concerned, the forehead of a sage, but so flat and smooth that, gazing on it, one felt tempted to doubt the fact of which there was no question, that Mrs. Hilliard represented a woman of rather more than ordinary intelligence.

‘Not very long,’ answered Catherine, with her slow, absent-minded mode of speech, dawdling as she spoke across the floor; ‘and though you had, you know it would not have signified,’ she added indifferently.

‘It always signifies if one interferes with another person’s comfort,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, lightly; ‘only you are too young to understand the value of that jewel of an English word, and I am bringing my excuse in my afternoon’s budget, Catherine.’

In their familiar household intercourse Mrs. Hilliard never abbreviated her cousin’s name, or played affectionate or mischievous tricks with it. This was not because Mrs. Hilliard was in the least like either of those dignitaries Fan Constable or the Vicar of Wakefield, who loved to be particular, who might choose to revenge themselves nobly on the base liberties taken, doubtless, with each in turn, when they were addressed as ‘Fan’ and ‘Dr. Prim.’

Mrs. Hilliard asserted that Catherine was ‘Catherine’ like her namesake of Sienna, therefore the elder woman could not presume to call the younger ‘Kate’ or ‘Kitty,’ though Mrs. Hilliard herself had never been anything else to her intimates than ‘Loo’ or ‘Looey,’ unless ‘Tom’ sometimes in the days of her youth.

Mrs. Hilliard was in the habit of referring unblushingly, and with a merry defiance of the contempt excited in the superior, highly cultivated people who proclaimed themselves far above gossip, to her diligence in collecting, and keenness in enjoying, the Friarton news of the day. Catherine did not often appreciate, in themselves, the promiscuous heaps of news cast down at her feet, for her to pick and choose from without much trouble on her part. But she did set wistful store on the merry heart of the gatherer and scatterer, and counted herself a dull girl by contrast. Not that Catherine was a dull young woman to speak with, she was rather pungent in a quiet way, as Fan Constable had described her. Yet with all her pungency she had a singleheartedness and magnanimity of character, a speedy inclination to own herself in the wrong, after speaking her mind, which generally forced her inferiors to respect as well as to pity her, and to receive her under their protection from the encroachments of others, even while they were taking advantage of her themselves.

‘You won’t enquire what great event has happened,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, hardly waiting till the servant had left the room.

‘I shall hear it presently,’ said Catherine composedly.

‘Then you shall have it _au naturel_, without any stuffing or garnishing, to punish a great lazybones of a girl who will not so much as get up a little curiosity to serve as a relish for my tit-bit.’

‘Too many cooks spoil the kale,’ said Catherine. ‘I should only waste my small culinary talents by setting them up against yours.’

‘I am not going to punish myself, in order to keep you in suspense any longer. I flatter myself, though you are a mouldy book-worm, you feel an agony of suspense, whatever you may pretend. As for myself, I am itching to create a sensation. Oliver Constable is going in for the mill and bakehouse—what do you think of that? What an anti-climax to Fan’s solemn gentility!’

‘Going in for the mill and bakehouse?’ repeated Catherine, vaguely.

‘My dear Catherine, you are getting as pedantically precise in your English, and as stupid, as the rest of your clever people,’ protested Mrs. Hilliard, with lively impatience. ‘Don’t tell me going in for a thing is slang. Very soon, if you don’t take care, you will be mistaken for a school-mistress. You will be as incapable as a senior wrangler of speaking the language of ordinary life, or of taking in a simple statement. Oliver Constable has come home from Oxford to be a miller and baker, as old Peter Constable was before him—do you understand that?’

‘Yes,’ said Catherine, with a faint smile. ‘What is your objection, Louisa?’

‘Mine? I have none in the world. He may be the bellman or the lamplighter—by-the-by, these are two far more romantic occupations than what he has chosen—for me. I am rather obliged to him for making the unexpected happen, because, though it always happens, according to Lord Beaconsfield, still, somehow, it sets us talking, and talking—or shall I call it gabbling—is my vocation.’

‘Don’t you find it tiresome?’ suggested Catherine, with odd _naïveté_.

‘To myself or other people?’ enquired Mrs. Hilliard, unmoved save for the twinkle in her eyes. ‘I can vouch it does not tire me;’ and she used her plump fingers French fashion to help herself to another lump of sugar.

‘I suppose Oliver Constable cares more for making money than for winning success in what is called a learned profession, and securing a social position; that is all it comes to,’ said Catherine, with a little sigh at the smallness of the sacrifice and the result altogether. ‘I am not sure that he may not be right, from his point of view, unless he were to “go in” (Louisa?) for great scholarship or for travelling to the North or the South Pole. You see there are no Eldorados or Asgards left for men to believe in, and go in search of now. Oliver Constable is not a genius, to write an immortal book, or paint a picture which will never be forgotten. I do not know that there is anything so very much better for him to do than honestly add pound to pound, and take his worldly pleasure by counting up his gains at the year’s end.’

‘My love, what a Mammon-worshipping speech from you, of all people!’

‘But we don’t seem to be able to keep from worshipping Mammon,’ alleged Catherine, wearily, ‘though we say and perhaps mean that we are worshipping another god; and I am not at all clear that Mrs. Grundy is a more respectable deity than Mammon.’

‘You can’t accuse me of paying homage at her shrine. But are you not sorry for sister Fan? What was her ultimatum for Oliver? That he should become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop of Canterbury, while she should be Jock the Laird’s sister? What a descent, to be condemned to remain the sister, as she was the daughter, of a well-to-do miller and baker!’

‘No, I am not sorry,’ said Catherine, with more animation than she had yet shown, for there was a spice of short-lived indignation in the tone. ‘If she could have no higher ambition for her brother than that he should be a barrister or a rector—you know his rising to be so much as a judge or a dean was hardly to be thought of—I have not a spark of pity to spare for Fan Constable’s disappointment.’

‘You have very little pity to spare for anybody out of a book, it appears to me,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with cheerful absence of concern. ‘Your little foible is that you are extremely hard-hearted. I am not—at least nobody can refuse to give me the credit of good nature. I am really sorry for Fan in the collapse of the dream of her life, if she would only believe me, and if she would not make herself so ridiculous by her fixed determination to be a lady. Of course the determination defeats itself. She is not and never will be a lady—conventionally, though she is well enough in her irregular way, if she would relax her resolution—which she will not do so that I must laugh or die,’ finished Mrs. Hilliard, not looking like dying.

‘I had quite a different idea of Oliver Constable, however,’ said Catherine, returning voluntarily to the main thread of the conversation, but not speaking as if this or any other baffled idea mattered much. ‘I never thought him mercenary——’

‘Wait a little,’ interrupted Mrs. Hilliard, with unquenched vivacity; ‘my hero is not mercenary. He is the most disinterested, unselfish of mortals, though he is a “sair saunt” to Fan. He has come back among us as the self-appointed champion of the millers and advocate of the bakers. He is to be the defender of the tradespeople—the last version of St. George in Friarton.’

‘But who is harming the millers, or what need have the bakers of an advocate?’ asked Catherine, in a puzzled tone. ‘I thought the tradespeople here were particularly prosperous—much more so than any other class. I am sure they are not deficient in a sense of their own merits and in a capacity for bringing them into the foreground.’

‘I agree with you entirely. But I suppose their prosperity is their bane in one sense, and that our taking them at their own word goes to prove that we are a pair of would be, bloated aristocrats. But it is a fact that I never go into Polley’s or Dadd’s shop without having a distinct perception that Mrs. Polley and old and young Dadd are thinking to themselves, “You need not look down on us; we are every bit as good as you are. We have as early spring chickens and lamb on our tables as you have on yours. We could buy you out any day” (and I dare say they could, if the Meadows were to sell). “We know our place, so far as being civil in return for your custom; but don’t try to turn up your nose at us”—as if my nose would do anything save turn up—to her Majesty the Queen on her throne in the House of Lords. Catherine, you are aware of its infirmity?’ exclaimed Mrs. Hilliard, parenthetically, tip-tilting the refractory member still farther with her middle finger in the most comical manner. ‘“Don’t go to think of trampling _us_ under your feet,” which, as Sairey Gamp used to say, “Betsy Prig will take her Bible oath” is the last exercise she would seek to take for the mere pleasure of the thing.’

Catherine was fain to laugh. ‘When I begged Mrs. Polley to keep her errand-boy away from the shrubbery—away from the birds’ nests,’ the girl chimed in—‘Mrs. Polley was quite rude. “You must really look after him yourself, Miss,” she told me sharply; “he is my servant here, but he is not answerable to me when he is out of the shop. Excuse me, but it ain’t any call of mine to look after Mrs. Hilliard’s place. Let them idle fellows of gardeners as are in her pay see to that, I have enough to do with my business. You ladies would be the first to complain and leave the shop if it were neglected.”’

‘There is something in that,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, candidly. ‘Indeed I have had thoughts of giving up Polley’s, because, according to cook, Mrs. Polley will not amend the error of her ways in the line of capers and cloves. I have meditated making an experiment in the new shop near the railway station, only I feared that, on the whole, I should be worse served there. For Mrs. Polley, to give the woman her due, knows her business, keeps a good article as a rule, and despises to ask an absurd price for it. As for her “Britons never shall be slaves” tone, it borders on the aggressive, but then it is the reverse of servility and it is the echo of a highly esteemed patriotic song. I imagine Oliver Constable will call it the expression of a fine independent spirit.’

‘But what does Oliver Constable mean?’ repeated Catherine, looking as she was apt to do sometimes, hopelessly mystified in spite of her cleverness.

‘He means to regenerate the lower middle classes—to make all the members ladies and gentlemen in spite of themselves. Young Dadd must learn Greek, and carry Plato, instead of “Verdant Green” and “Mrs. Brown at Margate,” in his coat-pocket, and dip into ancient philosophy in the intervals of handling his shears or his yard measure, of cutting off a yard of lace, and calculating how much cloth is required for the present fashion in flounces. Mrs. Polley and her girls will attend evening classes for the higher education of women, and trip you and me up with an opinion on the tertiary formation, or the recently discovered satellite of Neptune, when our small minds are full of bloom raisins and Carolina rice.’

‘But I thought you said he was to identify himself with the millers and bakers?’

‘That goes without saying, you little goose. Charity begins at home.’

‘But they will still be millers and bakers,’ hammered Catherine.

‘I should hope so. Let him make them what he likes, I trust he intends to leave us our flour and bread, else we shall be in a bad way. For, though the railway might bring us a supply from a distance, still we should miss a little, our breakfast and dinner rolls. Even these would be too heavy a price to pay for a young fanatic’s radicalism—is that the proper name to call it, Catherine?’

‘I cannot tell,’ said Catherine, slowly, ‘but surely the thing itself is wasted on millers and bakers and common tradespeople.’

The girl was not hard-hearted, as she had been called. Any social arrogance which she expressed was more an acquired trick of thought and speech than a calm persuasion. She was not a fool, yet she nourished a vague impression that it might be a Christian, patriotic duty to do something for the outcast and forlorn—that a troop of soldiers or a crew of sailors called for care from their leaders; while she held the notion that millers and bakers, with tradespeople in general, even though they were convicted of gross self-indulgence, and that coarse materialism which is the deadly enemy of a higher life—of all spirituality, might very well be left to take care of themselves.

‘Will Oliver Constable’s mission have any success?’ Catherine speculated, with mild, idle curiosity. ‘Will the great vulgar consent to be refined?’

‘I should think not,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, decidedly. ‘If I were one of them, I should hate to be poked up and enlightened. After all, I have a strong suspicion I am one of them, with just an outer coating of polish, the result of circumstances,’ Mrs. Hilliard announced impenitently, with a keen perception of the fun of taking guilt to herself.

It was like Catherine not to contradict the assertion beyond a certain point.

‘You don’t speak fine language like one of the Miss Polleys, or run away, after the fashion of some of the others, when they have come into the shop in their morning deshabille, and are scared by the entrance of a customer belonging to the upper ranks. You are not slovenly, smart, and splendid by turns. You don’t giggle at every word and think it witty to be rude to men, clenching your rudeness with an emphatic “There!” as I have heard the Miss Polleys do when I have gone to their shop with some of Reddock’s commissions on market-day. You don’t spend your evenings sauntering up and down the street, or paying perpetual visits to your cronies.’

‘But I am a very prosaic, commonplace person for all that,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, demurely. ‘You are sensible I have no sympathy with high heroics or “high faluting” of any kind—my nature is pitched in too low a key. The rest is accident. You forget that I am twice as old as the youngest Miss Polley—almost old enough to be her mother—not to speak of the cares I have gone through. I have no occasion to walk out after dinner, or shop-shutting, as it may be, since the whole day is mine, and you must admit I make good use of the hours after luncheon. I believe I am the best visitor in Friarton. Oliver Constable ought to include me in his mission, or get up a private one for my special benefit. It is not fair to my needs, it is impertinent to the tradespeople, to omit me in his benevolent efforts. But perhaps he would prefer to reform you, withdrawing you from your books and converting you into a social animal with a due regard to your neighbour’s welfare;’ as she spoke, Mrs. Hilliard glanced quickly at Catherine, but the glance fell without effect like blank shot.

‘I don’t think he will trouble with either of us,’ said Catherine, composedly. ‘We are not in trade, we should be wide of his mark. Will he continue to come here? I mean, will he drop you from his visiting-list, or will you drop him from yours?’

‘Oh dear no, not so far as I am concerned. I am not particular lest any offence should come between the wind and my gentility, and my friends know my Bohemian tendencies. My acquaintances are aware beforehand of the risks they run in countenancing me. Besides, the Constables, as everybody has heard, are blood relations of mine, and it does not suit my pride to throw them over, though they were to take to highway robbery, instead of grinding corn and baking bread, as they have done all along,’ said Louisa Hilliard, raising her head with a genuinely aristocratic movement, notwithstanding the shortness of her neck. ‘Then,’ she resumed in her usual tone, ‘I should lose the opportunity of seeing Fan stiffening into stone and at the same time kindling into a white heat before the bitter draught she has to swallow. And when all is said, Oliver Constable cannot get rid of the rather important items that he has been bred a university man, and has succeeded to a considerable patrimony, even though he should be eccentric enough to knead dough with his own hands or carry round a basket of loaves like St. Elizabeth on his head.’ Mrs. Hilliard ended hastily with a greater concession to public opinion than her previous sentence had implied.

The next moment she began to laugh at the picture she had conjured up. ‘I think I see him,’ she exclaimed, in high glee; ‘as if he did not make a sufficient spectacle of himself already—an Adonis who must contort himself into a Caliban—what a waste of good looks!’

‘I do not agree with you,’ said Catherine, with her sincerity as striking and more rampant than Fan Constable’s. ‘In the first place, he is not an Adonis, though he is a fairly handsome man. In the second, I should hate good looks which were not liable to be affected by temper and mood. They would be little better than those of a barber’s block. As a contrast, I could easily understand the fascination of the mobile ugliness of a Mirabeau. An Adonis liable to be replaced at any moment by a Caliban, is not at all a bad idea for enhancing the fugitive graces of Adonis. But Oliver Constable is not an Adonis.’

‘So be it, since you will have it so,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But my theory of real good looks is that they should rise superior to every vicissitude. Oliver Constable doth profess too much. I do not say he is intentionally hypocritical, but I imagine he has been nettled by his connection with trade, and now he is going to brazen it out, and thrust it down people’s throats, forcing his fellow-creatures to own that there is nothing like trade in the end. Very likely, too, he is not averse to drawing more money from money-making concerns. What more natural than that he should have inherited the trading spirit, and be still keener in business than his father was? Only he ought not to assume a cloak of philanthropy.’

Mrs. Hilliard deprecated enthusiasm as stoutly as if she had been a great diplomatist, and distrusted every profession which had not in it a large leaven of openly proclaimed self-interest and cynicism, while in her cheerful pessimism she treated the reverse as a good joke.

‘The game is not worth the candle,’ said Catherine, letting her heavily weighted eyelids drop.

‘It is far worse than that. Oliver Constable’s crotchet will not merely come to grief like other crotchets, it will serve to unsettle the young man. It will cost him the fair start in life he might have commanded, and of which he might have made something, if he has a tithe of the ability which has been liberally attributed to him. Though I laughed at first, and though I cannot help smiling still, at what I foresee of the manifestations of Fan’s wrath, still as an older woman and a relative of the family, however remote, I am sorry. I have sufficient grace left for that,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, with greater seriousness and with some genuine good feeling.

Catherine continued to look as if she saw no cause either for joy or sorrow, as if she were drearily impervious to emotion from the actual world outside herself and her books. Catherine’s faith and hope in humanity had reached the lowest ebb.

Oliver Constable’s aims would meet with nothing at the Meadows, save ridicule on the one hand, and unbelief on the other.