Dissolving Views

Front matter

VOL. I. LONDON : PRINTED BV SPOTTIMYOODK AND CO., NKW-HTRKET SOJ'AttK AND PARLIAMENT STREET BY MRS ANDREW LANG ' II faut un peu Ugirement et swperfieiellement couler ce Monde : et le, glisser, non I'enfoncer ' Montaigne, iii. 10 IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1884 All rights reserved DEDICATED TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD JUSTICE BOWEN CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME CHAPTER PAGE I. ELEANOR 1 II. KNIGHTSTON 29 III. ' ALL THE HEAVY CHANGE ' 51 IV. TRISTAN . . . 77 V. IVAN 113 VI. A MODERN MID-DAT CONVERSATION . . . . 149 VII. UNSETTLING 167 VIII. WHAT MISS MAXWELL SAID 199 IX. PARIS 223 X. THE HERO OF A PARAGRAPH 262 XI. BROKEN OFF

Chapter I. Eleanok

' Well, dear, what sort of an afternoon have you had ? ' ' Delightful — the last part, that is, when the Gordon boys came, but at first it was very dull. Mother, I do hate playing lawn-tennis with girls ! They never attend to what they are doing. They will keep talking, and apolo gising for their bad strokes, and entreating somebody to take their place, till I long to throw my racquet at their heads.' VOL. I. B Eleanor Winton looked very fierce and martial as she spoke. She not unfrequently expressed a desire to use her racquet as a tomahawk for the destruction of evil-doers. Now she was leaning back in a low chair, resting comfortably after her game. But there were dangerous remains of energy in Eleanor, as she showed by flicking her racquet to and fro at imaginary shooting balls. As the weapon tapped the floor both Eleanor's action and her style of language might have seemed rather too vigorous for the comfort of her mother, who not only looked, but was, an invalid.

But nervousness was not a malady of Mrs. Winton's. The slow decline of her health had been hidden from Eleanor as much by Mrs. Winton's unfailing spirits as by daily custom, which makes change almost imperceptible. ELEANOR. ' Oh, mother ! ' the girl went on ; ' Katie Russell is going to tbe Gordons. Mayn't I ask her to come here ? I haven't seen her for such an a°;e.' ' Of course you may, dear ; I shall be very glad to see ber. I wonder if she is as devoted to her brother Ivan as ever ? I felt almost inclined to tease her about it when she was here last.' ' She wouldn't have cared if you had,' said Eleanor. ' She laughs at herself a little for her idolatry. I like her to believe in her brother, but if Katie has a fault, it is that all ber geese are swans.' ' You are one of the flock, Eleanor.' ' Oh, yes, I'm a swan ; one of the rarest sort — a black swan ! ' ' Well, believing too much in people is not one of the black swan's faults.' B ' Oh, mother ! ' answered Eleanor, rather hurt, as she always was when this reproach was addressed to her ; ' I'm sure I admire people as much as any one, when there is anything to admire.

But I can't think a man an Adonis because he is moderately good-looking, or a girl a Madame de Sevigne because she can write an amusing letter. There are degrees, you know. I hate people who always talk in the superlative.' Eleanor did not happen to observe that - hate ' was itself rather a superlative ex pression. ' You are nothing if not critical, Eleanor. And Katie is happier than you, because she is ready to make the best of everybody, and does not take every trifle to heart in your violent way. And see, how fond everyone is of her.' ELEANOR , 5 ' Yes, and I don't wonder at it. There is nobody who is half such good company, or so ready to help one. But I could not stand having all those dull people wor shipping me, as they do Katie. The statue of the Goddess would fall down, and crush her adorers.' Mrs. Winton did not continue the discus sion with Eleanor, who, living among rather dull people, was not at all adored by the multi tude.

No one was more loyal than she to her friends, in whom she acknowledged no failings. But outside the circle of her friends, all men and women were fair game for the arrows of this young lady's mockery. Eleanor Winton was a clever girl, but neither so clever as her neighbours believed with trembling, nor so clever as she would fain have thought herself. In the thoughts of a ffirl, which like those of a boy are - long, lonothoughts ,' Eleanor had dreamed of being distinguished in many different ways. Ex perience, brief but conclusive, had shown her, however, that nature had not meant her for a Mrs. Siddons, an Angelica Kauffmann, a Christine Nillson, or a Mrs. Brownhig. Her last effort had been to acquire the knowledge and of course the fame of a female Mezzo fanti. She had waded a little way into Japanese grammar ; had tried to learn the Cyprian syllabary ; had given some of her attention to Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions, and had bought a Coptic dictionary.

But in all these various fields Eleanor had been rather a failure, and her good sense made it impossible for her to ignore the fact. She sighed, and abdicated, one after another, the airy intellectual thrones in the domain of dreams. ELEANOR. 7 It was not that Eleanor lacked perse verance, but she had insight enough to know what she could do and what she could not. Yet, though it was her pride to be considered practical and even a little hard, she had from childhood cherished visions of a future in which she would occupy a prominent place, surrounded by men who, as she liked to ex press, it ' had done something.' Becoming aware at a creditably early age that laurels were out of her own reach, and that she could never ' do something ' extraordinary herself, she dwelt more in her day-dreams on being surrounded by heroes of different kinds.

Why people who had ' done something ' should seek her out, Eleanor did not try to ascertain with prosaic precision. She hoped vaguely to be sought, not so much for what she did as for what she was. And what was she? In that direction there was no limit to imao-ination, which could not here be checked by disenchanting experiment. And what was Eleanor ? To be fair to her, she did not raise her airy towers on the foundation of her beauty. Eleanor was a tall girl and shapely. Her complexion was clear and pale. Not many people had seen Eleanor blush ; one whom chance had thus favoured was reminded of Mr. Browning's ' rose-misted marble.' Her hair was dark, and soft, and thick ; among changing fashions she wore it piled on her head, like a crown. Her features were a little stern, her large grey eyes were grave, but some people were aware that they could be merry and mischievous, and her mother and her friend knew that they could be very tender.

Such was Eleanor Winton to out ward view, ' a maiden,' as Wordsworth says, in ELEANOR. a rather Fijian strain of compliment, * not too bright and good for human nature's daily food.' Eleanor's life had hitherto been passed quietly enough in a house on the outskirts of Knightston, a large Midland town. Mrs. Winton was a widow, not very rich ; her hus band had been a judge in an Indian presidency, and had died, some fifteen years before, in one of the small recurring epidemics of cholera that make many native victims, and now and again take away a European. Two sons were in India, both of them married. Eleanor, the only daughter, was now nearly twenty years of age. Except for one year at school, she had been educated almost entirely by her mother, and by leave to roam in a house full of books, new and old.

Mrs. Winton's own youth had been passed abroad, and thus her daughter had a command of foreign idioms and accents unlike those of French and Italian as known to the young ladies of Knightston. Fortunately for Eleanor's character, Mrs. Winton was a mother in whom much native kindness had not subdued a sense of humour, and she held strong views as to the expediency of letting children develop themselves in their own direction. The maidens of Knightston slip ped placidly along the local groove, and, once ' finished,' left books, and art, and music alone for the rest of their lives. But Eleanor, as we have seen, had a turn for languages, and she still sketched, though she was out of the schoolroom. Mathematics she hated, and she did not like botany. Though a clever girl of this educated age, Eleanor was uninstructed in the anatomy of the common house-fly, and in the domestic arrangements of the snail.

ELEANOR. 11 Never had she been taught to observe the mechanism of life, as exhibited in the person of the unlucky frog. What is science to many young ladies is death to that hapless animal — in the earliest times the involuntary partner of childish sport, and now the martyr of bar barous experiment. Eleanor had never seen a scientific school-mistress show how a pigeon behaves in an exhausted receiver, nor, indeed, would she have allowed the bird to illustrate the laws of nature (by dying) without at tempting a rescue. Of science popularised Eleanor had read this much, and this had been enough. ' I suppose that when the oyster, that sapid and slippery morsel wind is and is gone, like a flash of gustatory summer lightning, glides along the palate, few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of machinery (and going machinery, too) far more complicated than a watch.' * ' Well,' said Eleanor to herself (after deter mining never to eat an oyster), ' if science makes you write like that, and think of swallowing watches before your soup, I will leave science alone.' And although always eager for knowledge, Miss Winton had adhered to this determination.

Thus it will be obvious that her education had been neglected and desultory. Eleanor's sympathies were warm, too, though she did not weep in the abstract for the general troubles of humanity. She did not know, except through the German dic tionary, the meaning of the word Weltschmerz. She did not droop, and refuse food and think amusement wicked, because people were over crowded at the East End. When she went to * Professor Huxley. ELEANOR. the National Gallery — and Eleanor was very fond of pictures — she did not tliink ' how wrong of me to enjoy them, when the man with the Happy Family at the corner of Trafalgar Square is too ignorant to take pleasure in Bronzino.' And she did not go away with a strange, wistful, yearning sense in her heart. Eleanor was innocent of ' prob lems,' whether mathematical or mental ; she never ' cpiestioned life,' but she did cate chise a class on Sunday.

From her scholars Eleanor learned that a feeling of the pre cariousness of human things is ever present with the poor. ' You will learn the twenty ninth hymn for next Sunday,' Eleanor would say to her pupils. * Oh, miss, we may all be dead before next Sunday ! ' the children used to reply, with perfect cheer fulness. ' We may,' Eleanor would answer, ' but some of us are likely to survive, and you had better learn the hymn.' But so conscious were the children of our faint hold on mundane things, that they very seldom learned as much of the sacred poem as might have been deshed. This is the sort of girl Eleanor was, ' with all her troubles before her,' as an amateur fortune-teller told her once, after looking at her hand. In perfect health, and with all the interest in hfe which youth and humour could give her, Eleanor had scarcely perceived how her mother's strength had waned with the longer days.

Mrs. Winton had suffered from a severe cold in the previous autumn ; the winter she had passed within doors, in rooms kept always at the same temperature ; and the spring had been unusually trying. ELEANOR. Mrs. Winton did not indeed hide from herself that she was failing fast, and she knew that very soon Eleanor would be left motherless. From a worldly point of view she had no anxiety as to the girl's future. A cousin who lived in London, Miss Maxwell by name, had promised to adopt Eleanor, and with her Mrs. Winton felt that her daughter would have a useful and happy life. She often thought, however, with much pain, of the sorrow that wilfulness and a strong love of power were likely to bring upon the girl, who, outwardly indifferent to criticism, had one of those quick sen sitive natures that go half-way to meet trouble.

Many a mirage and false refraction of sorrow that never came, did Eleanor set forth to encounter in later days. Nay, when she was a child, and when her mother was perfectly well, she had sometimes asked herself, ' What would become of me if mother died ? ' and had thrown her arms round Mrs. Winton's neck with a sudden passion of which that lady never guessed the cause. But the real sorrow of her mother's death drew nearer and nearer to Eleanor, up the slope of time, and scarcely threw a shadow before it. Mrs. Winton had been weak and languid in other winters, and had ' got strong again,' and this summer would be as another summer had been. The much talked of Katie RusseU arrived at the Gordons' the evening after that of which we have spoken, but owing to a spell of bad weather and to a feverish attack of Mrs. Winton's, which kept Eleanor in con stant attendance, the girls did not meet till ELEANOR. 17 Katie came to pay her visit at the Wintons' house.

She was nearly three years older than Eleanor, and more than three years wiser, but this amount of seniority had not prevented them from becoming friends at school, when so many years difference usually means as much as thirty do afterwards. Katie was the youngest of several sisters, all of them married, and hved with her mother and elder brother in a Devonshire country house, which her numerous friends were always tempting her to leave. In the course of her hfe she had made many trips to the Continent, and had spent a good deal of time in London, where her knack of adapting herself to her company had stood her in good stead. Last year she had passed some time at the seaside with Eleanor and her mother, who had come to like Katie nearly VOL. I. '* C as much as her daughter did. Miss Rus sell was now returning from a round of visits in order to spend the summer at home. 'My dear, it is so nice to see you,' was Eleanor's greeting, as Katie, a brown-haired, brown-cheeked maiden, ran up the stone stairs from the drive.

Then Eleanor gave Katie her cheek to kiss. That was like her, she never kissed : she was always the one who tend la joue. ' It is such a long time since you wrote to me,' Eleanor went on, ' that I had no idea you were coming this way.' ' I didn't mean to, but Agnes persuaded mamma to stay on for a bit, and the Gordons have invited me so often that I thought I really must come. I wanted so much to drive over and see you from there,' she went on, as they turned to go upstairs, ' but I had ELEANOR. such a bad cold they wouldn't let me stir out. How is your mother ? ' ' Better, I think, certainly, but a good deal pulled down. She won't stay in her room any longer, so the doctor has promised to let her come into the drawing-room this evening. I am so glad you are here, it will make a little variety for her.

She hasn't been strong enough to bear much reading, and I haven't been out to get any gossip, so alto gether it has been rather hard work.' ' Yes, I am sure it has,' said Katie. ' I know what it is very well, only ' and she paused suddenly, as she could not utter the thought in her mind that to amuse bright lively Mrs. Winton, however ill she might be, was a task very unlike that of entertaining her own inconsequent mother. Two hours later found Mrs. Winton and c the girls all seated in the drawing-room, where Eleanor had enough employment in continually picking up the dropped stitches of a Shetland shawl which Mrs. Winton was languidly knitting, and in listening to Katie, who was leaning back in a rocking-chair and pulling the ears of a stolid grey Persian kitten while she talked. After eager questions about pictures and plays which Katie had seen in London during the winter, the conversation gradually became more personal, and drifted into talk of her home life and its surroundings.

From her home it was but a step to her brother, and Eleanor laughed as she noted the softness in Katie's voice as she mentioned his name. Mrs. Winton smiled too, and asked with a spice of mischief in her tone, ' Is he as perfect as ever, Katie, or have your visits ELEANOR. 21 to London given you other standards of comparison ? ' 'No, Mrs. Winton, certainly not,' replied Katie, taking up the gauntlet. ' He is the standard by which I measure others, and invariably find them wanting. Go where I will, there is no one else that is half such good company. There is nothing that he can't do, and you don't know what a difference it makes when he is at home.' 'For pity's sake stop, Katie,' exclaimed Eleanor, who delighted in teasing her friend, ' or I shall take such a dislike to your Very Impossible He that I shall never be able to make up my mind to come to Huntingcombe.

All the charms you speak of can't be united in one person. There must be something to neutralise them somewhere.' ' Well, I don't wonder at your thinking so, but wait till you see him, and then you will find I haven't said a bit too much.' Eleanor looked up and made a mischievous face. ' Dear me ! if I could only get some one to believe in me like that, I should be positively driven into virtue to maintain my position.' ' Only if it was a very exceptional person who believed in you,' replied her mother, ' otherwise I should expect murder to be committed in the lane. Don't you remember the girl who was staymg at Deepdeen last Christmas, and had such a devotion to you ? She started an argument one day, Katie, about educating girls like boys, and would persist in agreeing with everything Eleanor said, and echoing her observations, till when at last in desperation Eleanor contradicted herself flatly, Miss Johnson agreed with her ELEANOR. 23 again.

Eleanor trifled so alarmingly with a Japanese fan-dagger, that, to prevent mischief, I was obliged to invent a new orchid in the conservatory, and carry the unconscious victim away to see it.' ' Yes, I can fancy what Eleanor's ex pressive face looked like. Oh, Eleanor ! you have a great deal to learn before you are fit to be the amiable heroine of a novel, with three proposals a week as the reward of virtue.' ' Heroine me no heroines,' said Eleanor, laughing ; ' I have been taught to read, so I'm not like one heroine ; and I don't climb walls, so I'm not hke another; and I don't care for dragoons, so I differ from most of them.' ' Now, Eleanor, seriously, have you ever thought of the kind of man you would like DISSOLVING VIEWS. to marry ? Last time I asked you, you had got no further than the fact that " he mustn't be a colonist," based on the angularity of your brother's objectionable friend.' Mrs. Winton laid down her shawl, thinking ' how uncomfortable anything based on an angularity must be,' and listening for Eleanor's answer with some earnestness. ' I don't know that I am much more enlightened now,' said the girl, meeting Katie's eyes quite frankly. ' What is the use of worrying ?

There are so many more interesting things to think about ! If I marry I suppose I shall faU in love, and then it will be too late to fuss.' ' Ah, my dear, that comes of having no sisters ! The problem of marriage was very early put before me, and I have constantly present with me the vision of an elegant ELEANOR. 25 being, compounded of all the virtues of my four brothers-in-law, and none of their vices. I insist on your knowing your own mind.' ' I can tell you what he will not be, if that will satisfy you, but I can't go beyond that. He won't be scientific or given to natural history, he won't be a violent poli tician, and he won't be a doctor, or a clergyman, or a soldier. I haven't at all " un furieux tendre pour les hommes d'epee." Not a common curate nor a lieutenant, I mean; I shouldn't so much mind a general, or an archbishop, or even an ambassador.' ' I see.

No light hid under a bushel for you. You want a bonfire.' ' Well, I'm afraid I do. I should like to be a great lady, and have a salon, and be able to ask the nicest people in every profession DISSOLVING VIEWS. to my house. I would rather have been Madame Recamier than anybody.' Mrs. Winton smiled a little at this inno cent remark. Eleanor might as well have wished to be a Pope Joan in this age of ours as a Madame Recamier, with a salon and everything brilliant about her. Mrs. Winton knew what modern salons are. A crowd of men and women meet in the rooms of some hon-hunting lady, who (like the pastime of the chase) brings people together that would not otherwise have met. The lack of a previous introduction by no means prevents these enterprising females from issuing their invitations, and the ignorance of hostess and guest of each other's physiognomy has more than once led to strange results.

The object of the party is ELEANOR. that every person shall be made acquainted with as many others as possible. Conse quently, not more than five minutes' con versation is allowed to every pair. The introductions, too, are performed in a new and original way. ' Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Wharton ; ' then, in a loud stage whisper, ' the man who has written a mono graph on the volcanoes of the South Pole.' ' I don't think you have met Miss Ashley, but ' (impressively) ' you know her Essay on Comparative Morality.' ' Let me present you to Mr. Hanson, who has an admirable scheme for regenerating society by means of amateur Cheap Jacks in the East End.' These and such as these are the lions, and this is the approved method of pinching their tails to make them roar. The effect is not however always adequate to the means em ployed, and both parties are frequently rendered abashed and uncomfortable.

Mrs. Winton knew all these things well. She had seen that they were altogether vanity, but she had left Eleanor to find out their hollowness for herself.

Chapter II. Knightston

' Now, Eleanor, tell me ; what sort of a place is Knightston? Are your townsfolk amusing ? ' Katie was* sitting on a rug at Mrs. Win ton's feet. The grass of May — a bright sunny May, for a wonder, and not the shrew ish, nipping month of most years — was starred with daisies. Mrs. Winton was lying on a long Indian chair, and Eleanor, half leaning against it, held some of the broad, cool fans of the chestnut tree, to screen her mother's eyes from the glow of the sun and sky. The girl had no idea that anything serious was the matter, and that Mrs. Winton was very ill. How ill the mother did not herself know, nor could even science, with all its uncomfortable prophetic power, teach her to number her days. But the gay courage and vital energy which had tided the invahd over so many dark mo ments did not forsake her now, and helped her to hide from Eleanor the truth about her own condition. ' She will know soon enough,' Mrs. Winton thought in her heart. ■ ' What kind of a place is Knightston ?

Oh, very much like other places, I suppose ! Why do you want to know ? ' answered Eleanor, lazily, to Katie's question. ' I wish you wouldn't ask her, Katie,' said Mrs. Winton. ' She is always glad of an excuse to abuse poor Knightston and its in habitants.' ' Why, I can't properly appreciate Eleanor, KNIGHTSTON. 31 Mrs. Winton, unless I know all about her "environment." Isn't that the philosophical word ? I could never get anything out of the Gordon girls, except the fact that the male sex does not shine.' ' Now, Eleanor, I will not have you find fault with your native town,' rejoined Mrs. Winton, with immense resolution ; and as at that moment a very erect old gentleman with white moustaches made his appearance on the lawn, the conversation dropped. This visitor was one of the many old Indians who chose Knightston for the haven of their later years.

Why old Indians and other strangers came there might be explained by a variety of reasons, which shall here be set down, for, to under stand Eleanor Winton, some knowledge of what Katie called her ' environment ' is certainly necessary. Brought up in a wider and more agreeable society, Eleanor might have been more tolerant and less critical. Knightston was a pretty place, and had been much prettier. There were waters of some healthy sort in the neighbourhood, and round them the original town had grown, starting from a Roman settlement, concerning which two or three tiles, a tiny bit of mosaic, and a possible coin (and probable brass button) remained to testify. In the early part of the century Knightston had been a watering place, and it was the traditions of these days, probably, that allured retired soldiers and old Indians to this forsaken spa.

Then some one had thought it a pity that the water force of the little river should be wasted ; some one had borrowed money and had erected 'mills.' The town now possessed several tall chim neys, a population of working people, a set of KN'IGIITSTON. 33 rich 'selfmade' manufacturers, and, in place of a trout-stream, a kind of sewer w hich was stained with all possible dyes, from psacock-blue to ma genta. There was still pretty scenery round the place, however, and Katie and Eleanor would wander for hours among the woods and over the downs, discussing every possible topic. There was not much chance of this kind of abstract conversation with the Knightston people, and want of companions to her mind had helped to make Eleanor what she was. ' Contempt, farewell ! ' she was never likely to cry, with Beatrice, while Knightston was in her neighbourhood.

The aristocracy of the town were the old generals, old civil servants, Indian judges, and the like. Their society was not genial nbr sparkling. When the old generals were not almost ferociously religious, VOL. I. D they were usually somewhat profane. In the former case they patronised Bible meetings, and never suffered the post-bag to be opened on Sunday ; in the latter their households trembled before the violent veterans. These officers bore themselves in their families much as they might have done when commanding a small, forlorn, and possibly disaffected garri son of sepoys in the midst of a hostile country. Yet there were gentle old soldiers in their ranks, Bayards for courtesy and kindness, men who had faced the Mutiny, and now were de lightful companions to their own daughters. Next there were in Knightston the people who had made or were making or logins', large fortunes in the trade of manufacturino* woollen goods.

They found recreation and excitement in the competitive" building of bio freestone or red brick houses on small plots KNIGHTSTON. 35 of land near to the town. In every direction on the low hills you saw towers and roofs which seemed palatial, but, when you drew nearer, behold, the palace was an overgrown villa, with thirty yards of carriage drive and four acres of garden. It was solely in their houses that the manufacturing princes of Knightston set their pride — in their houses, their hot-houses, and their pineries. If one man built a new billiard-room, his nei°;hbour would cap him by turning on electric light all over the premises. They patronised art sometimes, and filled their vast and wander ing piles of masonry with treacly and dubious ' old masters.' They had Rembrandts with an isle of yellow in an ocean of burnt umber, and Vandyke portraits of people with im possibly big eyes and small hands.