Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “Is servants allowed to dress in veils, out there?” demanded Mary Green, during a pause of Brother Jarrum’s, afforded to the audience that they might sufficiently revolve the disinterested generosity of the Latter Day Saint community.

  “Veils! Veils, and feathers, too, if they are so minded,” was Brother Jarrum’s answer; and it fell like a soothing sound on Mary Green’s vain ear. “It’s not many servants, though, that you’d find in New Jerusalem.”

  “Ain’t servants let go out to New Jerusalem?” quickly returned Mary Green. She was a servant herself, just now out of place, given to spend all her wages upon finery, and coming to grief perpetually with her mistresses upon the score.

  “Many of ’em goes out,” was the satisfactory reply of Brother Jarrum. “But servants here are not servants there. Who’d be a servant if she could be a missis? Wouldn’t a handsome young female prefer to be her master’s wife than to be his servant?”

  Mary Green giggled; the question had been pointedly put to her.

  “If a female servant chooses to remain a servant, in course she can,” Brother Jarrum resumed, “and precious long wages she’d get; eighty pound a year — good.”

  A movement of intense surprise amid the audience. Brother Jarrum went on —

  “I can’t say I have knowed many as have stopped servants, even at that high rate of pay. My memory won’t charge me with one. They have married and settled, and so have secured for themselves paradise.”

  This might be taken as a delicate hint that the married state, generally, deserved that happy title. Some of the experiences of those present, however, rather tended to accord it a less satisfactory one, and there arose some murmuring. Brother Jarrum explained —

  “Women is not married with us for time, but for eternity — as I tried to beat into you last night. Once the wife of a saint, their entrance into paradise is safe and certain. We have not got a old maid among us — not a single old maid!”

  The sensation that this information caused, I’ll leave you to judge; considering that Deerham was famous for old maids, and that several were present.

  “No old maids, and no widders,” continued Brother Jarrum, wiping his forehead, which was becoming moist with the heat of argument. “We have respect to our women, we have, and like to make ’em comfortable.”

  “But if their husbands die off?” suggested a puzzled listener.

  “The husband’s successor marries his widders,” explained Brother Jarrum. “Look at our late head and prophet, Mr. Joe Smith — him that appeared in a vision to our present prophet, and pointed out the spot for the new temple. He died a martyr, Mr. Joe Smith did — a prey to wicked murderers. Were his widders left to grieve and die out after him? No. Mr. Brigham Young, he succeeded to his honours, and he married the widders.”

  This was received somewhat dubiously; the assemblage not clear whether to approve it or to cavil at it.

  “Not so much to be his wives, you know, as to be a kind of ruling matrons in his household,” went on Brother Jarrum. “To have their own places apart, their own rooms in the house, and to be as happy as the day’s long. They don’t—”

  “How they must quarrel, a lot of wives together!” interrupted a discontented voice.

  Brother Jarrum set himself energetically to disprove this supposition. He succeeded. Belief is easy to willing minds.

  “Which is best?” asked he.— “To be one of the wives of a rich saint, where all the wives is happy, and honoured, and well dressed; or to toil and starve, and go next door to naked, as a poor man’s solitary wife does here? I know which I should choose if the two chances was offered me. A woman can’t put her foot inside the heavenly kingdom, I tell you, unless she has got a husband to lay hold of her hand and draw her in. The wives of a saint are safe; paradise is in store for ‘em; and that’s why the Gentiles’ wives — them folks that’s for ever riling at us — leave their husbands to marry the saints.”

  “Does the saints’ wives ever leave ’em to marry them others — the Gentiles?” asked that troublesome Davies.

  “Such cases have been heered of,” responded Brother Jarrum, shaking his head with a grave solemnity of manner. “They have braved the punishment and done it. But the act has been rare.”

  “What is the punishment?” inquired somebody’s wife.

  “When a female belonging to the Latter Day Saints — whether she’s married or single — falls off from grace and goes over to them Gentiles, and marries one of ‘em, she’s condemned to be buffeted by Satan for a thousand years.”

  A pause of consternation.

  “Who condemns her?” a voice, more venturesome than the rest, was heard to ask.

  “There’s mysteries in our faith which can’t be disclosed even to you,” was the reply of Brother Jarrum. “Them apostate women are condemned to it; and that’s enough. It’s not everybody as can see the truth. Ninety-nine may see it, and the hundredth mayn’t.”

  “Very true, very true,” was murmured around.

  “I think I see the waggins and the other vehicles arriving now!” rapturously exclaimed Brother Jarrum, turning his eyes right up into his head, the better to take in the mental vision. “The travellers, tired with their journey, washed and shaved, and dressed, and the women’s hair anointed, all flagrant with oil and frantic with joy — shouting, singing, and dancing to the tune of the advancing fiddles! I think I see the great prophet himself, with his brass-band in front and his body-guard around him, meeting the travellers and shaking their hands individ’ally! I think I see the joy of the women, and the nice young girls, when they are led to the hyminial halter in our temple by the saints that have fixed on ‘em, to be inducted into the safety of paradise! Happy those that the prophet chooses for himself! While them other poor mistaken backsliders shall be undergoing their thousand years of buffetings, they’ll reign triumphant, the saved saints of the Mil—”

  How long Brother Jarrum’s harangue might have rung on the wide ears of his delighted listeners, it is not easy to say. But an interruption occurred, to the proceeding’s. It was caused by the entrance of Peckaby; and the meeting was terminated somewhat abruptly. While Susan Peckaby sat at the feet of the saint, a willing disciple of his doctrine, her lord and master, however disheartening it may be to record it, could not, by any means, be induced to open his heart and receive the grace. He remained obdurate. Passively obdurate during the day; but rather demonstratively obdurate towards night. Peckaby, a quiet, civil man enough when sober, was just the contrary when ivre; and since he had joined the blacksmith’s shop, his evening visits to a noted public-house — the Plough and Harrow — had become frequent. On his return home from these visits, his mind had once or twice been spoken out pretty freely as to the Latter Day Saint doctrine: once he had gone the length of clearing the shop of guests, and marshalling the saint himself to the retirement of his own apartment. However contrite he may have shown himself for this the next morning, nobody desired to have the scene repeated. Consequently, when Peckaby now entered, defiance in his face and unsteadiness in his legs, the guests filed out of their own accord; and Brother Jarrum, taking the flaring candle from the shelf, disappeared with it up the stairs.

  This has been a very fair specimen of Brother Jarrum’s representations and eloquence. It was only one meeting out of a great many. As I said before, the precise tenets of his religious faith need not be enlarged upon: it is enough to say that they were quite equal to his temporal promises. You will, therefore, scarcely wonder that he made disciples. But the mischief, as yet, had only begun to brew.

  CHAPTER XL.

  A VISIT OF CEREMONY.

  Whatever may have been Lionel Verner’s private sentiments, with regard to his choice of a wife — whether he repented his hasty bargain or whether he did not, no shade of dissatisfaction escaped him. Sibylla took up her abode with her sisters, and Lionel visited her, just as other men visit the young ladies they may be going to marry. The servants at Verner’s Pride were informed that a
mistress for them was in contemplation, and preparations for the marriage were begun. Not until summer would it take place, when twelve months should have elapsed from the demise of Frederick Massingbird.

  Deerham was, of course, free in its comments, differing in no wise on that score from other places. Lionel Verner was pitied, and Sibylla abused. The heir of Verner’s Pride, with his good looks, his manifold attractions, his somewhat cold impassibility as to the tempting snares laid out for him in the way of matrimony, had been a beacon for many a young lady to steer towards. Had he married Lucy Tempest, had he married Lady Mary Elmsley, had he married a royal princess, he and she would both have been equally cavilled at. He, for placing himself beyond the pale of competition; she, for securing the prize. It always was so, and it always will be.

  His choice of Mrs. Massingbird, however, really did afford some grounds for grumbling. She was not worthy of Lionel Verner. So Deerham thought; so Deerham said. He was throwing himself away; he would live to repent it; she must have been the most crafty of women, so to have secured him! Free words enough, and harshly spoken; but they were as water by the side of those uttered by Lady Verner.

  In the first bitter hour of disappointment, Lady Verner gave free speech to harsh things. It was in her love for Lionel that she so grieved. Setting aside the facts that Sibylla had been the wife of another man, that she was, in position, beneath Lionel — which facts, however, Lady Verner could not set aside, for they were ever present to her — her great objection lay in the conviction that Sibylla would prove entirely unsuited to him; that it would turn out an unhappy union. Short and sharp was the storm with Lady Verner; but in a week or two she subsided into quietness, buried her grief and resentment within her, and made no further outward demonstration.

  “Mother, you will call upon Sibylla?” Lionel said to her one day that he had gone to Deerham Court. He spoke in a low, deprecating tone, and his face flushed; he anticipated he knew not what torrent of objection.

  Lady Verner met the request differently.

  “I suppose it will be expected of me, that I should do so,” she replied, strangely calm. “How I dislike this artificial state of things! Where the customs of society must be bowed to, by those who live in it; their actions, good or bad, commented upon and judged! You have been expecting that I should call before this, I suppose, Lionel?”

  “I have been hoping, from day to day, that you would call.”

  “I will call — for your sake. Lionel,” she passionately added, turning to him, and seizing his hands between hers, “what I do now, I do for your sake. It has been a cruel blow to me; but I will try to make the best of it, for you, my best-loved son.”

  He bent down to his mother, and kissed her tenderly. It was his mode of showing her his thanks.

  “Do not mistake me, Lionel. I will go just so far in this matter as may be necessary to avoid open disapproval. If I appear to approve it, that the world may not cavil and you complain, it will be little more than an appearance. I will call upon your intended wife, but the call will be one of etiquette, of formal ceremony: you must not expect me to get into the habit of repeating it. I shall never become intimate with her.”

  “You do not know what the future may bring forth,” returned Lionel, looking at his mother with a smile. “I trust the time will come when you shall have learned to love Sibylla.”

  “I do not think that time will ever arrive,” was the frigid reply of Lady Verner. “Oh, Lionel!” she added, in an impulse of sorrow, “what a barrier this has raised between us — what a severing for the future!”

  “The barrier exists in your own mind only, mother,” was his answer, spoken sadly. “Sibylla would be a loving daughter to you, if you would allow her so to be.”

  A slight, haughty shake of the head, suppressed at once, was the reply of Lady Verner. “I had looked for a different daughter,” she continued. “I had hoped for Mary Elmsley.”

  “Upon this point, at any rate, there need be no misunderstanding,” returned Lionel. “Believe me once for all, mother: I should never have married Mary Elmsley. Had I and Sibylla remained apart for life, separated as wide as the two poles, it is not Mary Elmsley whom I should have made my wife. It is more than probable that my choice would have pleased you only in a degree more than it does now.”

  The jealous ears of Lady Verner detected an undercurrent of meaning in the words.

  “You speak just as though you had some one in particular in your thoughts!” she uttered.

  It recalled Lucy, it recalled the past connected with her, all too plainly to his mind; and he returned an evasive answer. He never willingly recalled her: or it: if they obtruded themselves on his memory — as they very often did — he drove them away, as he was driving them now.

  He quitted the house, and Lady Verner proceeded upstairs to Decima’s room — that pretty room, with its blue panels and hangings, where Lionel used to be when he was growing convalescent. Decima and Lucy were in it now. “I wish you to go out with me to make a call,” she said to them.

  “Both of us, mamma?” inquired Decima.

  “Both,” repeated Lady Verner. “It is a call of etiquette,” she added, a sound of irony mixing in the tone, “and, therefore, you must both make it. It is to Lionel’s chosen wife.”

  A hot flush passed into the face of Lucy Tempest; hot words rose to her lips. Hasty, thoughtless, impulsive words, to the effect that she could not pay a visit to the chosen wife of Lionel Verner.

  But she checked them ere they were spoken. She turned to the window, which had been opened to the early spring day, and suffered the cool air to blow on her flushed face, and calmed down her impetuous thoughts. Was this the course of conduct that she had marked out for herself? She looked round at Lady Verner and said, in a gentle tone, that she would be ready at any hour named.

  “We will go at once,” replied Lady Verner. “I have ordered the carriage. The sooner we make it — as we have to make it — the better.”

  There was no mistake about it. Lucy had grown to love Lionel Verner. How she loved him, esteemed him, venerated him, none, save her own heart, could tell. Her days had been as one long dream of Eden. The very aspect of the world had changed. The blue sky, the soft-breathing wind, the scent of the budding flowers, had spoken a language to her, never before learned: “Rejoice in us, for we are lovely!” It was the strange bliss in her own heart that threw its rose hues over the face of nature, the sweet, mysterious rapture arising from love’s first dream; which can never be described by mortal pen; and never, while it lasts, can be spoken of by living tongue. While it lasts. It never does last. It is the one sole ecstatic phase of life, the solitary romance stealing in once, and but once, amidst the world’s hard realities; the “fire filched for us from heaven.” Has it to arise yet for you — you, who read this? Do not trust it when it comes, for it will be fleeting as a summer cloud. Enjoy it, revel in it while you hold it; it will lift you out of earth’s clay and earth’s evil with its angel wings; but trust not to its remaining: even while you are saying, “I will make it mine for ever,” it is gone. It had gone for Lucy Tempest. And, oh! better for her, perhaps, that it should go; better, perhaps, for all; for if that sweet glimpse of paradise could take up its abode permanently in the heart, we should never look, or wish, or pray for that better paradise which has to come hereafter.

  But who can see this in the sharp flood tide of despair? Not Lucy. In losing Lionel she has lost all; and nothing remained for her but to do battle with her trouble alone. Passionately and truly as Lionel had loved Sibylla; so, in her turn, did Lucy love him.

  It is not the fashion now for young ladies to die of broken hearts — as it was in the old days. A little while given to “the grief that kills,” and then Lucy strove to arouse herself to better things. She would go upon her way, burying all feelings within her; she would meet him and others with a calm exterior and placid smile; none should see that she suffered; no, though her heart were breaking.

  “I will f
orget him,” she murmured to herself ten times in the day. “What a mercy that I did not let him see I loved him! I never should have loved him, but that I thought he — Psha! why do I recall it? I was mistaken; I was stupid — and all that’s left to me is to make the best of it.”

  So she drove her thoughts away, as Lionel did. She set out on her course bravely, with the determination to forget him. She schooled her heart, and schooled her face, and believed she was doing great things. To Lionel she cast no blame — and that was unfortunate for the forgetting scheme. She blamed herself; not Lionel. Remarkably simple and humble-minded, Lucy Tempest was accustomed to think of every one before herself. Who was she, that she should have assumed Lionel Verner was growing to love her? Sometimes she would glance at another phase of the picture: That Lionel had been growing to love her; but that Sibylla Massingbird had, in some weak moment, by some sleight of hand, drawn him to her again, extracted from him a promise that he could not retract. She did not dwell upon this; she drove it from her, as she drove away, or strove to drive away, the other thoughts; although the theory, regarding the night of Sibylla’s return, was the favourite theory of Lady Verner. Altogether, I say, circumstances were not very favourable towards Lucy’s plan of forgetting him.

  Lady Verner’s carriage — the most fascinating carriage in all Deerham, with its blue and silver appointments, its fine horses, all the present of Lionel — conveyed them to the house of Dr. West. Lady Verner would not have gone otherwise than in state, for untold gold. Distance allowing her, for she was not a good walker, she would have gone on foot, without attendants, to visit the Countess of Elmsley and Lady Mary; but not Sibylla. You can understand the distinction.