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The Vicar's Daughter, a novel by George MacDonald |
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Chapter 15. Rumors |
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_ CHAPTER XV. RUMORS Hardly was it completed, when Cousin Judy called, and I went down to see her, carrying my baby with me. As I went, something put me in mind that I must ask her for Miss Clare's address. Lest I should again forget, as soon as she had kissed and admired the baby, I said,-- "Have you found out yet where Miss Clare lives, Judy?" "I don't choose to find out," she answered. "I am sorry to say I have had to give her up. It is a disappointment, I confess." "What do you mean?" I said. "I thought you considered her a very good teacher." "I have no fault to find with her on that score. She was always punctual, and I must allow both played well and taught the children delightfully. But I have heard such questionable things about her!--very strange things indeed!" "What are they?" "I can't say I've been able to fix on more than one thing directly against her character, but"-- "Against her character!" I exclaimed. "Yes, indeed. She lives by herself in lodgings, and the house is not at all a respectable one." "But have you made no further inquiry?" "I consider that quite enough. I had already met more than one person, however, who seemed to think it very odd that I should have her to teach music in my family." "Did they give any reason for thinking her unfit?" "I did not choose to ask them. One was Miss Clarke--you know her. She smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about her except what I've just told you." "And who told you that?" "Mrs. Jeffreson." "But you once told me that she was a great gossip." "Else she wouldn't have heard it. But that doesn't make it untrue. In fact, she convinced me of its truth, for she knows the place she lives in, and assured me it was at great risk of infection to the children that I allowed her to enter the house; and so, of course, I felt compelled to let her know that I didn't require her services any longer." "There must be some mistake, surely!" I said. "Oh, no! not the least, I am sorry to say." "How did she take it?" "Very sweetly indeed. She didn't even ask me why, which was just as well, seeing I should have found it awkward to tell her. But I suppose she knew too many grounds herself to dare the question." I was dreadfully sorry, but I could not say much more then. I ventured only to express my conviction that there could not be any charge to bring against Miss Clare herself; for that one who looked and spoke as she did could have nothing to be ashamed of. Judy, however, insisted that what she had heard was reason enough for at least ending the engagement; indeed, that no one was fit for such a situation of whom such things could be said, whether they were true or not. When she left me, I gave baby to her nurse, and went straight to the study, peeping in to see if Percivale was alone. He caught sight of me, and called to me to come down. "It's only Roger," he said. I was always pleased to see Roger. He was a strange creature,--one of those gifted men who are capable of any thing, if not of every thing, and yet carry nothing within sight of proficiency. He whistled like a starling, and accompanied his whistling on the piano; but never played. He could copy a drawing to a hair's-breadth, but never drew. He could engrave well on wood; but although he had often been employed in that way, he had always got tired of it after a few weeks. He was forever wanting to do something other than what he was at; and the moment he got tired of a thing, he would work at it no longer; for he had never learned to _make_ himself. He would come every day to the study for a week to paint in backgrounds, or make a duplicate; and then, perhaps, we wouldn't see him for a fortnight. At other times he would work, say for a month, modelling, or carving marble, for a sculptor friend, from whom he might have had constant employment if he had pleased. He had given lessons in various branches, for he was an excellent scholar, and had the finest ear for verse, as well as the keenest appreciation of the loveliness of poetry, that I have ever known. He had stuck to this longer than to any thing else, strange to say; for one would have thought it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions, and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil--a girl of imaginative disposition, I presume--fell so much in love with him that she betrayed her feelings to her countess-mother, and the lessons were of course put an end to. I suspect he did not escape heart-whole himself; for he immediately dropped all his other lessons, and took to writing poetry for a new magazine, which proved of ephemeral constitution, and vanished after a few months of hectic existence. It was remarkable that with such instability his moral nature should continue uncorrupted; but this I believe he owed chiefly to his love and admiration of his brother. For my part, I could not help liking him much. There was a half-plaintive playfulness about him, alternated with gloom, and occasionally with wild merriment, which made him interesting even when one felt most inclined to quarrel with him. The worst of him was that he considered himself a generally misunderstood, if not ill-used man, who could not only distinguish himself, but render valuable service to society, if only society would do him the justice to give him a chance. Were it only, however, for his love to my baby, I could not but be ready to take up his defence. When I mentioned what I had just heard about Miss Clare, Percivale looked both astonished and troubled; but before he could speak, Roger, with the air of a man of the world whom experience enabled to come at once to a decision, said,-- "Depend upon it, Wynnie, there is falsehood there somewhere. You will always be nearer the truth if you believe nothing, than if you believe the half of what you hear." "That's very much what papa says," I answered. "He affirms that he never searched into an injurious report in his own parish without finding it so nearly false as to deprive it of all right to go about." "Besides," said Roger, "look at that face! How I should like to model it. She's a good woman that, depend upon it." I was delighted with his enthusiasm. "I wish you would ask her again, as soon as you can," said Percivale, who always tended to embody his conclusions in acts rather than in words. "Your cousin Judy is a jolly good creature, but from your father's description of her as a girl, she must have grown a good deal more worldly since her marriage. Respectability is an awful snare." "Yes," said Roger; "one ought to be very thankful to be a Bohemian, and have nothing expected of him, for respectability is a most fruitful mother of stupidity and injustice." I could not help thinking that _he_ might, however, have a little more and be none the worse. "I should be very glad to do as you desire, husband," I said, "but how can I? I haven't learned where she lives. It was asking Judy for her address once more that brought it all out. I certainly didn't insist, as I might have done, notwithstanding what she told me; but, if she didn't remember it before, you may be sure she could not have given it me then." "It's very odd," said Roger, stroking his long mustache, the sole ornament of the kind he wore. "It's very odd," he repeated thoughtfully, and then paused again. "What's so very odd, Roger?" asked Percivale. "The other evening," answered Roger, after yet a short pause, "happening to be in Tottenham Court Road, I walked for some distance behind a young woman carrying a brown beer-jug in her hand--for I sometimes amuse myself in the street by walking persistently behind some one, devising the unseen face in my mind, until the recognition of the same step following causes the person to look round at me, and give me the opportunity of comparing the two--I mean the one I had devised and the real one. When the young woman at length turned her head, it was only my astonishment that kept me from addressing her as Miss Clare. My surprise, however, gave me time to see how absurd it would have been. Presently she turned down a yard and disappeared." "Don't tell my cousin Judy," I said. "She would believe it _was_ Miss Clare." "There isn't much danger," he returned. "Even if I knew your cousin, I should not be likely to mention such an incident in her hearing." "Could it have been she?" said Percivale thoughtfully. "Absurd!" said Roger. "Miss Clare is a lady, wherever she may live." "I don't know," said his brother thoughtfully; "who can tell? It mightn't have been beer she was carrying." "I didn't say it was beer," returned Roger. "I only said it was a beer-jug,--one of those brown, squat, stone jugs,--the best for beer that I know, after all,--brown, you know, with a dash of gray." "Brown jug or not, I wish I could get a few sittings from her. She would make a lovely St. Cecilia," said my husband. "Brown jug and all?" asked Roger. "If only she were a little taller," I objected. "And had an aureole," said my husband. "But I might succeed in omitting the jug as well as in adding the aureole and another half-foot of stature, if only I could get that lovely countenance on the canvas,--so full of life and yet of repose." "Don't you think it a little hard?" I ventured to say. "I think so," said Roger. "I don't," said my husband. "I know what in it looks like hardness; but I think it comes of the repression of feeling." "You have studied her well for your opportunities," I said. "I have; and I am sure, whatever Mrs. Morley may say, that, if there be any truth at all in those reports, there is some satisfactory explanation of whatever has given rise to them. I wish we knew anybody else that knew her. Do try to find some one that does, Wynnie." "I don't know how to set about it," I said. "I should be only too glad." "I will try," said Roger. "Does she sing?" "I have heard Judy say she sang divinely; but the only occasion on which I met her--at their house, that time you couldn't go, Percivale--she was never asked to sing." "I suspect," remarked Roger, "it will turn out to be only that she's something of a Bohemian, like ourselves." "Thank you, Roger; but for my part, I don't consider myself a Bohemian at all," I said. "I am afraid you must rank with your husband, wifie," said _mine_, as the wives of the working people of London often call their husbands. "Then you do count yourself a Bohemian: pray, what significance do you attach to the epithet?" I asked. "I don't know, except it signifies our resemblance to the gypsies," he answered. "I don't understand you quite." "I believe the gypsies used to be considered Bohemians," interposed Roger, "though they are doubtless of Indian origin. Their usages being quite different from those amongst which they live, the name Bohemian came to be applied to painters, musicians, and such like generally, to whom, save by courtesy, no position has yet been accorded by society--so called." "But why have they not yet vindicated for themselves a social position," I asked, "and that a high one?" "Because they are generally poor, I suppose," he answered; "and society is generally stupid." "May it not be because they are so often, like the gypsies, lawless in their behavior, as well as peculiar in their habits?" I suggested. "I understand you perfectly, Mrs. Percivale," rejoined Roger with mock offence. "But how would that apply to Charlie?" "Not so well as to you, I confess," I answered. "But there is ground for it with him too." "I have thought it all over many a time," said Percivale; "and I suppose it comes in part from inability to understand the worth of our calling, and in part from the difficulty of knowing where to put us." "I suspect," I said, "one thing is that so many of them are content to be received as merely painters, or whatever they may be by profession. Many, you have told me, for instance, accept invitations which do not include their wives." "They often go to parties, of course, where there are no ladies," said Roger. "That is not what I mean," I replied. "They go to dinner-parties where there are ladies, and evening parties, too, without their wives." "Whoever does that," said Percivale, "has at least no right to complain that he is regarded as a Bohemian; for in accepting such invitations, he accepts insult, and himself insults his wife." Nothing irritated my bear so much as to be asked to dinner without me. He would not even offer the shadow of a reason for declining the invitation. "For," he would say, "if I give the real reason, namely, that I do not choose to go where my wife is excluded, they will set it down to her jealous ambition of entering a sphere beyond her reach; I will not give a false reason, and indeed have no objection to their seeing that I am offended; therefore, I assign none. If they have any chivalry in them, they may find out my reason readily enough." I don't think I ever displeased him so much as once when I entreated him to accept an invitation to dine with the Earl of H----. The fact was, I had been fancying it my duty to persuade him to get over his offence at the omission of my name, for the sake of the advantage it would be to him in his profession. I laid it before him as gently and coaxingly as I could, representing how expenses increased, and how the children would be requiring education by and by,--reminding him that the reputation of more than one of the most popular painters had been brought about in some measure by their social qualities and the friendships they made. "Is it likely your children will be ladies and gentlemen," he said, "if you prevail on their father to play the part of a sneaking parasite?" I was frightened. He had never spoken to me in such a tone, but I saw too well how deeply he was hurt to take offence at his roughness. I could only beg him to forgive me, and promise never to say such a word again, assuring him that I believed as strongly as himself that the best heritage of children was their father's honor. Free from any such clogs as the possession of a wife encumbers a husband withal, Roger could of course accept what invitations his connection with an old and honorable family procured him. One evening he came in late from a dinner at Lady Bernard's. "Whom do you think I took down to dinner?" he asked, almost before he was seated. "Lady Bernard?" I said, flying high. "Her dowager aunt?" said Percivale. "No, no; Miss Clare." "Miss Clare!" we both repeated, with mingled question and exclamation. "Yes, Miss Clare, incredible as it may appear," he answered. "Did you ask her if it was she you saw carrying the jug of beer in Tottenham Court Road?" said Percivale. "Did you ask her address?" I said. "That is a question more worthy of an answer." "Yes, I did. I believe I did. I think I did." "What is it, then?" "Upon my word, I haven't the slightest idea." "So, Mr. Roger! You have had a perfect opportunity, and have let it slip! You are a man to be trusted indeed!" "I don't know how it could have been. I distinctly remember approaching the subject more than once or twice; and now first I discover that I never asked the question. Or if I did, I am certain I got no answer." "Bewitched!" "Yes, I suppose so." "Or," suggested Percivale, "she did not choose to tell you; saw the question coming, and led you away from it; never let you ask it." "I have heard that ladies can keep one from saying what they don't want to hear. But she sha'n't escape me so a second time." "Indeed, you don't deserve another chance," I said. "You're not half so clever as I took you to be, Roger." "When I think of it, though, it wasn't a question so easy to ask, or one you would like to be overheard asking." "Clearly bewitched," I said. "But for that I forgive you. Did she sing?" "No. I don't suppose any one there ever thought of asking such a dingy-feathered bird to sing." "You had some music?" "Oh, yes! Pretty good, and very bad. Miss Clare's forehead was crossed by no end of flickering shadows as she listened." "It wasn't for want of interest in her you forgot to find out where she lived! You had better take care, Master Roger." "Take care of what?" "Why, you don't know her address." "What has that to do with taking care?" "That you won't know where to find your heart if you should happen to want it." "Oh! I am past that kind of thing long ago. You've made an uncle of me." And so on, with a good deal more nonsense, but no news of Miss Clare's retreat. I had before this remarked to my husband that it was odd she had never called since dining with us; but he made little of it, saying that people who gained their own livelihood ought to be excused from attending to rules which had their origin with another class; and I had thought no more about it, save in disappointment that she had not given me that opportunity of improving my acquaintance with her. _ |
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