Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  Capricious or not, she was a beautiful old woman to look at; something like her brother John, who had been one of the handsomest men of his day; her daughter and grand-daughter, both women of singular beauty and personal grace, inherited their looks and carriage from her. Clear-skinned, with pure regular features, and abundant bright white hair (it turned suddenly some ten years after this date, in the sixtieth of her age), she was a study for old ladies. People liked to hear her talk; she was not unwilling to gratify them. At one time of her life, she had been known to say, her tongue got her into some trouble, and her style of sarcasm involved her in various unpleasant little differences and difficulties. All that was ever said against her she managed somehow to outlive, and at fifty and upwards she was generally popular, except, indeed, with religious and philanthropic persons. These, with the natural instinct of race, smelt out at once an enemy in her. At sight of her acute attentive smile and reserved eyes a curate would become hot and incoherent, finally dumb; a lecturer nervous, and voluble to the last.

  II

  The two children of Mr. John Cheyne enjoyed somewhat less of their aunt’s acquaintance and care than did her grandchildren, or even her other nephew, Lord Cheyne’s politico-philanthropic son and successor. They were brought up in the quietest way possible; Clara with a governess, who took her well in hand at an early age, and kept her apart from all influence but her own; Frank under the lazy kind incurious eyes of his father, who coaxed him into a little shaky Latin at his spare hours, with a dim vision before him of Eton as soon as the boy should be fit. Lord Cheyne now and then exchanged visits with his brother, but not often; and the children not unnaturally were quite incapable of appreciating the earnest single-minded philanthropy of the excellent man — their father hardly relished it more than they did. But there was one man, or boy, whom John Cheyne held in deeper and sincerer abhorrence than he did his brother; and this was his brother’s son. Mr. Cheyne called between whiles at his uncle’s, but was hardly received with a decent welcome. A clearer sighted or more speculative man than John Cheyne would have scented a nascent inclination on his nephew’s part towards his daughter. There was a sort of weakly weary gentleness of manner in the young philanthropist which the girl soon began to appreciate. Clara showed early enough a certain acuteness, and a relish of older company, which gave promise of some practical ability. At thirteen she had good ideas of management, and was a match for her father in most things. But she could not make him tolerate his nephew; she could only turn his antipathy to profit by letting it throw forward into relief her own childish friendliness. There was the composition of a good intriguer in the girl from the first; she had a desirable power of making all that could be made out of every chance of enjoyment. She was never one to let the present slip. Few children have such a keen sense as she how infinitely preferable is the smallest limping skinny half-moulted sparrow in the hand to the fattest ortolan in the bush. She was handsome too, darker than her father’s family; her brother had more of the Cheyne points about him. Frank was not a bad sort of boy, quiet, idle, somewhat excitable and changeable, with a good deal of floating affection in him, and a fund of respect for his sister. Lady Midhurst, after one of her visits (exploring cruises in search of character, she called them), set him down in a decisive way as “ flat, fade, wanting in spice and salt; the sort of boy always to do decently well under any circumstances, to get creditably through any work he might have to do; a fellow who would never tumble because he never jumped; well enough disposed, no doubt, and not a milksop exactly — certain to get on comfortably with most people, if there were not more of his father latent in the boy than she saw yet; whereas, if he really had inherited anything of her brother John’s headstrong irresolute nature, she was sure he had no strong qualities to counterbalance or modify it.”

  Lady Midhurst rather piqued herself on this exhaustive elaborate style of summary; and had, indeed, a good share of insight and analytic ability. Her character of Frank was mainly unfair; but that quality of “always doing well enough under any circumstances - the boy really had in some degree: a rather valuable quality too. His aunt would have admitted the value of it at once; but he was not her sort, she would have added; she liked people who made their own scrapes for themselves before they fell into them, and then got out without being fished for. Frank would get into trouble sometimes, no doubt, but he would just slip in. Now it was always better to fall than to slip. You got less dirty, and were less time about it; besides, an honest tumble was less likely to give you a bad sprain. This philosophic lady had a deep belief in the discipline of circumstances, and was disposed to be somewhat more than lenient towards any one passing (not unsoiled) through his time of probation and training. Personally, at this time, Frank was a fair, rather short boy, with light hair and grey eyes, usually peaceable and amiable in his behaviour; his sister, tall, brown, thin, with clear features, and something of an abrupt decisive air about her. They had few friends, and saw little company; Captain Harewood, who in former days had been rather an intimate of John Cheyne’s, hardly ever now rode over to see his ex-friend; not that he had any quarrel with the uncle of his divorced wife, but he now scarcely ever stirred out or sought any company beyond a few professional men of his own stamp and a clergyman or two, having lately taken up with a rather acrid and dolorous kind of religion. Lady Midhurst, one regrets to say, asserted that her enemy made a mere pretence of austerity in principle, and spent his time, under cover of seclusion, in the voluptuous pastime of torturing his unlucky boy and all his miserable subordinates. “The man was always one of those horrid people who cannot live without giving pain; she remembered he was famous for cruelty in his profession, and certainly he had always been the most naturally cruel and spiteful man she ever knew; she had not an atom of doubt he really had some physical pleasure in the idea of others’ sufferings; that was the only way to explain the whole course of his life and conduct.” Once launched on the philosophy of this subject, Lady Midhurst went on to quote instances of a like taste from history and tradition. As to the unfortunate Captain Harewood, nothing could be falser than such an imputation; he was merely a grave, dry, shy, soured man, severe and sincere in his sorrowful distaste for company. Perhaps he did enjoy his own severity and moroseness, and had some occult pleasure in the sense that his son was being trained up sharply and warily; but did not a boy with such blood in his veins need it?

  Thus there was one source of company cut off, for the first years of their life, from the young Cheynes. The only companion they were usually sure of was not much to count on in the way of amusement, being a large, heavy, solitary boy of sixteen or more, a son of their neighbour on the left — Mr. Radworth, of Blocksham. These Radworths were allies of old Lord Cheyne’s, who had a great belief in the youth’s genius and promise. He had developed, when quite young, a singular taste and aptitude for science, abstract and mechanical; had carried on this study at school in the teeth of his tutors and in defiance of his school-fellows, keeping well aloof from all other learning and taking little or no rest or relaxation. His knowledge and working power were wonderful; but he was a slow, unlovely, weighty, dumb, grim sort of fellow, and had already overtasked his brain and nerves, besides ruining his eyes. He never went anywhere but to the Cheynes’, and there used to pay a dull puzzled homage to the girl, who set very light by him. There was always a strong flavour of the pedant and the philistine about Ernest Radworth, which his juniors were of course quick enough to appreciate.

  Mr. John Cheyne, though on very fair terms with his sister, did not visit the Stanfords; he had never seen his niece since the time of the divorce; Lady Midhurst was the only member of the household at Ashton Hildred who ever came across to his place. The two children hardly knew the name of their small second cousin, Amicia Stanford; she was a year younger than Frank Cheyne, and the petted pupil of her grandmother. Mrs. Stanford, a gentle handsome woman, placid and rather shy in her manner, gave the child up wholly to the elder lady’s care, and spent her days chi
efly in a soft sleepy kind of housekeeping. A moral observer would have deplored the evident quiet happiness of her life. She never thought at all about her first husband, or the three years of her life which Lady Midhurst used to call her pre-Stanford period, except on those occasions when her mother broke out with some fierce reference to Captain Harewood, or some angry expression of fondness for his son. Then Mrs. Stanford would cry a little, in a dispassionate graceful manner; no doubt she felt at times some bitter tender desire and regret towards the first of her children, gave way between whiles to some unprofitable memory of him, small sorrows that had not heart enough in them to last long. At one time, perhaps, she had wept away all the tears she had in her; one may doubt if there ever had been a great store of them for grief to draw upon. She was of a delicate impressible nature, but not fashioned so as to suffer sharply for long together. If there came any sorrow in her way she dropped down (so to speak) at the feet of it, and bathed them in tears till it took pity on her tender beauty and passed by on the other side without doing her much harm. She was quite unheroic and rather unmaternal, but pleasantly and happily put together, kind, amiable, and very beautiful; and as fond as she could ever be, not only of herself, but also of her husband, her mother, and her daughter. The husband was a good sort of man, always deep in love of his wife and admiration of her mother; never conspicuous for any event in his life but that elopement; and how matters even then had come to a crisis between two such lovers as they were, probably only one person on earth could have told; and this third person certainly was not the bereaved captain. The daughter was from her birth of that rare and singular beauty which never changes for the worse in growing older. She was one of the few girls who have no ugly time. In this spring of 1849 she was the most perfect child of eight that can be imagined. There was a strange grave beauty and faultless grace about her, more noticeable than the more usual points of childish prettiness: pureness of feature, ample brilliant hair, perfect little lips, serious and rounded in shape, and wonderful unripe beauty of chin and throat. Her grandmother, who was fond of French phrases when excited or especially affectionate (a trick derived from recollections of her own French mother and early friends among French relatives — she had a way of saying, “Hein?” and glancing up or sideways with an eye at once bird-like and feline), asserted that “Amy was faite à peindre-faite à croquer-faite à manger de baisers.” The old life-worn philosophic lady seemed absolutely to riot and revel in her fondness for the child. There was always a certain amiably cynical side to her affections, which showed itself by and by in the girl’s training; but the delight and love aroused in her at the sight of her pupil were as true and tender as such emotions could be in such a woman. Lady Midhurst was really very much fonder of her two grandchildren than of any one else alive. Redgie was just her sort of boy, she said, and Amy just her sort of girl. It would have been delicious to bring them up together (education, superintendence, training of character, guidance of habit, in young people, were passions with the excellent lady); and if the boy’s father would just be good enough to come to some timely end —— . She had been godmother to both children, and both were as fond of her as possible. “Enfin!” she said, hopelessly.

  III

  They were to have enough to do with each other in later life, these three scattered households of kinsfolk; but the mixing process only began on a late spring day of 1849, at the country house which Mr. John Cheyne had inherited from his wife. This was a little old house, beautifully set in among orchards and meadows, with abundance of roses now all round it, under the heavy leaves of a spring that June was fast gaining upon. A wide soft river divided the marsh meadows in front of it, full of yellow flag-flowers and moist fen-blossom. Behind, there slanted upwards a small broken range of hills, the bare green windy lawns of them dry and fresh under foot, thick all the way with cowslips at the right time. It was a splendid place for children; better perhaps than Ashton Hildred with its huge old brick-walled gardens and “wonderful fruit-trees blackened and dotted with lumps or patches of fabulous overgrown moss, and wild pleasure-grounds stifled with beautiful rank grass; better decidedly than Lord Cheyne’s big brilliant Lidcombe, in spite of royal shooting-grounds and the admirable slopes of high bright hill-country behind it, green sweet miles of park and embayed lake, beyond praise for riding and boating; better incomparably than Captain Harewood’s place, muffled in woods, with a grim sad beauty of its own, but seemingly knee-deep in sere leaves all the year round, wet and weedy and dark and deep down, kept hold of somehow by autumn in the midst of spring; only the upper half of it clear out of the clutch of winter even in the hottest height of August weather, with a bitter flavour of frost and rain in it all through summer. It was wonderful, Lady Midhurst said, how any child could live there without going mad or moping. She was thankful the boy went to school so young, though no doubt his father had picked out the very hardest sort of school that he decently could select. Anything was better than that horrid wet hole of a place, up to the nose and eyes in black damp woods, and with thick moist copses of alder and birch trees growing against the very windows; and such a set of people inside of it! She used to call there about three times a year, during the boy’s holidays; get him apart from his father and tutor, and give him presents and advice and pity and encouragement of all sorts, mixed with histories of his mother and half-sister, the whole spiced not sparingly with bitter allusions to his father, to which one may fear there was some response now and then on the boy’s part.

  It was after one of these visits that Captain Harewood first brought his son over to his old friend’s. Perhaps he thought at length that the boy might as well see some one about his own age in holiday-time. Reginald was growing visibly mutinous and hard to keep down by preachings and punishments; had begun evidently to wince and kick under the domestic rod. His father and the clerical tutor who came over daily to look after the boy’s holiday task could hardly keep him under by frequent flogging and much serious sorrowful lecturing. He was not a specially fast boy, only about as restless and insubordinate as most fellows at his age; but this was far more than his father was prepared to stand. Let him see some one else outside home than Lady Midhurst; it would do him no harm, and the boy was always vicious, and jibbed frightfully, for some days after his grandmother’s visits. So before the holidays were out the Captain trotted him over to make friends with Mr. Cheyne’s son. The visit was a matter of keen and rather frightened interest to Frank. Clara, on hearing the boy was her junior, made light of it, and was out of the way when Captain Harewood came in with his son. The two boys eyed each other curiously under close brows and with lips expressive of a grave doubt on either side. The visitor was a splendid-looking fellow, lithe and lightly built, but of a good compact make, with a sunburnt oval face, and hair like unspun yellow silk in colour, but one mass of short rough curls; eyebrows, eyes, and eyelashes all dark, showing quaintly enough against his golden hair and bright pale skin. His mouth, with a rather full red under lip for a child, had a look of such impudent and wilful beauty as to suggest at once the frequent call for birch in such a boy’s education. His eyes too had a defiant laugh latent under the lazy light in them. Rather well got-up for the rest and delicately costumed, though with a distinct school stamp on him, but by no means after the muscle-manful type.

  This boy had a short whip in one hand, which was of great and visible comfort to him. To switch his leg in a reflective measured way was an action at once impressive in itself and likely to meet and obviate any conversational necessity that might turn up. No smaller boy could accost him lightly while in that attitude.

  At last, with a gracious gravity, seeing both elders in low-voiced talk, he vouchsafed five valuable words: “I say, what’s your name?” Frank gave his name in with meekness, having a just sense of his relative insignificance. He was very honest and easy to dazzle.