Chapter II: The Woman with a Mission

Ein starker Geist in einem zarten Leib
Ein zwitter zwischen Mann und Weib,
Gleich ungeschickt zum Herrschen und zum Lieben,
Ein kind mit eines Riesen Waffen
Ein Mittelding von Weisen und von Affen!
SCHILLER.--_Die Berühmte Frau._

Marmaduke and Violet, "so justly formed to meet by nature," have not, it may be supposed, remained insensible to each other's charms. The elopement of Blanche gave him several opportunities of making eloquent remarks on the superiority of affection--the riches of the heart--to mere worldly wealth; and to utter several stinging sarcasms on those who gave up the worship of a loving heart, for the trumpery advantages of an establishment and a position.

These sarcasms were, of course, meant for Mrs. Meredith Vyner, who accepted them in bland silence, or made vague defences, saying that women were often misguided, because the whole of the facts were not known.

Violet so entirely responded to his sentiments, and, without knowing the previous connection between him and her mother, so unhesitatingly applied those sarcasms to her, that she became more and more attracted to him, from the fact that they alone seemed rightly to have read her mother's character.

Mrs. Meredith Vyner saw, with strangely mingled jealousy and pleasure, the growing attachment of these two. She did not love Marmaduke: she had never loved him in any high or generous sense of the term. But he had filled her girlish imagination, and he still exercised a certain fascination over her. She admired his beauty; she delighted in the sense of power exercised over so fiery and impetuous a creature; it was exquisite flattery. To see her place occupied in his heart was, therefore, singularly irritating. His anger was an avowal of his love. His threats of vengeance, much as she might dread them, were the threats of one who suffered in his love. And so clearly did she perceive this, that it occasioned no surprise to observe how, in the same measure as his attachment grew to Violet, his anger seemed to abate, his mind no longer to run upon its old topics of inconstancy and vengeance. No surprise, but great jealousy!

Other feelings mingled with this. She could not but be delighted to think that Marmaduke had ceased to harbour any schemes against her peace: the tiger was pacified, or attracted by other prey. This was not all. She hated Violet, and watched the development of this passion with curious eagerness, because in it she foresaw two sources of misery to her daughter. If they married, she thought they would be mutually wretched, and it was in her power at any time to make Violet horribly jealous, by informing her of Marmaduke's early attachment. That was one source; another was, with a little coquetry and cunning on her part, to bring him once more at her feet, which, she doubted not, she could still effect.

Under the "still life" of what seemed the most uneventful of country residences, under the smooth current of every-day occupations, such were the tempests rumbling in the deeps, and ready at an instant to burst forth! The drama was really there; it seemed to be elsewhere. The development and collision of passions, out of which the dramas of life are constructed, were circumscribed within the walls of the Hall and the Grange. But it was elsewhere that the noisy bustle of event--noisy because of its emptiness--attracted the attention of spectators, and seemed, by the talk occasioned, to have absorbed all the interest which could possibly lie in the elements afforded by the neighbourhood.

But, first, a word respecting one of the principal actors. I mean Hester Mason, the poetess. Had Rose's letter, in which, according to promise, she doubtless gave a detailed description of the Walton Sappho fallen into my hands, you should have been treated with her lively account of this important personage: her womanly acuteness and observation would have assuredly delighted you. As it is, my matter-of-fact pen must be the substitute.

Hester Mason was five and twenty, and still wrote Miss before her name; not because adorers were backward, but because they were Waltonians. They had no "spirituality;" they had no "imaginings;" they had no "mission." Life to them had no "earnestness;" they lived without a "purpose." Cowards, they humbled themselves before "conventionalities," and dared not tell society to its face that it was a lie. They went to church; they called themselves Christians, because they followed an antiquated routine, and did not comprehend the later "developements" of Christianity necessitated by the "wants of the age." Above all, they shuddered at the true doctrine of social regeneration, that, namely, of the emancipation of woman, and thought that marriage should be indissoluble. They were humdrums!

Not to one of those could she descend; her soul was too lofty, her passions too "devouring," to waste themselves on such "clods." Indeed, had she been less of a "priestess," she might have been equally exclusive; since the Waltonians were utterly without taste for literature, philosophy, or art; and were as ill looking as the inhabitants of small towns usually are. Hester had been thrice on a visit of a few days to London; she had seen Hyde Park and its brilliant company; she had walked down St. James's-street and Pall Mall, and on the doorsteps of the clubs had seen men who were gods compared with the dandies of Walton. She had feasted upon contemporary literature, and had written burning letters of wild enthusiasm to Bulwer, in imitation of his "Florence Lascelles." She had dreamed ambitious dreams, in which she held a sceptre in London society, and awoke to find herself in Walton!

Hester was handsome, but coarse-featured. Her black hair and eyes gave a certain _éclat_ to a face ornamented with a nose which irredeemably betrayed her low birth, and surmounted by a forehead too high and large for beauty. She was about the middle height, and had a magnificent bust. Her hands were large and coarse; her legs were--to express them in one word, I should say they were _Devonshire legs_! In her dress, gait, and manner you saw something which, though not positively vulgar, was distinctly not ladylike; a certain _brusquerie_, almost pertness, and a dogmatism, which is at all times shocking in a woman.

About the time when Julius St. John first interested himself in the publication of her volume of poems, Hester, worn out with awaiting her "ideal," and almost despairing of ever reigning in London society, began so far to humble herself in her own eyes, as to admit the attentions of the surgeon's apprentice, newly arrived at Walton. True it is that James Stone, the foresaid apprentice, had a dash of London about him. He was not a Waltonian, he was not a humdrum; so far from it, that he had the character of a "rake!" He discoursed about the ballet; had been behind the scenes at the theatres; was well-versed in Jullien's promenade concerts (then a novelty); smoked a meerschaum; and when in full-dress turned his shirt-sleeve cuffs over his coat, much to the amazement of the Waltonians, who imagined he had just washed his hands, and had forgotten to turn back his cuffs, so little did they appreciate the dandyism!

It may appear strange, but that little trait of elegance won more of Hester's admiration than all his personal charms, and they were not few, could have effected in a month. It gave him a London air. It made him so superior to the provincial bumpkins, who laughed with coarse ridicule at an elegance they could not understand. It was in vain Hester, bridling, told them that the "pink of fashion and the mould of form"--the all-accomplished Count D'Orsay--wore his cuffs in that way. They only laughed the more, and christened Stone--the Walton _De_ Orsay.

As long as Stone held out against the ridicule which his innovation excited, Hester accorded him her sympathy, and almost her love. But when he yielded to public opinion, and turned back his cuffs to their original place, she suddenly cooled towards him. It was a submission to conventionalities. It was a truckling to society. It was cowardice.

He purchased his pardon, however, and by a speech so adroit that in Walton it must have appeared worthy at least of a Lauzun--had Lauzun's name ever been heard there.

"If I do not yield this trifle to public opinion they will force me to quit this place, and to quit the place would be quitting _you_."--She forgave him.

But her pardon availed him little. Invited by Mrs. St. John to the Grange, patronized by the "great people" round Walton, her volume on the eve of being launched into the wide sea of literature, she felt all her old ambition revive within her, and scarcely forgave herself for having idled away an hour with such a youth as Stone--too poor for a husband, too insignificant for a lover.

The patronage of Sir Chetsom Chetsom completed her intoxication. That graceless old Lovelace, struck with the beauty of his protégé, saw at once the facilities afforded him for an intrigue. He was constantly at her father's. Her poems made the pretext of his visits. Her charms formed the staple of his conversation; varied by accounts of London society, and visions of the brilliant career which awaited her if she only determined boldly to enter it.

A sorry figure, truly, was the wigged and whiskered baronet for a girl with "bright imaginings," and at five and twenty, to choose as her lover; and yet, if I have contrived to indicate her character properly, the reader will not be surprised at her lending a willing ear to the old boy's artful flatteries.

He was not young, but he was rich. He had no "imaginings," but he could tell of the splendours of the capital. He had no "mission," but he wore _bottes vernies_. He was without "earnestness," but he talked fluently of all the new works, and had met most of the literary lions in society.

More than all, he was Sir Chetsom Chetsom, and she was Hester Mason the linen-draper's daughter. Rank gives a lustre which dazzles even virtue; and Hester had very few scruples of virtue to struggle against; so that ambition found her an easy victim. She coquetted--she was "cruel" to her adorer; not because she was afraid to yield, but because she wished to sell her honour dearly.