Old Acquaintance

Front matter

OLD ACQUAINTANCE OLD ACQUAINTANCE s;Y MRS. BROTHERTON LONDON SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1874 All rights reserved gfbicatmn To A. E. THACKERAY Dearest Annie. V In, our ' careless-ordered garden' here, among the tawny wall-flowers, I have often picked you a common nose gay hardly worth the trouble of carrying home. But you hame always taken it, and said you liked it, in that way of yours and that voice of yours much sweeter than floivers. Eere is another poor nosegay which I think you will also accept, and like a little, because an old friend gathered it for you. Mary Brotherton. Hookhill. Freshwater. I. W.. 1871. Mt thanks are due to those gentlemen who have given me permission to reprint the following Stories and Sketches. M. B. CONTENTS.

Part I. Contributions Of The Rev

C. FRESHE. JOENS WIFE. My brother John was born fifteen years before me, and my earliest recollection of him is connected in my mind with the costume of a midshipman in the Royal Navy, to which institution he belonged. Our father died when I was just old enough to shout with pride at my black clothes, new from top to toe. He was a clergyman, with a tolerable living in Devonshire. For some years I was always suspected of going into a decline, and never actually went. But I lost my poor mother, who faded away in a consumption when I was a puny lad of sixteen. She had hold of John's fingers, and pressed them quite strongly not five minutes before she died, and gasped, ' John, John, take care of my boy for me.' I was there, too, with my face down on the counterpane, and her other hand on my head.

John did take care of me, God knows. He was not *B married then, but he took me home to all the home he could give me, a little lodging at Plymouth. He was a lieutenant on board the flagship there. Our landlady was the sweetest, foolish old creature, who only wanted wings to be an angel or a goose. She coddled me so unmercifully that I came out of her hands twice as puny as I went into them. In-doors and out, night and day, she insisted on my living in a dreadful respi rator, that covered my nose as well as my mouth, and made me dream that I was the Man in the Iron Mask. At last John came one day and told me that he was 'made,' which, it seems, is the naval for be coming the next thing to what an officer happens to be ; after which, it appears that he is immediately taken to pieces again, as the same expression is used on every subsequent similar occasion.

If ever a man looked just made, and as bright as a new penny, John did when he added, with an honest red in his face, that he was going to be married directly to Elizabeth Mackenzie. I knew that he had been engaged to her for almost two years. Well, I was eighteen by this time, and felt that I must not be a great baby on my brother's hands any more. So I shook hands with him and said, ' John, I am glad with all my heart for you, aud God bless you and Elizabeth ; and now, I'll — I'll do something, and be something, like a man, and take care of myself in future, as a man ought.' John clapped me once or twice gently on the shoulder with out saying a word, and then turned away suddenly to stir the fire. But in the little lookine--°lass over the chimney-piece I saw his good, sunburnt, square face, and two or three tears were running down it.

Then I felt, just the same as if he had told me, that I was not likely to be a care and trouble to my dear old Jack much longer. About three months after his marriage I caught a great cold, in consequence of leaving off my respirator one lovely spring day, and had an inflammation of the lungs. But John's -wife was a capital nurse, and helped me, as John expressed it, to weather the doctors. And then I really seemed to get better every hour, as if that illness had been the curing of me, or perhaps the great concluding crash of the thunderstorm that had threatened and growled at me all my life. However, one day, John's wife came up to my sofa and said, ' Charley, how shall you like to go to Italy for a year or two ? because we are going to take you, whether you like it or not. The new doctor says all you want is warm air and plenty of it, and that in a hot climate you'll get as strong as an Irish porter.' ' Stouter than Dublin stout,' suggested John, who was having some for luncheon.

Cheerfully as they did it, they sacrificed a great deal more, and in more ways than I had the least idea of, to their troublesome sick lad. If I had known this, I hope I should not have taken it all so easily as I did. But I had been petted and poor-Charley'd all my life, you see, till every thing every body did for me came a good deal too much as a matter of course. To be saved the necessity of taking thought for oneself is curiously apt to make one take all the more. In the first place, John gave up the little cottage he was going to buy near his wife's father. Colonel Mackenzie was a widower, almost eighty, and very infirm ; and Elizabeth, who was his only un married child, had left him at last to marry John, in the full belief that they were still to live close to gether. But John ' took care ' of my mother's boy, and carried him to Italy, and John's wife went with John ; and while she was far away, the poor old man died in a servant's arms.

Hereabouts, my recollections seem to take very pictureful forms. The little voyage from Marseilles to Naples, for instance. I sit, in gorgeous blue weather, on the deck of a steamer, as it pants through the b summer sea, past great shadowy mountain shores. My heart feels brimful, and I can't help crying, though I was never so exquisitely happy before. John's wife is afraid the excitement will hurt me. Not a bit — but, on the contrary, shoots quite a new sort of healthy life into my poor young bones and blood. Just after a refidgent sunset, the first of June, we came to a full stop in the bay. A broad rosy blush overspreads half the heavens, dyeing the silvery water and the quays and the moving throngs. I see Vesuvius stand up, thwarted by a golden cloud, which slowly draws past from the purple peaks and the lucid sky.

Before we had been at Naples three months, I felt perfectly well. I had fairly come out of that prison of invalidism, and held up my head in the sun, and blessed God under the blue. The extremest heat and blaze of the southern summer did me nothing but good ; no amount of thermometer put me down ; I basked like a lizard, and chirped as impudently as a cicada. I bathed, I boated, I drew crooked sketches, and I wrote lame and dismal verses, after the manner of young persons blessed with exuberant spirits. We knew several pleasant people that happened to be at Naples, and so found a ready-made little society, that fitted us perfectly. But now John's wife had fallen ill, or, if not ill, into what I may call a state of nerves. She was always irritable when she was not gloomy. Her nice clear-cut face grew hatchety, and her bright black eyes dim and red-rimmed, or wild and miserably eager.

John was wretched, and sent for a doctor, who disinterestedly advised change of air. Now, when the doctor had given this prescription, we couldn't just ring the bell that day after dinner and desire the courier to be sent up, and, when he came, say to him, ' 0 Pipo, we are going to Jerusalem (or Jersey) to-morrow. Settle everything, you know and have the carriage at the door by half-past ten. And 0, Pipo, here's a hundred pounds, you know.' And when he had put them into his leathern pouch and vanished, go to bed and to sleep while the servants sat up all night to pack. We couldn't, because we had no carriages, nor couriers with leathern pouches, nor himdred pounds to put in them. When we wanted change of air, or indeed any thing, we had first to con sider if we coidd get it at all, and then the cheapest way.

Our pecuniary circumstances were, to speak delicately, the reverse of illimitable ; and just now they were particularly straitened, for the journey from England and a rather expensive lodging (all for me), had nearly stranded us, John said, till next quarter day. I hope we shall not be contemned for having a small income ; I am sure we would have a larger one if we could. John's wife looks very dignified when on this subject, and says if we have not money we have blood. Not that I can see the point of her observation, for I am positive there exists not the sanguinary and eccentric baker (for instance) who would accept, in differently, the fluid in question for 8s. 1 l^d., the amount of our last week's bread-bill. However, I know John's wife would be vexed if I did not mention that her mother was a niece of the Countess of Cocker nony, and her grandmother — I'm not sure, though I have been told so often — but I rather think her grand mother was a bishopess.

At all events, I can distinctly affirm that John's wife, by-her-self-John's-wife, is one of the dearest and best little women in the world, and one of the best gentlewomen too, except when she bothers about Lady Cockernony and the bishopess. Yet, after all, I don't see how she can help it, being a Scotch woman. But ah ! John's wife had a worse flaw than that in her fine porcelain. She had the flaw of a jealous temper. I found this out long before John did. The first time she had a fit of it after her marriage I thought she was in fun, and laughed at her. But I soon discovered that sport to me was death to her, and then I grew serious enough ; tor I saw how the small black cloud, no bigger than a man s hand, threatened to swallow up the whole heaven of this dear couple. At first Elizabeth (as she has since confessed), simply felt jealous of every woman John spoke to ; and she had frequent little passing attacks of suspicion, that made squally domestic weather.

It would have sorely tried any temper less sweet, and any affection less unselfish, than John's. But I believe he never, even at the worst, quite comprehended her un happy disease. I have seen him stand looking at her with the purest anxiety clouding his kind face ; and when she answered his tender inquiries sullenly, or pushed him away if he tried to kiss her, or sarcas tically bade him seek the society he preferred, he would stand looking at her again, piteously — that great strong John — like a child that its mother snubs. At last Elizabeth pounced on a particular object to convert into food for her green-eyed monster. This was Kitty Haile, a little invalid girl of sixteen, the daughter of an old naval friend of John's. Captain Haile had married late in life, and was a widower. He seemed passionately fond of his only child, this poor little white-faced Kitty.

No doubt she suffered a good deal from the mysterious bone complaint, on account of which they had been visiting the baths of Ischia ; but I own I thought her a peevish, petulant little creature, although rather pretty, and admired the heavenly patience and tenderness of her dear old father. In short, she did not like me much, nor I her. She took a great fancy at first to John's wife, who also at first bestowed a good deal of sincere compassion on the poor child ; until John himself came to be very much with little Kitty, who had known him all her life and called him Uncle John, and probably perceived very little difference as to age between him and her father. He, for his part, often came to fetch John, that he might coax her into following some medical injunction which his own entreaty seemed only to set her against.

The fond old captain used to talk of her very much as if she were six months old, and fractious in teething, calling her his Peetums-keetums, his Pitsy-itsy-kitsy, and such like, which annoyed the girl, probably because she was a babyish little thing. John, pitying both, did all he could to soothe and occupy the fretful little sufferer. He taught her chess ; and many a time she sent her father for Uncle John, with a peremptory message that the men were waiting, and so was she. John seldom refused to obey her sum mons, though any one in their senses might have seen he could hardly have gone to amuse himself. But his wife was not in her senses, and every day brought fresh aggravation to her insanity. She herself had quite left off visiting Kitty Haile ; and that little damsel, resenting the neglect (and never dreaming of the cause), used to abuse her to me as much as she dared, pitying poor Uncle John for having married such a cross old thing.

N.B. Elizabeth was twenty-six. It was while family matters were in this state that John, to give his wife what change he could, determined that we should go to Capri. So one afternoon, late in August, we get into a boat with four oars and a striped awning, and travel swiftly across the windless bay. Our mariners stand up on the seats and row with lithe and lusty strokes, their faces set towards Capri. Their picturesque attitudes, the Indian swartness of their half-naked limbs, their loose white drawers and bright-coloured woollen caps, complete the gorgeous picture around us. Sometimes they sing in low voices, sometimes chatter and grin, half-turning dark faces a-glitter with eyes and teeth. Soon the superb and lovely isle rears itself before us. Enormous precipices, dove-coloured, changeable, softly, shadowy with azure glooms that mitigate the golden dazzle.

On the right, the huge peak of Anacapri ; on the left, the lion-like promontory called the Rock of Tiberius ; and in the middle hollow, yet far above the beach, the little town of Capri. All the heights and depths of the mountains are dark with vast thickets of myrtle, arbutus, and bay, or bright with vine-garlands among the figs and pomegranates. While we are still a yard or two from the marina, a dozen fish-wives, plunging up to their knees in the transparent water, hold out strong brown arms of assistance. They haul in the boat, they haul us out, they lug forth our luggage, and two sturdy nereids, hoisting trunk and carpet-bag on their heads, stride up to yonder little hotel on the cliff to the right. We follow, climbing a steep path, diverg ing presently down a garden, through an entry, and coming out on a charming loggia.

The hotel is but a tiny villa on a shelf of the cliff. It has five or six bed rooms, two of which open by glass doors on this covered loggia, which is the common parlour. And over the parapet of this loggia, adorned with great pots of pink clustering oleanders, I behold all the bay, and, right in front, Vesuvius robed in sunset. And, leaning on the parapet, I can see the variegated pebbles, rocks, and seaweed at the bottom of the green and purple water below. John is paying the boatmen and the nereids, aDd bargaining with the landlord. Elizabeth has been in specting the two bedrooms opening on the loggia, which we have secured. Now she comes out of the larger one, crying, ' Cameriera ! Cameriera ! ' A lame, dismal young man, with lank black hair and moustache, who appears to have something on his mind, limps up through a trapdoor from an underground reoion.

He is all the chambermaid Elizabeth will get. He is also we subsequently learn, the waiter and the cook and most likely the washerwoman. He limps to the glass doors, and I follow. Elizabeth points to a little smoky evil-odoured lamp, underneath a sixpenny coloured print of the Madonna in a wooden frame. ' Take it awav ' says Mrs. Freshe decidedly ; ' non mi va.' The chambermaid with the lank moustache pauses a moment before he obeys, then slowly lifts the lamp and limps off with it, muttering something, — possibly an apology to the Madonna. And when we have been here about a week, we, sitting in the loggia one day, perceive Donino, the chambermaid, limp into Elizabeth's room, and presently limp out again. On his return we observe that he has got the sixpenny Madonna under his arm, and we ask what he is going to do with that pictorial gem.

Donino replies moodily, ' 'Cellenzi, she has now been eight days without her lamp. She will bear it no longer. There is no end to the crockery broken in this house.' In a short time John's wife became wonderfully re stored. Her appearance and spirits recovered all their cheerful charm. No doubt she throve on the savage natural beauty and savage island air about her, but chiefly on the absence of all opportunity for self torment. Then one night late, and quite unexpectedly, arrived Captain Haile from Naples. He had been there all alone for a week past, detained by business ; his daughter was with some female friends at Salerno. He had taken them by water round the Gulf, and had then been obliged to return to Naples. His daughter wished to remain at Salerno a few weeks, fancying herself better there ; and he was now on his way to visit her, although he could only be absent two nights.

En route he had come to Capri, to beg that John would accompany him. Indeed he showed us a note from his little spoilt Kitty, ordering him to bring Uncle John, or not dare to show his own face. I needed but a glance at Elizabeth to discover that the evil spirit clutched her poor heart again more fiercely than ever. She got up and went into her room, and appeared no more. But it was already so late that her absence excited no remark. It was settled that Captain Haile and John should start next morning at sunrise, and thus reach Salerno by about mid-day. They would remain there the following night, and return to Capri early the day after. We then sepa rated, Captain Haile going to one of the little bed rooms, fortunately vacant, and John to his own room. I remained awhile, leaning over the parapet, enjoying the balmy September dark, into which the approaching moon-rise seemed to flow perceptibly.

It was two or three nights past full moon ; and while I watched the faint glow broaden and brighten where she was coming up over the Rock of Tiberius, I was startled by John's voice, loud and stern, within his own room. The glass doors were not closed, and I had heard, without heeding, the sound of talk there for some time. But now John spoke as I had never heard him speak before, and this is what he called out — ' Retract what you have said !' and then louder still, ' they are shameful words — retract them ! ' Then Elizabeth came out, a darting white figure, and John strode after her. It was quite light enough now to see them. He came in front of her, and put his hands on her arms, and so held her, while she writhed, uttering stifled ejaculations. He did not speak till she stood still, and then he only said, ' My wife, you must retract those words.' She endeavoured again to wrench herself away, and muttered resentfully, ' You hurt me — you hurt me, sir.' 'You know I can't intend that,' said he, and pre sently added, in a voice that now trembled and was tender, ' 0 my wife, my wife ! you could not mean it ; you cannot persist.

It must be your pride that holds out. . . . Well, I was too rough with you; but, my girl, they were shameful words, unworthy of you and of me.' Elizabeth slipped out of his hold, now relaxed, gave him a scornful little push on the breast, and ran from him. She turned on the threshold ofher room and cried : ' Go to the little wanton who is worthy of you ! And I wish to God I had never seen your face, and I wish to God I might never see it more.' That was what she said, the poor frantic thing. She entered the bedroom and shut herself in, audibly bolting the doors. John stood still where she had left him, except that by a quick movement he covered his eyes with one hand. Then I ran up and seized the other. ' 0 John, John,' I said, ' don't mind ; it will be all right when she has time to think.' He answered nothing ; but when he uncovered his face I saw that it had lost its softer expression, and had even a touch of disgust.

I saw that he was profoundly pondering on what had past, and I could partly under stand how it must have embittered his loyal and tender nature. The shock must, indeed, have been severe to him, who had never even remotely guessed at those frantic suspicions and evil fancies which had long filled his wife's heart with poison — poison that had now run over at her lips. He put up his hand to stop me when I began to speak again, and presently asked me to leave him and go to bed ; he would come to my room shortly. When he did so, he rolled up a great coat for a pillow, and stretched himself quietly on the floor. At dawn I thought he was asleep, when I got up and went into the loggia. There I saw Elizabeth, sitting motion less, a shawl covering her head, staring over the parapet. She never turned her face, though she must have heard us both come out, for John immediately followed me.

The sun was now rising, and the tenderest pink and azure began to run into the lovely pearly world before us. I saw a hope come and die in John's eyes as he caught sight of his wife, and as he perceived that she steadily averted her face when he passed her to go and dress in his room. Presently he reappeared, ready with his overcoat on his arm, and again lingered, with a wistful look she did not see, near Elizabeth's motionless figure. And then Donino, that gloomy gnome, uprose through the trap, bearing a coffee-tray ; and Captain Haile's voice, ' coming ere he came,' was heard in the entry. John went a few steps to meet him, and Eliza beth, drawing her shawl closer over her face, ran across the loggia, bolting herself once more into her bedroom. In a quarter of an hour they were off. I accompanied them to the boat — a gay little toy we had often hired at Naples, and furnished with two boatmen.

Captain Haile proposed my joining the expedition; but I could not have found it in my heart to leave Elizabeth at this moment, and I knew John would have been hurt if I had. He squeezed my hand silently as he jumped in, but good old Captain Haile turned his face, nodded, and sang out as they were gliding off — ' Good bye ; God bless ye, my dear lad.' I like to remember that he did. All that day I saw little of my companion, and I believe she did not speak a single word to me. She was in her own room most of the time, and I, a good deal oppressed by a certain suffocating quality in the atmosphere, spent the afternoon lying on a bench in the loggia, a book on my knees, but my eyes shut. It is a good while ago, but when I think of it I still seem to listen half asleep to the ceaseless sigh of the ripple below, mixed with the pleasant plash of oars, while an aromatic fragrance strikes up on my face from some passing boat, deep laden with fresh-cut myrtle branches, to be stored for winter fuel.

At night, loitering again in the loggia, where, how ever, it was hardly cooler than in my little room, I heard John's wife crying bitterly behind her half-closed doors, and, as I thought, praying. I was so glad, I clapped my hands softly, and thanked God. Next morning the weather was still fair, but more and more stifling as the day grew. Captain Haile and John, accordingto their own calculation, were to be at Capri again early in the afternoon. Elizabeth seemed more cheerful, as if she had squared accounts with her conscience, and was resolved to pay what she owed to the uttermost farthing. She brought her work into the loggia, and we sat silent ; but I saw a cleared-up heart in her handsome dark eyes when she raised them, although the traces of rainy weather were still on their lids. But just at twelve o'clock a deadly gloom crawled over the shining bay and shores.

Then a black blot of cloud spread like the monstrous shadow of a hand over the whole sky, all but two or three lurid streaks, like the divisions of the fingers, that made the dreadful eclipse more portentous. And suddenly, like the very bursting of the gates of hell, the tempest broke, with a ghastly zigzag flare of lightning, and a thunder-crash, and a roaring of wind, that seemed to threaten the world ! It was but the vanguard of a storm so terrific and indescribable that none who have not witnessed the like can properly comprehend the horror of it. As for us, we remained holding by the pillars of the loggia, appalled and bewildered. An inky blinding rack of cloud and rain rushed across, torn by lightning, scourged by the screaming blast. Nothing else was visible except the sea just below, leaping ghastly white in the black ness, tormented into mad rage, churning and breaking and tumbling among the rocks.

And in a short half-hour all this wild war had swept off, suddenly as it overcame ; and the sun broke out gloriously with the last thunder-clap. As if (I thought, being indifferent-poetical,) the demons of the storm had been driven back to their inferno, and the gate slammed after the hindmost, while the angels of light and peace floated back, and magnetized the world with their shining hands. The sunset that evening in a cloudless sky, over a languidly-heaving blue sea, fast falling to a dead calm. John had not returned. His wife and I got up from the dinner we could not eat, and silently reseated ourselves close to the parapet, where we had already sat and watched for many hours of growing terror. We knew that we both thought of that which we dared not face, much less utter. We looked fixedlj towards the barren cliff of Massa, till I believe we both painted on it, more than once, that white sail which was the desire of our hearts.

Twilight fell. No boat had glided towards Capri through that narrow strait between the cliff on the continent and the Rock of Tiberius. But suddenly, behind the doubling folds of the dusk, and already near shore, we perceived a large boat, which might have ap proached over that threshold between the Bay and tne Gulf. Elizabeth started up, clapping her hands with a shriek, and a face that almost brightened the dark. Alas ! in spite of this gathering darkness, my eyes had not deceived me. I had instantly seen that this was not the gay little Neapolitan cockleshell, but a great brown clumsy fishing-boat, unlike as a lumbering cockchafer to a butterfly. The poor wife ! I tried to comfort her. I told her how probable it was that weatherwise seamen would foresee the storm, and delay until it had passed ; that they might still arrive in an hour or two, or at latest to-morrow morning.

All the while my own convictions contradicted my own words, which yet appeared to have most reason on their side. It was past eleven o'clock, when Elizabeth at length left the loggia and went into her room, with a look on her face worse to see than any anguish that can utter itself. She had hardly gone when a slight noise made me turn my head, and I dimly discerned our landlord Don Salvatore, who stood in the doorway of that passage-room which led through the house. ' Tst, tst, Signor,' said he softly, beckoning me. When I went to him I found quite a number of persons assembled in this entry, which was only b>hted by the smoky little lamp now restored to the nose of that unfastidious Madonna. 'Eccellenza,' said Don Salvatore, ' there is sad news for the poor Signora. This worthy person, Tito, at your service, will relate to you the disastrous particulars.' I remember how the man mouthed his words, having that sort of florid, histrionic genius common to his country and class.