The years fly, we know, and come not again, and there’s balm in that for the wounds they leave. For we forget a good deal, and Hope is a faithful lover, and never quits us for long together; and then there’s honest Use-and-Wont, surely our friend. Because you were a fool yesterday, you’re wise to-day; and if you’re a fool to-morrow—why, the alternation is established. There’s a progression; it is like the rotation of crops. There’s a mort of healing in a brace of longish years. The county, which had found little Mrs. Germain stiff when she came home from her honeymoon, now looked to her for stiffness when it felt relaxed. Her idiosyncrasy was accepted, you see; once admitted to be a person, she became a personage. And, discovered by the county, she discovered herself. She found out that she had a character; she had never known that before, nor had any others who had had to do with her: Mrs. James, to wit, Miss de Speyne, her husband. The process of these discoveries ought to entertain us for a chapter, and its resolution shall be attempted. But the county learned it first, when it came to rely upon her stiffness. The Chaveneys, the Gerald Swetebredes, the Trevor-Waynes, the Perceforest people, before the two years were over, forgot that they had ever eyed each other, with brows inquiring “Colonial?” or spelling “Hopeless, my dear!” Such looks had passed, but now, on the contrary, they leaned—some heavily. Lady Chaveney was one. “She is charming with Guy,” she said more than once, “quite charming. An influence—in the nicest way.” She added, once, as if the news was sacred, “I believe he’s told her everything.” Guy was the Chaveney heir, the florid, assured youth whom we met just now on our visit; he had been pronounced “wild” by Mr. Germain; and he had told her everything. She took herself quite seriously with Guy, in the elder-sister fashion, Mr. Germain, at first approving, as, at first, he had approved every sign of her making way. He came, before the end of two years, to feel differently, lost touch with the sense of his benevolence, felt to be losing grip of many things. But in the early days he had approved, there’s no doubt—in those days of stress and taut nerves when, returning from a honeymoon by much too long, she had found Mrs. James pervading the great, orderly house, and had, without knowing it, braced herself for a tussle, and unawares found herself in it, and amazingly the winner. Her husband had backed her up there, in his quiet way. Short, quick, breathless work it had been—a fight in spasms. She had been crossing the hall when the great lady came out of the Little Library.
“Ah, Mary—A Mrs. Burgess has called, I see—wife of some one in Farlingbridge. She called while you were out. A politeness very natural under the circumstances—but not the custom here, I think. Lady Diana, I happen to know, never—I suppose you will send cards by the carriage. That would answer the purpose very well. We have never known the townspeople, you know—in that sort of way. There is a tenants’ party in the summer. They come to that.”
Mary had listened. She was pale, but her eyes smouldered.
“I can’t do that, Mrs. Germain. I mean, I must return the call.”
“Ah? It will be against my recommendation.”
“I am very sorry. I asked Mrs. Burgess to call when I met her the other day at Waysford.”
“Really? Waysford? One would meet her there, I suppose. A Sale of Work?”
“Yes. But I asked her to call upon me. It was kind of her to come so soon.”
Mrs. James pressed her lips together. So soon! Why, the woman would fly! “Does my brother know of this, may I ask?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, out of breath. She was scared, but meant to go on.
“It will be better that he should be told.”
“If you think it will interest him—yes,” Mary said, and went upstairs—to stare out of window, clench and unclench her hands. Mrs. James reported the case to her brother-in-law, and Mary drove, the next day, to Farlingbridge—her husband with her—and returned the call. Nothing more was said; nor, when the visit of a Colonel Dermott, V.C., and his lady, townspeople, too, had to be witnessed, was a word of warning uttered. But Mrs. James left within a fortnight of her rout, staying only for the first dinner-party at Southover. That was how she learned that Mary Middleham had character. It shocked her; and it was annoying, too, that she could expect no sympathy from James.
The house-parties for the winter shooting, and those dinner-parties for the county had to be gone through with somehow. She set herself squarely to the task, and was glad enough to believe towards the end of her two years that she was learning the business. There was little to do, indeed, but be agreeable, but she found that more than enough. Agreeable she could be when she felt happy; her nature was as sweet as an apple. But if she felt hurt she must show it, and she discovered that that was a cardinal sin. Then there was the language to master, the queer, impertinent, leisurely laconics of these people—expensive, perfectly complacent, incredibly idle young men, old men without reticence, airy, free-spoken women, and girls who unaffectedly ignored her. To cope with such as these she must be even as they were, or seem so. The quickness of their give-and-take in conversation, the ripple and flow, the ease of the thing, asked an alertness of her which excited while it tried her to death. Perpetually flagging at the game, she spurred herself perpetually; for she discovered that there is no more deadly sin in the code than an awkward pause, that being all of a piece with the end and aim of living—which is smooth running. A woman should die sooner than drop a conversation, or murder it.
She was at her best with the men, as perhaps she might expect. She could run, she could walk all day, chatter, laugh outright, seem to be herself; they paid her the compliment of approving looks. But among the women she knew that she must be herself, a very different thing. She felt infinitely small, ill-dressed, ill-mannered, clumsy, and a dunce. It was from them, however, that she gained her reputation of being stiff; she had them to thank for that. It had come to her in a flash of spirit one day in the summer of her first year, that if ignoring was in the wind, she could ignore with the best. She chose to ignore Mrs. Chilmarke, Mrs. Ralph Chilmarke, a beauty, a dainty blonde and a wit. She did it steadily for three days, at what a cost she could never have guessed when she began it, and her reward was great. Mrs. Chilmarke respected her for it, and the Duchess—a duchess was in the house—was frankly delighted, and said so. She had watched out the match, and had backed the brune.
Under such exertions as these character will out, while it may slumber through years of pedagogy. But she worked hard at her lessons directly she had found out what she wanted, and was tolerably equipped for her tour in France and Italy when the time came. She made no way with Latin—Mr. Germain had to give that up; and English literature made her yawn. She insisted on botany, for reasons unknown to the good gentleman, and became great friends with the head gardener, a Scotchman, who made the initial mistake of supposing her a little fool, and was ever afterwards her obedient servant. Shall we do wrong in putting this study down to Senhouse’s credit? I think not. Quietly and methodically, after a method all her own, Mary Germain began to find herself, as they say. But before she did that her husband had to find her; and he, poor gentleman, who had had to begin upon their wedding day, was at the end of his discoveries before he was at the end of his honeymoon. So far he struggled, but after that he suffered—dumbly and in secret, within his plate armour. The fact is, there had been too much honeymoon. His evident discomfort had made her self-conscious, killed her ease, threatened her gratitude—upon which he had proposed to subsist—and turned him from an improbable mate into a rather unsuccessful father of his wife.
October is a bad time for honeymoons; the evenings are so long. Nevertheless, at Torquay, her mind had been fairly easy about him. He had liked the hotel. At Saltcombe he had been pretty miserable, much on her conscience. He had taught her chess, it seems, and if she had known what she was about, chess might have done pretty well. But unfortunately she took to chess, and began to beat him at it by audacious combinations and desperate sallies quite unwarranted by science. That vexed him sadly. He abandoned the game, telling her frankly that he could not help being irritated to see skill out-vailed by temerity. “One plays, you see, my love, for the pleasure of playing, not to win. That is the first condition of a pastime.” She told him she was very sorry, and he kissed her. But after that Villiers used to lay newspapers and reviews on the sitting-room table while they were dining. She consoled herself with the remembrance of that kiss on the lips; it was nearly the last of them. He selected her forehead, from Saltcombe onwards, or her cheek. From Saltcombe they went down into Cornwall—Truro, Penzance, Sennen, St. Ives. There it was that she learned to be happy in her own company. She spent hours alone, scrambling among the rocks, watching the sea.
Her life was filling, her vistas opening. This was great gain, to feel the triumph of discovery. She had never been so far afield before, and the wild splendours of rocks and seas made her at times like a thing inspired. She was amazed at herself—at the stinging blood in her which made her heart beat. She used to get up early at Sennen, steal, hatless, out of the sleeping inn, and fleet over turf to the edge of the cliffs. There she stood motionless, with unwinking eyes and parted lips, while the wind enfolded her. All was pure ecstasy; she was like a nymph—bare-bosomed, ungirdled, unfilletted, in the close arms of the Country God. From such hasty blisses she returned drowsy-eyed, glossed with rose-colour, with a sleek bloom upon her, and ministered to her husband’s needs, dressed with care, with the neatness which he loved. She sat q............