Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (509 page)

‘O, your honour, I was never that sort o’ woman, an’ nobody has known it on me.’

‘Very likely not, because you were never a widow before. A woman’s always silly enough, but she’s never quite as great a fool as she can be until she puts on a widow’s cap. Now, just ask yourself how much the better you will be for staying on your farm at the end of four years, when you’ve got through your money, and let your farm run down, and are in arrears for half your rent; or, perhaps, have got some great hulky fellow for a husband, who swears at you and kicks your children.’

‘Indeed, Sir Christifer, I know a deal o’ farmin,’ an’ was brought up i’ the thick on it, as you may say. An’ there was my husband’s great-aunt managed a farm for twenty year, an’ left legacies to all her nephys an’ nieces, an’ even to my husband, as was then a babe unborn.’

‘Psha! a woman six feet high, with a squint and sharp elbows, I daresay — a man in petticoats. Not a rosy-cheeked widow like you, Mrs. Hartopp.’

‘Indeed, your honour, I never heard of her squintin’, an’ they said as she might ha’ been married o’er and o’er again, to people as had no call to hanker after her money.’

‘Ay, ay, that’s what you all think. Every man that looks at you wants to marry you, and would like you the better the more children you have and the less money. But it is useless to talk and cry. I have good reasons for my plans, and never alter them. What you have to do is to take the best of your stock, and to look out for some little place to go to, when you leave The Hollows. Now, go back to Mrs. Bellamy’s room, and ask her to give you a dish of tea.’

Mrs. Hartopp, understanding from Sir Christopher’s tone that he was not to be shaken, curtsied low and left the library, while the Baronet, seating himself at his desk in the oriel window, wrote the following letter:

Mr. Markham, — Take no steps about letting Crowsfoot Cottage, as I intend to put in the widow Hartopp when she leaves her farm; and if you will be here at eleven on Saturday morning, I will ride round with you, and settle about making some repairs, and see about adding a bit of land to the take, as she will want to keep a cow and some pigs. — Yours faithfully,

Christopher Cheverel

After ringing the bell and ordering this letter to be sent, Sir Christopher walked out to join the party on the lawn. But finding the cushions deserted, he walked on to the eastern front of the building, where, by the side of the grand entrance, was the large bow-window of the saloon, opening on to the gravel-sweep, and looking towards a long vista of undulating turf, bordered by tall trees, which, seeming to unite itself with the green of the meadows and a grassy road through a plantation, only terminated with the Gothic arch of a gateway in the far distance. The bow-window was open, and Sir Christopher, stepping in, found the group he sought, examining the progress of the unfinished ceiling. It was in the same style of florid pointed Gothic as the dining-room, but more elaborate in its tracery, which was like petrified lace-work picked out with delicate and varied colouring. About a fourth of its still remained uncoloured, and under this part were scaffolding, ladders, and tools; otherwise the spacious saloon was empty of furniture, and seemed to be a grand Gothic canopy for the group of five human figures standing in the centre.

‘Francesco has been getting on a little better the last day or two,’ said Sir Christopher, as he joined the party: ‘he’s a sad lazy dog, and I fancy he has a knack of sleeping as he stands, with his brushes in his hands. But I must spur him on, or we may not have the scaffolding cleared away before the bride comes, if you show dexterous generalship in your wooing, eh, Anthony? and take your Magdeburg quickly.’

‘Ah, sir, a siege is known to be one of the most tedious operations in war,’ said Captain Wybrow, with an easy smile.

‘Not when there’s a traitor within the walls in the shape of a soft heart. And that there will be, if Beatrice has her mother’s tenderness as well as her mother’s beauty.’

‘What do you think, Sir Christopher,’ said Lady Cheverel, who seemed to wince a little under her husband’s reminiscences, ‘of hanging Guercino’s “Sibyl” over that door when we put up the pictures? It is rather lost in my sitting-room.’

‘Very good, my love,’ answered Sir Christopher, in a tone of punctiliously polite affection; ‘if you like to part with the ornament from your own room, it will show admirably here. Our portraits, by Sir Joshua, will hang opposite the window, and the “Transfiguration” at that end. You see, Anthony, I am leaving no good places on the walls for you and your wife. We shall turn you with your faces to the wall in the gallery, and you may take your revenge on us by-and-by.’

While this conversation was going on, Mr. Gilfil turned to Caterina and said, — ‘I like the view from this window better than any other in the house.’

She made no answer, and he saw that her eyes were filling with tears; so he added, ‘Suppose we walk out a little; Sir Christopher and my lady seem to be occupied.’

Caterina complied silently, and they turned down one of the gravel walks that led, after many windings under tall trees and among grassy openings, to a large enclosed flower-garden. Their walk was perfectly silent, for Maynard Gilfil knew that Caterina’s thoughts were not with him, and she had been long used to make him endure the weight of those moods which she carefully hid from others. They reached the flower-garden, and turned mechanically in at the gate that opened, through a high thick hedge, on an expanse of brilliant colour, which, after the green shades they had passed through, startled the eye like flames. The effect was assisted by an undulation of the ground, which gradually descended from the entrance-gate, and then rose again towards the opposite end, crowned by an orangery. The flowers were glowing with their evening splendours; verbenas and heliotropes were sending up their finest incense. It seemed a gala where all was happiness and brilliancy, and misery could find no sympathy. This was the effect it had on Caterina. As she wound among the beds of gold and blue and pink, where the flowers seemed to be looking at her with wondering elf-like eyes, knowing nothing of sorrow, the feeling of isolation in her wretchedness overcame her, and the tears, which had been before trickling slowly down her pale cheeks, now gushed forth accompanied with sobs. And yet there was a loving human being close beside her, whose heart was aching for hers, who was possessed by the feeling that she was miserable, and that he was helpless to soothe her. But she was too much irritated by the idea that his wishes were different from hers, that he rather regretted the folly of her hopes than the probability of their disappointment, to take any comfort in his sympathy. Caterina, like the rest of us, turned away from sympathy which she suspected to be mingled with criticism, as the child turns away from the sweetmeat in which it suspects imperceptible medicine.

‘Dear Caterina, I think I hear voices,’ said Mr. Gilfil; ‘they may be coming this way.’

She checked herself like one accustomed to conceal her emotions, and ran rapidly to the other end of the garden, where she seemed occupied in selecting a rose. Presently Lady Cheverel entered, leaning on the arm of Captain Wybrow, and followed by Sir Christopher. The party stopped to admire the tiers of geraniums near the gate; and in the mean time Caterina tripped back with a moss rose-bud in her hand, and, going up to Sir Christopher, said — ‘There, Padroncello — there is a nice rose for your button-hole.’

‘Ah, you black-eyed monkey,’ he said, fondly stroking her cheek; ‘so you have been running off with Maynard, either to torment or coax him an inch or two deeper into love. Come, come, I want you to sing us “
Ho perduto
” before we sit down to picquet. Anthony goes tomorrow, you know; you must warble him into the right sentimental lover’s mood, that he may acquit himself well at Bath.’ He put her little arm under his, and calling to Lady Cheverel, ‘Come, Henrietta!’ led the way towards the house.

The party entered the drawing-room, which, with its oriel window, corresponded to the library in the other wing, and had also a flat ceiling heavy with carving and blazonry; but the window being unshaded, and the walls hung with full-length portraits of knights and dames in scarlet, white, and gold, it had not the sombre effect of the library. Here hung the portrait of Sir Anthony Cheverel, who in the reign of Charles II. was the renovator of the family splendour, which had suffered some declension from the early brilliancy of that Chevreuil who came over with the Conqueror. A very imposing personage was this Sir Anthony, standing with one arm akimbo, and one fine leg and foot advanced, evidently with a view to the gratification of his contemporaries and posterity. You might have taken off his splendid peruke, and his scarlet cloak, which was thrown backward from his shoulders, without annihilating the dignity of his appearance. And he had known how to choose a wife, too, for his lady, hanging opposite to him, with her sunny brown hair drawn away in bands from her mild grave face, and falling in two large rich curls on her snowy gently-sloping neck, which shamed the harsher hue and outline of her white satin robe, was a fit mother of ‘large-acred’ heirs.

In this room tea was served; and here, every evening, as regularly as the great clock in the court-yard with deliberate bass tones struck nine, Sir Christopher and Lady Cheverel sat down to picquet until half-past ten, when Mr. Gilfil read prayers to the assembled household in the chapel.

But now it was not near nine, and Caterina must sit down to the harpsichord and sing Sir Christopher’s favourite airs from Gluck’s ‘Orfeo’, an opera which, for the happiness of that generation, was then to be heard on the London stage. It happened this evening that the sentiment of these airs, ‘
Che faro senza Eurydice?
’ and ‘
Ho perduto il bel sembiante
’, in both of which the singer pours out his yearning after his lost love, came very close to Caterina’s own feeling. But her emotion, instead of being a hindrance to her singing, gave her additional power. Her singing was what she could do best; it was her one point of superiority, in which it was probable she would excel the highborn beauty whom Anthony was to woo; and her love, her jealousy, her pride, her rebellion against her destiny, made one stream of passion which welled forth in the deep rich tones of her voice. She had a rare contralto, which Lady Cheverel, who had high musical taste, had been careful to preserve her from straining.

‘Excellent, Caterina,’ said Lady Cheverel, as there was a pause after the wonderful linked sweetness of ‘
Che faro
’. ‘I never heard you sing that so well. Once more!’

It was repeated; and then came, ‘Ho perduto’, which Sir Christopher encored, in spite of the clock, just striking nine. When the last note was dying out he said — ‘There’s a clever black-eyed monkey. Now bring out the table for picquet.’

Caterina drew out the table and placed the cards; then, with her rapid fairy suddenness of motion, threw herself on her knees, and clasped Sir Christopher’s knee. He bent down, stroked her cheek and smiled.

‘Caterina, that is foolish,’ said Lady Cheverel. ‘I wish you would leave off those stage-players’ antics.’

She jumped up, arranged the music on the harpsichord, and then, seeing the Baronet and his lady seated at picquet, quietly glided out of the room.

Captain Wybrow had been leaning near the harpsichord during the singing, and the chaplain had thrown himself on a sofa at the end of the room. They both now took up a book. Mr. Gilfil chose the last number of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’; Captain Wybrow, stretched on an ottoman near the door, opened ‘Faublas’; and there was perfect silence in the room which, ten minutes before, was vibrating to the passionate tones of Caterina.

She had made her way along the cloistered passages, now lighted here and there by a small oil-lamp, to the grand-staircase, which led directly to a gallery running along the whole eastern side of the building, where it was her habit to walk when she wished to be alone. The bright moonlight was streaming through the windows, throwing into strange light and shadow the heterogeneous objects that lined the long walls Greek statues and busts of Roman emperors; low cabinets filled with curiosities, natural and antiquarian; tropical birds and huge horns of beasts; Hindoo gods and strange shells; swords and daggers, and bits of chain-armour; Roman lamps and tiny models of Greek temples; and, above all these, queer old family portraits — of little boys and girls, once the hope of the Cheverels, with close-shaven heads imprisoned in stiff ruffs — of faded, pink-faced ladies, with rudimentary features and highly-developed head-dresses — of gallant gentlemen, with high hips, high shoulders, and red pointed beards.

Here, on rainy days, Sir Christopher and his lady took their promenade, and here billiards were played; but, in the evening, it was forsaken by all except Caterina — and, sometimes, one other person.

She paced up and down in the moonlight, her pale face and thin white-robed form making her look like the ghost of some former Lady Cheverel come to revisit the glimpses of the moon.