Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  But for the rest — who seem to have not a care on earth; whose proper element seems hot weak tea with too much sugar in it; and to whom semi-baked batter in a spongy condition appears to be wholesome and invigorating food — for them my hatred is unsoftened by any touch of sympathy. We are foes — foes to the death, or rather to the door-mat; for once out of the abominable Castle of Despair — when once their cabs have driven them off to the “Supreme Silences,” and mine has driven me to my lodgings — I think of them no more.

  I digress. Revenons à nos moutons: that is to say, Rosa Matilda. I met her at a tea-party. O, that so lovely an Aphrodite could rise out of the mud-ocean of “a few friends”! I think I was more than usually brilliant that evening. I asked her if she’d seen Millais’s “Yale of Rest,” and if she didn’t think the nuns were ugly. I knew I was safe in saying this; I’d heard the remark made so often. I asked her if she liked muffins, and if she didn’t consider them indigestible; and if she didn’t think they were always administered to people at a tea-party to incapacitate them for eating any supper. She said I was a quiz, she was sure. I was glad she was sure, because I was myself by no means so convinced of the fact. I asked her if she’d read the Tale of Two Cities, and if she didn’t think it more affecting than Pickwick. I asked her which she liked best, Frederick the Second, or the Virginians, and which of the heroines of the Idyls she thought would have made the best housekeeper for a young man who married on two hundred a-year. Enid, no doubt, because she didn’t mind wearing faded silk. She told me she thought Geraint a perfect brute of a husband, and that Lancelot was the only man in the book worth anything; and that Guinevere was very silly in throwing away the diamonds, even if she threw off the lover. She thought Elaine a very forward young person, who couldn’t leave off running after the men, even when she was dead. This, and much more, she said, which I to hear, of course, did seriously incline; in fact, so seriously, that I ran some risk of sliding off my hostess’s slippery embroidered chair in bending over the scented tresses of the lovely being who was seated on a low prie-dieu by my side. Rapturous moments! I remarked on the opposite side of the room the female parent of my charmer, who from time to time cast uneasy glances in the direction of her daughter and myself. Presently she addressed some few whispered words to our hostess, and either my eyes deceived me, or that lady’s lips shaped the syllables, “five hundred a-year, and expectations from an uncle.” At any rate, the effect of the communication was pleasing, and the mamma of my loveliest smiled upon her child. After tea this divine being sang, and I turned over the leaves of her music — delightful task! I believe I always turned them over in the wrong place. Who could keep his eyes upon inanimate crotchets and quavers while she was singing? In short, my time was come! I beheld my first love, all but seventeen. The evening was a dream; she sang — I didn’t know what she sang; she played — it may have been a sonata by Sebastian Bach, or it might be variations on a Christy-Minstrel melody; but it was to me the music of the spheres, and would have been had it been the merest domestic request to “Polly” to make the ordinary preparations for the evening meal. I took her in to supper. I sat next her at supper, and we were crowded. I procured her chicken, and I carved a tongue for her. I sent a lot of particoloured jujubes, which adorned that comestible, into her lap in my enthusiasm; but Amare et sapere — the proverb is somewhat musty, — but nobody ever did, you know.

  O, the ‘nectar that those dismal liquids, the two-shilling Cape and the two-and-sixpenny Marsala, to say nothing of the African sherry, became, when you quaffed them by her side! I introduced her to my sisters. They said afterwards in the cab, going home, that she was an affected thing, and that her crinoline set vilely. What did I care for her crinoline? And if that silk, as they said, had been evidently turned from the top to the bottom, what did I care? My Enid was lovelier than all the world; and as to her faded silk — why, I’d buy her a new one — or she should have it dyed — and so and so. Mamma — her mamma — she wore a front; but she was her mamma; and it was a mighty effort, but I always looked as if I believed in it — her mamma asked me to call; and I said I knew most of the managers of the West-end theatres (I hope those gentlemen will forgive me; and I believe they will, for they most have been in love themselves at some remote period of their existences), and that I could get “orders,” and might I bring them to the Pocklintons? [Pocklinton was my Rosa Matilda’s surname. Feu Pocklinton (Mrs. P. was a widow) had been in the Post-office — I never asked what; he might have been a “twopenny,” or a “general,” for aught I cared.] I might bring the orders. I did. I got them from my old friend Scrauncher, who does the theatricals for the Daily Scarifier; and I treated him to uncountable “bitters” at the hostelry where he broke covert. So Rosa Matilda, Mrs. P., and myself went in a cab; I with my back to the horses, of course; but cabs are narrow, and she was opposite; I didn’t think the fare from Mornington - place to the Olympic too nrach.

  O, my Rosa, “hollow-hearted”! where, where are the half-crowns I used to spend on those dear deluding hansoms, that were always beckoning to me in the Strand, and that would draw me up to the Hampstead-road, in spite of myself?

  Well, my eighteenth venture seemed to be a fortunate one; Rosa Matilda and I were engaged. Yes; I had said one day in the drawing-room (mamma had a call to make, and would I excuse her?), — we were alone, — I had said that “the happiness — future life — depended — one word — render — happy or miserable.” And Rosa Matilda had said, “Lor, Mr. Strothers!” (I forgot to mention, by-the-bye, that my name is Strothers — Christian name, Benjamin — and that has told against me on some occasions)—” Lor, Mr. Strothers, what can I say to make you happy or miserable?”

  “What can you say — ?” and then, and then — there followed the old, old, pitiful, hackneyed, worn-out, new and original, eminently-successful farce! — the blushes, the smiles, the tears, the little trembling hand, the surprise, and all the shabby old properties thereunto belonging; and I found myself accepted. Seventeen performances had, perhaps, taken a little of the freshness out of the said cosmopolitan farce. Seventeen wakings from the same dream made it, perhaps, rather hard to forget that the dream was a dream.

  Perhaps there was an arrière pensée even in that gush of rapture, and I may have thought that I was only playing at being happy after all. But, carpe diem, and here is Mrs. Pocklinton come home; and “Well, she never! — and of all the surprising things — and Rosey, naughty girl, to be so sly — and how strange that she should never have had the least idea!” And I have not the slightest doubt that this woman and her daughter had talked over me and my prospects, and the advantages of a marriage with me, and the conflicting advantages of that offer of Brown’s, and that possible offer of Jones’s, with the strong probability that before long Robinson himself might “pop,” these hundred times by their bedroom fires during our brief acquaintance. But better, as the poet says, “to have loved and lost” — better to be the weakest of fools than to lose the capability of being made a fool of — better the maddest dream earth can give than that sober waking which tells us we can dream no more. So I was, upon the whole, glad that Rosa Matilda accepted me; and I bought her a diamond ring at Hancock and Burbrook’s that afternoon, and I put it upon her finger after tea.

  So we were engaged. Time passed. I had taken a house and furnished it, guided by my future mother-in-law. The day was fixed for our marriage. It was to take place in December. We were now in November; yes, we were in that dreary and suicidal month, when I for the first time heard his name — the name of my unknown and mysterious rival — the name of the being on whom, for some months of my life, I poured the inarticulate anathema, the concentrated hate, of a hitherto-peaceful mind. It was in this wise: we had been to the theatre; we had seen a farce, — I forget the title, but I know Mr. Buckstone had his coat split up the back, and that everybody took everybody for somebody else; so, as I daresay these incidents only occur in one piece, my readers will recognise the dramatic production of
which I have forgotten the name; — we had been to the theatre, and I had returned to the Pocklintons’ to supper. We had scalloped oysters; I was helped twice: the bottled ale was peculiarly delicious. Life seemed that night one bright and golden dream. I little knew the Damoclesian sword which was at that very moment dangling from the whitewashed medallion in the centre of the ceiling. I little knew that the Thunderer had his bolt in his hand, and was only waiting the most convenient moment for launching that instrument at the devoted head of Benjamin Strothers, of the Inner Temple. I had my fork midway between my plate and my mouth; the moderator-lamp was burning brightly; that nightmare of a young woman in a rustic dress was asking that eternal “Momentous Question” of that Frankenstein of a young man in chains, on the wall opposite me; the fire was fierce and glowing, — a cinder fell out into the fender; I remember (so, in the great epochs of our lives, do the most trivial things impress us!) I wondered whether the housemaid would use that cinder in the morning to light the fire, or whether she would throw it on the ash-heap in the back-garden, when Mrs. Pocklinton remarked, “You are fond of fish, Mr. Strothers?” I thought this was a hit at me for having been helped twice; if it was, it was mean: for were not those very oysters part of a barrel of Colchesters of my own presenting?—” You are fond of fish? Ah, Rosey, wasn’t Captain Thomas fond of fish?”

  The sword had dropped — the bolt was launched; the Thunderer put his hands in his pockets, and I daresay resumed that little skirmish with the Ox-eyed about his predilection for late hours and fancy dress. The blow was struck! Captain Thomas!

  The reader will naturally observe, “Well, what then? What then? There is nothing in the mere mention of the name of Captain Thomas; there is nothing even in Captain Thomas being fond of fish.” But I think there is a great deal in Rosa Matilda’s starting from her seat at the mention of that name, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, and darting hurriedly from the room.

  “Sensitive child!” said Mrs. Pocklinton. “It is very odd; but we actually daren’t mention his name before her. It was a most extraordinary infatuation!”

  Extraordinary infatuation! Now this was pleasant for me, wasn’t it?

  “And pray, madam,” I said, not without some degree of severity, “may I be allowed!” (I laid a sarcastic stress upon “allowed”) “to inquire who” (another sarcastic stress upon “who,” and then I was done up in the way of breath) “Captain Thomas may be?”

  “O,” said Mrs. P., “the dearest creature! He was—” And she didn’t say what he was, for at this very moment reënter Rosa Matilda with red eyes.

  “Forgive me, dear Benjamin, for being so silly,” she murmured; “I know it’s very, very weak and childish; but he loved me so, poor dear — and I — I—” (symptoms of more tears)—” I’d had him so long.”

  She’d had him so long! He couldn’t have been — No; that was too horrible! And, besides, he was a captain — a warrior — a man of mature years — an accepted lover, of course — my predecessor in the affections of this false girl and Mrs. P.’s scalloped oysters.

  Well, what was to be done? Discard Rosa Matilda, and get the upholsterer to take back the furniture at a reduction, like that dear, volatile hero of M. de Kock’s romance, Ce Monsieur, who was always furnishing apartments, and always selling his movables and garnitures? No; prudence whispered that I should lose by the transaction; and I loved Rosa Matilda. This Captain Thomas, this military or naval commander, as the case might be, was a being of the past. I, I was the conqueror; and I registered an inward vow, that once married to Rosa Matilda, it should be my care to provide her with more substantial causes for red eyes than phantasm Captain Thomases.

  So I let it pass; and I had hot brandy-and-water after supper, and Rosa Matilda had spoonfuls out of my glass, and she burnt my hand with the bowl of the spoon in fascinating playfulness, and we behaved with the infantine simplicity of a pair of turtle-doves, to whom sorrow and sighing and Captain Thomases were unknown.

  The first time, I have said before, it was in this wise; the second time it was in another wise.

  Our house was furnished, and we went one afternoon to look at it. The Brussels was down in the dining-room, the tapestry in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. P.’s taste. I don’t believe in sky-blue roses on a primrose ground; but I daresay she did, and she would have the carpet. The Kidderminsters upstairs were the most innocent, gushing, simple-minded patterns you ever saw; verdant as meadows in spring, and an admirable fond for the white curtains, and the white-and-gold china, and the maple wardrobe with looking-glass doors and china knobs to the drawers. Mrs. P. said the house was a bijou, and that if the two treasures she had recommended to us as cook and housemaid only kept it in order, as she would see that they did (I said, “Thank you:” I made a mental resolve to have no interference from her; but I committed myself to nothing by saying “thank you”), we should have the most perfect establishment at the West-end. It was Haverstock-hill, but she called it the West-end. Well, we were in the drawing-room; we had admired everything — and Rosa Matilda would make me open all the cabinet-drawers and all the chiffonier doors; they were stiff, and I hurt myself; but we weren’t married yet, so of course I couldn’t be rude enough to refuse — and we were just going away, when all of a sudden Mrs. P. was struck by the hearthrug.

  “It was so beautifully soft; and those lovely forget-me-nots!” (The blue roses were forget-me-nots.) “Such an exquisite, such a” — she might say—”poetical idea. It was really like walking on the Idyls of the King. It seemed the heaven,” if she might be so bold as to make such a paraphrase, “up-breaking through the dearth.”

  I said, “O, ah; yes, to be sure.” I didn’t quite know what she was driving at, when Rosa Matilda said, in her most gushing manner — that was the worst of Rosa Matilda, she would gush —

  “0 mamma, mamma! wouldn’t Captain Thomas have been happy here?”

  O, upon my word, I was close to a spring sofa, and I sank down on it aghast. I — I had furnished this house! I had submitted to, perhaps, such extortion from the most respectable of tradesmen as no man ever before endured.

  Mrs. P. paid the bills for me; and there was a new sofa, value 12?. 125. if a halfpenny, in her drawing-room in Mornington-place, that I never quite made out. I had done all this, and now I was told how happy Captain Thomas would have been in this house of my providing. O! I am not a man prone to use unconstitutional language, but I said, “0!” But, bless you, this was nothing; the Thunderer hadn’t done with me yet.

  “Yes; wouldn’t he?” said that elderly serpent of a mother-in-law, that was to have been, of mine. “This hearthrug, how he would have loved it! He would have appreciated it more than you do, Mr. Strothers, I know.”

  “O, would he?” This, of course, was a hit at my want of taste. Captain Thomas would have understood the aesthetics of those blue anomalies; they were as big as breakfast-cups.

  “Yes, mamma; for I should have brought him here, you know, poor darling, if we hadn’t lost him,, said Rosa Matilda. “You shouldn’t have kept him all to yourself, I can tell you.”

  O, now! talk of — well, a rivalry between mother and daughter! Why, in the Roman Empire at its very worst stage of corruption, when Vitellius set the Tiber on fire, and played the violin while it was blazing, when Julius Cæsar lighted Athens with burning Calvinists, could there have been anything worse than this?

  I said, “Ha, ha!” I was quite beyond words, so I said, “Ha, ha!”

  “The dear,” she continued — my wife, that was to be, continued (why, Desdemona bothering Othello about that pocket-handkerchief she wanted him to give to Cassio, was nothing to this!),—”you would have grown so fond of him, Benjamin!”

  Should I, Benjamin? O, I daresay. “No,” I said, “no, madam; I will have no Captain Thomases here. I — I — since it’s gone so far, and since the house is furnished, and my new coat come home, we will say no more; but no Thomases here; no, no!”

  “You don’t like them?” she said; “how ver
y odd!”

  O, odd was it? Well! I had seen a book, with a yellow paper-cover, at Mornington-place; a book in a foreign language; and I attributed the evident absence of moral region in the cerebral development of the woman I adored to a gradual eating away of that department of the brain, from the perusal of books in a foreign language; and I registered another vow, that when married to me, Rosa Matilda should only read those sterling English works of fiction which elevate the moral sense while they develop the intellectual organs. She should have her Pierian draught from the pure fountains of Fielding and Smollett, the pious inculcations of Jonathan Sterne (connected with the Church, I know, and I believe an Irish bishop). Not for her lips those exciting and poisonous beverages whose spring is in Soho-square and the Burlington Arcade, to say nothing of obliging Mr. Jeffs at Brighton, and that handy little shop in Holborn at which I myself deal.