Later on in the evening, while John was removing the tea-things from the
drawing-room, and brushing the crumbs from the table-cloth with an accompanying
hiss, such as he was wont to encourage himself with in rubbing down Mr
Bridmain's horse, the Rev. Amos Barton drew from his pocket a thin green-covered
pamphlet, and, presenting it to the Countess, said,?
"You were pleased, I think, with my sermon on Christmas Day. It has been printed
in The Pulpit, and I thought you might like a copy."
"That indeed I shall. I shall quite value the opportunity of reading that
sermon. There was such depth in it!?such argument! It was not a sermon to be
heard only once. I am delighted that it should become generally known, as it
will be, now it is printed in The Pulpit."
"Yes," said Milly innocently, "I was so pleased with the editor's letter." And
she drew out her little pocket-book, where she carefully treasured the editorial
autograph, while Mr Barton laughed and blushed, and said, "Nonsense, Milly!"
"You see," she said, giving the letter to the Countess, "I am very proud of the
praise my husband gets."
The sermon in question, by the by, was an extremely argumentative one on the
Incarnation; which, as it was preached to a congregation not one of whom had any
doubt of that doctrine, and to whom the Socinians therein confuted were as
unknown as the Arimaspians, was exceedingly well adapted to trouble and confuse
the Sheppertonian mind.
"Ah," said the Countess, returning the editor's letter, "he may well say he will
be glad of other sermons from the same source. But I would rather you should
publish your sermons in an independent volume, Mr Barton; it would be so
desirable to have them in that shape. For instance, I could send a copy to the
Dean of Radborough. And there is Lord Blarney, whom I knew before he was
chancellor. I was a special favourite of his, and you can't think what sweet
things he used to say to me. I shall not resist the temptation to write to him
one of these days sans fa?on, and tell him how he ought to dispose of the next
vacant living in his gift."
Whether Jet the spaniel, being a much more knowing dog than was suspected,
wished to express his disapproval of the Countess's last speech, as not
accordant with his ideas of wisdom and veracity, I cannot say; but at this
moment he jumped off her lap, and turning his back upon her, placed one paw on
the fender, and held the other up to warm, as if affecting to abstract himself
from the current of conversation.
But now Mr Bridmain brought out the chessboard, and Mr Barton accepted his
challenge to play a game, with immense satisfaction. The Rev. Amos was very fond
of chess, as most people are who can continue through many years to create
interesting vicissitudes in the game, by taking longmeditated moves with their
knights, and subsequently discovering that they have thereby exposed their
queen.
Chess is a silent game; and the Countess's chat with Milly is in quite an
under-tone?probably relating to women's matters that it would be impertinent for
us to listen to; so we will leave Camp Villa, and proceed to Milby Vicarage,
where Mr Farquhar has sat out two other guests with whom he has been dining at
Mr Ely's, and is now rather wearying that reverend gentleman by his protracted
small-talk.
Mr Ely was a tall, dark-haired, distinguished-looking man of three-and-thirty.
By the laity of Milby and its neighbourhood he was regarded as a man of quite
remarkable powers and learning, who must make a considerable sensation in London
pulpits and drawing-rooms on his occasional visits to the metropolis; and by his
brother clergy he was regarded as a discreet and agreeable fellow. Mr Ely never
got into a warm discussion; he suggested what might be thought, but rarely said
what he thought himself; he never let either men or women see that he was
laughing at them, and he never gave any one an opportunity of laughing at him.
In one thing only he was injudicious. He parted his dark wavy hair down the
middle; and as his head was rather flat than otherwise, that style of coiffure
was not advantageous to him.
Mr Farquhar, though not a parishioner of Mr Ely's, was one of his warmest
admirers, and thought he would make an unexceptionable son-in-law, in spite of
his being of no particular "family." Mr Farquhar was susceptible on the point of
"blood,"?his own circulating fluid, which animated a short and somewhat flabby
person, being, he considered, of very superior quality.
"By the by," he said, with a certain pomposity counteracted by a lisp, "what an
ath Barton makth of himthelf, about that Bridmain and the Counteth, ath she
callth herthelf. After you were gone the other evening, Mithith Farquhar wath
telling him the general opinion about them in the neighbourhood, and he got
quite red and angry. Bleth your thoul, he believth the whole thtory about her
Polish huthband and hith wonderful ethcapeth; and ath for her?why, he thinkth
her perfection, a woman of motht refined feelingth, and no end of thtuff."
Mr Ely smiled. "Some people would say our friend Barton was not the best judge
of refinement. Perhaps the lady flatters him a little, and we men are
susceptible. She goes to Shepperton church every Sunday?drawn there, let us
suppose, by Mr Barton's eloquence."
"Pshaw," said Mr Farquhar: "Now, to my mind, you have only to look at that woman
to thee what she ith?throwing her eyth about when she comth into church, and
drething in a way to attract attention. I should thay, she'th tired of her
brother Bridmain, and looking out for another brother with a thtronger family
likeneth. Mithith Farquhar ith very fond of Mithith Barton, and ith quite
dithtrethed that she should athothiate with thuch a woman, tho she attacked him
on the thubject purpothly. But I tell her it'th of no uthe, with a pig-headed
fellow like him. Barton'th well-meaning enough, but tho contheited. I've left
off giving him my advithe."
Mr Ely smiled inwardly and said to himself, "What a punishment!" But to Mr
Farquhar he said, "Barton might be more judicious, it must be confessed." He was
getting tired, and did not want to develop the subject.
"Why, nobody vithit-th them but the Bartonth," continued Mr Farquhar, "and why
should thuch people come here, unleth they had particular reathonth for
preferring a neighbourhood where they are not known? Pooh! it lookth bad on the
very fathe of it. You called on them, now; how did you find them?"
"O!?Mr Bridmain strikes me as a common sort of man, who is making an effort to
seem wise and well-bred. He comes down on one tremendously with political
information, and seems knowing about the king of the French. The Countess is
certainly a handsome woman, but she puts on the grand air a little too
powerfully. Woodcock was immensely taken with her, and insisted on his wife's
calling on her, and asking her to dinner; but I think Mrs Woodcock turned
restive after the first visit, and wouldn't invite her again."
"Ha, ha! Woodcock hath alwayth a thoft place in hith heart for a pretty fathe.
I
t 'th odd how he came to marry that plain woman, and no fortune either."
"Mysteries of the tender passion," said Mr Ely. "I am not initiated yet, you
know."
Here Mr Farquhar's carriage was announced, and as we have not found his
conversation particularly brilliant under the stimulus of Mr Ely's exceptionable
presence, we will not accompany him home to the less exciting atmosphere of
domestic life.
Mr Ely threw himself with a sense of relief into his easiest chair, set his feet
on the hobs, and in this attitude of bachelor enjoyment began to read Bishop
Jebb's Memoirs.
CHAPTER IV.
I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about
the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to
find that it was very far from being as bad as they imagined. Nice distinctions
are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to
discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really
belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good
for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to
modify that opinion.
Besides, think of all the virtuous declamation, all the penetrating observation,
which had been built up entirely on the fundamental position that the Countess
was a very objectionable person indeed, and which would be utterly overturned
and nullified by the destruction of that premiss. Mrs Phipps, the banker's wife,
and Mrs Landor, the attorney's wife, had invested part of their reputation for
acuteness in the supposition that Mr Bridmain was not the Countess's brother.
Moreover, Miss Phipps was conscious that if the Countess was not a disreputable
person, she, Miss Phipps, had no compensating superiority in virtue to set
against the other lady's manifest superiority in personal charms. Miss Phipps's
stumpy figure and unsuccessful attire, instead of looking down from a mount of
virtue with an aur?ole round its head, would then be seen on the same level and
in the same light as the Countess Czerlaski's Diana-like form and well-chosen
drapery. Miss Phipps, for her part, didn't like dressing for effect?she had
always avoided that style of appearance which was calculated to create a
sensation.
Then what amusing inuendoes of the Milby gentlemen over their wine would be
entirely frustrated and reduced to nought, if you had told them that the
Countess had really been guilty of no misdemeanours which need exclude her from
strictly respectable society; that her husband had been the veritable Count
Czerlaski, who had had wonderful escapes, as she said, and who, as she did not
say, but as was said in certain circulars once folded by her fair hands, had
subsequently given dancing lessons in the metropolis; that Mr Bridmain was
neither more nor less than her half-brother, who, by unimpeached integrity and
industry, had won a partnership in a silk manufactory, and thereby a moderate
fortune, that enabled him to retire, as you see, to study politics, the weather,
and the art of conversation, at his leisure. Mr Bridmain, in fact,
quadragenarian bachelor as he was, felt extremely well pleased to receive his
sister in her widowhood, and to shine in the reflected light of her beauty and
title. Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is
the slave of some woman or other. Mr Bridmain had put his neck under the yoke of
his handsome sister, and though his soul was a very little one?of the smallest
description indeed?he would not have ventured to call it his own. He might be
slightly recalcitrant now and then, as is the habit of long-eared pachyderms,
under the thong of the fair Countess's tongue; but there seemed little
probability that he would ever get his neck loose. Still, a bachelor's heart is
an outlying fortress that some fair enemy may any day take either by storm or
stratagem; and there was always the possibility that Mr Bridmain's first
nuptials might occur before the Countess was quite sure of her second. As it
was, however, he submitted to all his sister's caprices, never grumbled because
her dress and her maid formed a considerable item beyond her own little income
of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to lead with her a migratory life, as
personages on the debatable ground between aristocracy and commonalty, instead
of settling in some spot where his five hundred a-year might have won him the
definite dignity of a parochial magnate.
The Countess had her views in choosing a quiet provincial place like Milby.
After three years of widowhood, she had brought her feelings to contemplate
giving a successor to her lamented Czerlaski, whose fine whiskers, fine air, and
romantic fortunes had won her heart ten years ago, when, as pretty Caroline
Bridmain, in the full bloom of five-and-twenty, she was governess to Lady
Porter's daughters, whom he initiated into the mysteries of the pas de bas, and
the lancer's quadrilles. She had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony
with Czerlaski, who had taken her to Paris and Germany, and introduced her there
to many of his old friends with large titles and small fortunes. So that the
fair Caroline had had considerable experience of life, and had gathered
therefrom, not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom, but much
external polish, and certain practical conclusions of a very decided kind. One
of these conclusions was, that there were things more solid in life than fine
whiskers and a title, and that, in accepting a second husband, she would regard
these items as quite subordinate to a carriage and a settlement. Now she had
ascertained, by tentative residences, that the kind of bite she was angling for
was difficult to be met with at watering-places, which were already preoccupied
with abundance of angling beauties, and were chiefly stocked with men whose
whiskers might be dyed, and whose incomes were still more problematic; so she
had determined on trying a neighbourhood where people were extremely well
acquainted with each other's affairs, and where the women were mostly
ill-dressed and ugly. Mr Bridmain's slow brain had adopted his sister's views,
and it seemed to him that a woman so handsome and distinguished as the Countess
must certainly make a match that might lift himself into the region of country
celebrities, and give him at least a sort of cousinship to the quarter-sessions.
All this, which was the simple truth, would have seemed extremely flat to the
gossips of Milby, who had made up their minds to something much more exciting.
There was nothing here so very detestable. It is true, the Countess was a little
vain, a little ambitious, a little selfish, a little shallow and frivolous, a
little given to white lies. But who considers such slight blemishes, such moral
pimples as these, disqualifications for entering into the most respectable
society! Indeed, the severest ladies in Milby would have been perfectly aware
that these characteristics would have created no wide distinction between the
Countess Czerlaski and themselves; and since
it was clear there was a wide
distinction?why, it must lie in the possession of some vices from which they
were undeniably free.
Hence it came to pass, that Milby respectability refused to recognise the
Countess Czerlaski, in spite of her assiduous church-going, and the deep disgust
she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the congregations on
Ash-Wednesdays. So she began to feel that she had miscalculated the advantages
of a neighbourhood where people are well acquainted with each other's private
affairs. Under these circumstances, you will imagine how welcome was the perfect
credence and admiration she met with from Mr and Mrs Barton. She had been
especially irritated by Mr Ely's behaviour to her; she felt sure that he was not
in the least struck with her beauty, that he quizzed her conversation, and that
he spoke of her with a sneer. A woman always knows where she is utterly
powerless, and shuns a coldly satirical eye as she would shun a gorgon. And she
was especially eager for clerical notice and friendship, not merely because that
is quite the most respectable countenance to be obtained in society, but because
she really cared about religious matters, and had an uneasy sense that she was
not altogether safe in that quarter. She had serious intentions of becoming
quite pious?without any reserves?when she had once got her carriage and
settlement. Let us do this one sly trick, says Ulysses to Neoptolemus, and we
will be perfectly honest ever after? all' edu gar toi ktema tes nikes labein
tolma? dikaioi d'authis ekphanoumetha. The Countess did not quote Sophocles, but
she said to herself, "Only this little bit of pretence and vanity, and then I
will be quite good, and make myself quite safe for another world."
And as she had by no means such fine taste and insight in theological teaching
as in costume, the Rev. Amos Barton seemed to her a man not only of
learning?that is always understood with a clergyman?but of much power as a
spiritual director. As for Milly, the Countess really loved her as well as the
preoccupied state of her affections would allow. For you have already perceived
that there was one being to whom the Countess was absorbingly devoted, and to
whose desires she made everything else subservient? namely, Caroline Czerlaski,
n?e Bridmain.
Thus there was really not much affectation in her sweet speeches and attentions
to Mr and Mrs Barton. Still, their friendship by no means adequately represented
the object she had in view when she came to Milby, and it had been for some time
clear to her that she must suggest a new change of residence to her brother.
The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way
we have imagined to ourselves. The Countess did actually leave Camp Villa before
many months were past, but under circumstances which had not at all entered into
her contemplation.
CHAPTER V.
The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, was, you
perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character, and perhaps I am
doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a man who was so very
far from remarkable,?a man whose virtues were not heroic, and who had no
undetected crime within his breast; who had not the slightest mystery hanging
about him, but was palpably and unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in
love, but had had that complaint favourably many years ago. "An utterly
uninteresting character!" I think I hear a lady reader exclaim?Mrs Farthingale,
for example, who prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine
tippets, adultery, and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who
is quite a "character."
But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your fellow-countrymen
that are of this insignificant stamp. At least eighty out of a hundred of your