The excursion of ‘Jane’ into society somewhat late in life, was a lesson she had resolved to learn for herself, — and her return to her quiet little home was the natural result of that experience. I shall be satisfied if her brief history has but one effect — that of making my sex see, if only ‘through a glass darkly’ that home is best — and that it is within the scope of every woman, even the poorest, to make whatever home she possesses a happy and useful centre from which may spring noble lives, noble aims and noble results. In our present strange, troubled, and strenuous times women could do much useful work if only they would — but it is not by rushing into the political fray and hampering the business of Government by ignorant and foolish quarrels that they can show their wisdom or exert their influence. Women seldom shine to advantage in political discussions, — and even in their private lives they do not always make the best of themselves. Much is to be said in favour of the men who endure their many moods and vagaries with mute patience, for we cannot deny that there are thousands of mean women, spiteful women, jealous women, petty and childish women, who make their homes unbearable by their quarrels, tempers, sulks and whimsies and by their teasing or ‘nagging’ spirit, — thus giving ample cause for all the caustic witticisms that have ever been launched against our sex from time immemorial by many succeeding generations of male cynics and satirists. There is time and opportunity to remedy all this, — for in these days women are given far better chances of education than they ever had before, — and with careful study, constant reading, and habitual practice of that gracious and gentle self-control which alone can give the perfect manner, ease and distinction of perfect womanhood, the reproaches so often and so justly levelled against us should grow less, if not cease altogether. A loud tongue, a fussy bearing and a heavy tread betoken the female vulgarian, while a soft voice, quiet movements and a light step express the daintiness and delicacy of that fine feminine charm which silently asserts itself to be all that man is not, and which because of its unlikeness to himself man does most admire and worship. Even with the on-coming of years that particular charm never fails to exert a wholesome and refining influence on others, as in the case of ‘Jane’ — for youth, if vulgar and arrogant, loses its attractiveness, while age, if mellowed with the sweet spirit of content, inspires love unconsciously, and attaches to itself a thousand ties of reverence and tenderness which often make the sunset of life more beautiful than the sunrise. So it was with ‘Jane’ — so, let me hope, may it be with every one of my sex who does me the honour of reading Jane’s ‘Social Incident.’
MARIE CORELLI
The original frontispiece
JANE
IT was a very odd thing. Some people declared it was the oddest thing they ever heard of. Nevertheless, odd or even, the fact remained: Jane had resolved to ‘go into Society.’
Now in the ordinary course of fashionable events, ladies are supposed to ‘come out’ when they are seventeen or eighteen. Sometimes they have been known (if we are to believe their own candid statements) to make their curtsey at Court when barely fifteen, and then to have been immediately snapped up by some ardent and impatient bidder in the matrimonial market before they have had time to become sixteen. This accounts, they will tell you with a sweet smile, for the presence of their remarkably mature-looking sons and daughters, while they themselves are still quite young. But Jane would never be able to plead an early entrance into Society in excuse for her age. Jane ‘came out at fifty-seven, and everybody knew it.
Jane, — otherwise known as Miss Jane Belmont, — was a sweet-looking, placid-faced lady of the purely old-fashioned type. She was altogether behind the time in her notions of life, — she was not, and never could be, ‘up to date.’ She had never adopted a ‘cause’ or developed a ‘mission.’ Living in the country all her life as she had done, she was a creature of simple habits and equable disposition, with a warm, generous heart of her own, and all the fine instincts and characteristics of the perfect gentlewoman. She was quite contented with the world as she found it, — she thought it a very beautiful world, and every morning and evening she closed her gentle blue eyes in a quiet ravishment of earnest prayer, and asked the great Creator of all things to make her more and more thankful for the blessing and high privilege of life.
Here it will at once be seen how ignorant and foolish Jane was. If she had known better, — if she had read her modern magazines properly, and if she had followed the tenor of ‘progressive’ thought, she would of course have realised that Science had proved to its own entire satisfaction that there was no Creator at all to be thankful to, and that life was now discovered to be such a poor thing at best as to be only fit for frittering away or grumbling at.
But Jane never read any magazines. She was a curious woman in some things; and one of her fixed ideas was that no literature could be good or reliable which was too cheap. So she paid her threepence for the Times every morning religiously, and never read anything in it except the telegrams, which were quite sufficient to keep her fairly cognisant of the greater doings of the human race at large. Of the ‘little doings,’ — the fashionable scandals, the silly rumours, the ridiculously trifling incidents of Court and Society which are so frequently served up as ‘news ‘to a jaded and contemptuous public, she knew nothing whatever. And in consequence of her lack of better information she lived on in the peaceful belief that God was good, that the world was a very pleasant place, that life and health were excellent things, and that men and women were, taken altogether, much more full of virtue than of vice. And thus a lovely benevolence ennobled her features and made them attractive, despite the wrinkling of the pale, delicate skin near the eyes and mouth, — the inward grace of charity gave lustre to her calm eyes and bestowed a magic brightness on the silver threads in her soft parted hair, — and there was not a man, woman, or child in the village where she dwelt that would not have willingly testified to the sweetness of her smile. It was a smile that warmed the heart and lingered in the memory, — and young girls who came with their mothers to call on that old maid,’ as some of them profanely styled her before they knew her, went away charmed and enthralled by Jane and her beautiful manners, carrying bouquets of roses she had herself gathered and given to them, with kind and pretty words, from her own carefully kept and deliciously scented garden, where all the ‘old-fashioned’ flowers grew in profusion, making a paradise of enchantment for bees, butterflies, and singing-birds.
Ashleigh-in-the-Dell was a charming little English village nestling among hills and sheltered by deep woodlands, and there Jane had lived ever since her earliest childhood. Her father had been the rector of the parish, and had died full of years and honours after a well-spent, useful life in which he had conscientiously striven to do his utmost best to follow the Divine teaching of the Divinest Teacher the world has ever seen or ever will see. And when the new rector was installed, Jane, finding herself possessed of a sufficient income whereon to live becomingly, if simply, purchased the cottage where she now dwelt, which for some private reason of her own she called ‘Restful Harbour.’ There she stayed year after year, without taking any change or seeming to require one. She had no recollection of her mother, who had died early; though there was a picture of her in the charming drawing-room of ‘Restful Harbour’ which Jane was fond of looking at because it was a beautiful face, — almost the face of what one might expect an angel to be. “That was my mother,” she would say to the inquiring visitor. And on one such occasion, when a caller, wishing to be complimentary, replied, “You are very like her,” Jane flushed with surprise and answered eagerly, “Oh, no! I was never in the least like her. She was a great beauty, I have heard, — and I was always plain.”
Occasionally, on winter evenings, when news was scarce and there was nothing particular to talk about, some of the people at Ashleigh-in-the-Dell would rummage their memories to try and recall whether in bygone times Jane had ever been in love. She had not always been elderly, — she was certainly young once. What di
d she do when she was young? What was she like? Nobody had a very distinct impression. She had been the dispenser of her father’s bounties to the poor of the neighbourhood, — but she had always maintained such an unobtrusive demeanour that as a matter of fact her quiet presence in the village had grown to be as much a portion of it as the sunshine that beamed upon it or the flowers that grew in its meadows. And after her father’s death she became less noticeable than ever; she was just ‘Miss Jane,’ or ‘Old Miss Belmont,’ by whichever name her neighbours affected to call her, and there her individuality appeared to end. She was one of those unimportant persons against whom there is nothing to be said, — one who is neither rich, nor powerful, nor good-looking enough to create envy in the hearts of others or set scandalous tongues gossiping. She lived her life in undisturbed seclusion, doing a great deal of good in her own simple way, and having no particular ‘hobby’ or ‘fad’ except an artistic taste for old china and a great tenderness for mignonette. Mignonette bordered her garden wherever a border was possible — great vases of it were daily arranged in her rooms, and the sweet fragrance of it seemed to be distilled from every breath of air that blew over ‘Restful Harbour.’ But beyond the old china and the mignonette, Jane had no desires and apparently no ambition.
Taking all these premises of Jane’s uneventful history into due consideration, it was not wonderful that the village of Ashleigh-in-the-Dell should experience a violent thrill, somewhat of the nature of an earthquake or a thunder-clap, when it heard the news that Jane had all at once become a great heiress in her own right, — and that from henceforth her yearly income would average nearly twenty thousand pounds. A relative of whom she had never heard, a cousin of her beautiful dead mother, had suddenly gone to his account, leaving everything he possessed to “Jane Belmont, only daughter of the late Reverend Hugh Belmont and of his wife, Janet Evelyn Pierpont, first cousin to me the testator.” She, — Jane, — was the Jane Belmont in question, — so she was told by the two legal gentlemen who called in person one day at ‘Restful Harbour’ to break the good news to her gently. “For,” said they with much feeling, looking round the simple little country parlour she called her drawing-room, “it must be very overwhelming for you!”
But Jane was not exactly overwhelmed; true, a few tears trickled down her cheeks, and her thin, well-shaped white hands trembled a little, but otherwise she showed no sign of feverish excitement.
“What am I to do with all this money?” she asked with a touch of sorrow in her voice as she put the question.
“Spend it, my dear madam! Spend it!” exclaimed one of the legal gentlemen, smiling at her naïveté. “That is, spend the interest and reserve the capital. Amuse yourself, — go about the world a little — enjoy your life!”
“I have always enjoyed it,” said Jane, simply.
“Well, well, enjoy it a little more! Money can do anything for you; you can have a fine house, a carriage and pair, a box at the opera, plenty of dresses and jewels, — in fact, everything in the world is at your disposal. You have only to express a wish and you have the means to gratify it.”
A bewildered look shadowed Jane’s peaceful countenance, and she folded her delicate hands together more closely, to hide their nervous trembling.
“I am too old for such pleasures, sir,” she said gently.
“Too old! Nonsense, my dear madam!” And the lawyer quite bounced in his chair at the very suggestion. “I never heard of such a thing! Nobody is old in our days, — nobody ever intends to be old. I know a lady of your age who passes very well for thirty at this very moment — in fact, she is much more lively and smart than she was in her teens. With your fortune, I assure you, my dear Miss Belmont, that you can have a very pleasant time of it, ah! and I shouldn’t wonder if you made a very excellent marriage!”
Jane’s pale cheeks flushed a shamed soft pink.
“Please do not jest with me,” she said, the quiet dignity of her voice and manner rather confusing her legal visitors, who began to feel they had been guilty of an impertinence—” I hope I know better than to marry at my time of life.”
The legal gentlemen protested they had meant no harm, and duly apologised for their indiscretion. They left her, — somewhat troubled in their own minds as to what she thought of them. Going back in the train to London from Ashleigh-in-the-Dell, one said to the other, —
“I wonder what she will do?” And the other replied, —
“Something quite unusual, you may be sure! I shouldn’t wonder if she made her mark in Society.” Now when the news of Jane’s inheritance reached to that almost inaccessible and exclusive point of social altitude represented by the Squire and his wife and daughters, who were the one ‘county family’ in residence at Ashleigh-in-the-Dell, it was made the subject of a solemn and general palaver. The Squire himself, who had never called on ‘old Miss Belmont,’ said he must ‘leave a card’ — the Squire’s lady signified her intention of doing the same; and the Squire’s daughters observed with much graceful tenderness that they would take a basket of hothouse grapes to ‘dear Miss Belmont.’ And a lady who was staying with the Squire on a visit — the Honourable Mrs. Maddenham, a personage understood to be of immense influence at Court and much liked by all Great People (by which phrase we nowadays understand the Great of Purse and not the Great of Heart), said she would like nothing better than to be introduced to such an ‘interesting’ person as Miss Belmont. Introduced she was accordingly, — and at once fastened on Jane as pertinaciously as a blood-sucking gadfly. Everywhere Jane went, there would the affectionate Mrs. Maddenham also go. Jane was her ‘sympathy,’ she declared; for ages she had been looking for a woman in all points resembling Jane. Jane must love her because she loved Jane! It was an ‘affinity’ of souls.’ And curious to relate, after a very little while, Mrs. Maddenham completely dominated and took possession of Jane.
Now up to this time ‘old Miss Belmont’ had been credited, rightly or wrongly, with the quality of ‘having a will of her own,’ but with the advent of the honourable Mrs. Maddenham she appeared to resign herself to the force of circumstances, and most meekly to do whatever Mrs. Maddenham bade her. It was Mrs. Maddenham who impressed her with the fact that she must ‘go into Society,’ — and ‘into Society’ Jane plunged accordingly. Accompanied by Mrs. Maddenham, she left Ashleigh-in-the-Dell, — handing over ‘Restful Harbour’ with all its china and mignonette to the care of her gardener and his wife, who were charged with the business of keeping it clean and in order. Without a tear or a sigh she turned her back on the pretty village which had been her home for years, and went by tearing, snorting, smoking, grinding express to London. Within that huge vortex, Jane, like a helpless wooden dummy, disappeared under the wild and whirling wing of the Honourable Mrs. Maddenham. And for some time she seemed drowned, lost, and gone for ever: — when suddenly she emerged from the seething whirlpool of Fashion with three white feathers on her dear old head and a long silver-grey train, trimmed with wonderful lace, pendant from her shoulders, which, by-the-bye, were still shapely, and would bear showing in daylight, — for Jane was a well-made woman, with a white skin. In this guise, and with some qualms of uneasy shame concerning these same shoulders, Jane made her curtsey to one of the convenient representatives of absent Majesty on Drawing-Room Day, and her appearance was duly chronicled in the fashionable-news among the presentations thus: “Miss Jane Belmont, by the Honourable Mrs. Maddenham.” Then it was that people began to talk and say, “What an odd thing!” The natives of Ashleigh-in-the-Dell improved this statement by adding “that it was the oddest thing they ever heard of!” Jane had ‘gone into Society,’ — she had ‘come out!’ — and not only had she ‘come out,’ but she had been sketched in the Lady’s Pictorial in her Court gown — with a waist of sixteen inches, the contour of a broomstick, and the head of a noodle. But that was the fault of the Court modiste who made her gown. The Court modiste had put the gown on one of her ‘collapsible’ wire frames, and had turned the ‘collapsible’ roun
d and round like a tee-to-tum for the delectation of the fashion-paper artist — and he or she had sketched it, as every sort of costume is sketched in the pictorials, with nothing of figure, but all of millinery. And seeing poor Jane thus stuck up for show, Ashleigh-in-the-Dell was, as it were, convulsed — and worthy persons, who had known Jane for years, shook their heads and said “Can it be possible?”
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 926