The Education of Antonia

Book I

' Violets Plucked, the Sweetest Rain makes not Fresh CHAP. PAGE 1. Noughts and Crosses ..... 3 2. 'Fear not, thou Wedding-Guest' . . . .10 3. 'Except it be Corroborate by Customf. ' . . .19 4. ' Shall Beautyhold a Plea ? ' . . . .31 5. ' All Sorts of Gentlemen ' . . . . .45 6. ' And Siller hae to Spare ' . . . . .57 7. 'To Talk of many Things' . . . . .61 8. 'On a Sunshine Holiday-' . . . . .71 9. ' Our Acts our Angels are ' . . . . .80 10. 'Idols of the Den and of the Forum' . . .85 11. 'Fire in Flints doth quiet lie' . . . .95 12. 'Food for Powder' ...... 106 13. ' Who has not been the Victim and Slave of his Action ? ' 113 14. 'But she was Trained in Nature's School' . . 127 15. 'Clouded Awhile' ...... 134

Book II

' How should I your True Love Know 1 ' 1. ' When Love is an Unerring Light ' 2. ' Art thou thine own Commander ? ' 143 VI THE EDUCATION OF ANTONIA CHAP. PAGE 3. 'From the King's Acquaintance' .... 165 4. ' The Descendant of the Past and Parent of the Future ' 173 5. 'Obpheus' ....... 1S1 6. 'What has been Governs what Shall be' . 194

Book III

Recitation 1. 'Over all Mischance' ..... 207 2. 'What's her History?' ..... 216 3. ' Land Rats and Water R \ i s ' . . . 231 4. '"War ! War !' . . . . ' . .238 5. 'A Grave closing o'er One'. .... 215

Book IV

Tin: World's Academy 1. 'Conceal Yoursel' as weel's Ye can' . . . 257 2. 'Bet Keek in every other Man' .... 267 3. ' Travellers must be Content ' . . 279 4. 'Ministering Angels'. _ 288 5. ' Or Freeman Fall ' . . . . . . ogg 6. ' This I was Worth ' . . . 301

Book V

'Give Me to See' 1. 'What have you Lost by Losing of this Day?' 2. 'The Gods Decide' ... 311 324 3. ' And is this Yarrow ? ' 4. ' Princes and Counties ! ' 332 340 5. 'Your being in Egypt might be my Question CONTENTS VII chap. paoe 6. 'Youth's a Stuff will not Endure' . . . 358 7. 'Give me that Man that is not Passion's Slave' . 366 S. 'To Fight like Men be Ours' .... 378 9. ' Whistle and I'll come to you, my Lad ! ' . 385 10. 'But I did find Him still mine Enemy' . . . 394 11. 'And folds over the World its Healing Wings' . 403 12. 'That can Sing both High and Low' . . . 415 13. ' She loved Me for the Dangers I had Passed ' . . 420 14. ' Gone to Swear a Peace ! ' . . . . . 430 15. 'Forward brave Champions' .... 443 16. 'If all the World and Love were Young' . . 450 17. 'That intermediate Door betwixt' . . . 460 IS. 'Have I met You again?' . . . . .466 19. 'Evolving Day from Night for Evermore' . . 499 20. ' Why may not He as well Aspire ? ' . . .481

Book I

Violets plucked, the sweetest rain Makes not fresh nor grow again ; Trim thy locks, look cheerfully ; Fate's hidden ends eyes cannot see : Joys as winged dreams fly fast, Why should sadness longer last ? C

Chapter I

Noughts and Crosses. Her studio was a little cupboard of a place, with skylights in the roof, giving unfriendly light upon a number of pictorial failures and unfinished sketches ranged haphazard on the white washed walls. ' Horrid things ! ' she said to herself, as in a course of vigorous tidying up she brought out from a neglected corner certain paintings in somewhat ill-used frames, with fatal white crosses marked upon their backs. ' No wonder they were not hung. I hate them.' Hot and tired, she paused a moment and looked out of the little end window, where the July sun beat fiercely on the leads. In proportion to her income, the frame in her hand cost quite a large sum of money ; it was new, and every jag and dent in it discoursed eloquently of misspent capital. Antonia's spirit was clouded by an unwonted depression ; her failure bore some inexplicable relation to the round of squalid life in the heat and dust of the noisy streets out there ; the white chalk crosses were all of an ugly piece with the red herrings and doubtful strawberries upon the costermongers' barrows. 'How hideous life is !' she thought petulantly, listening to the discordance of the streets ; ' the butchers' shops, cheap linen drapers, the dull dwelling-houses . . . how deadly dull ! the swarms of dirty yelling children, the way the people clothe themselves, greasy shoddiness and tawdry finery.

These people are revolting in every way,' reasoned Antonia, sitting down on the floor among her pictures to consider the odd millions calmly ; ' absolutely revolting. And they crowd upon you for ever, you cannot get away from them. Oh dear ! why does not some one die and leave me heaps of money ? I would go to Italy.' To Italy ! She saw Raphael the divine painter going to his conference with the princes of the Church, attended by his splendid retinue of artists, who probably hated one another like poison, she reflected. She was troubled by the idea of a railway station in Rome. But Urbino, Perugia ! what a charm in the very names ! Assisi perched high on a rock, where young Francesco went laughing through the streets with his gay companions, chatting and singing snatches of song ; the country-side where he saw his visions and dreamed his dreams, -where he consoled the afflicted and tended the sick, operations vaguely picturesque to Antonia's mind, ignoring inharmonious detail : far other a grateful Italian peasantry, mediæval too, than the sordid throng of a Chelsea slum hateful with Cockney accents.

In long draperies, in sacred garb, Antonia herself could have followed in his steps, keeping safely distant from the lepers, but listening to his silver speech when, unconscious forerunner of a Darwin, he called to the birds, ' My sisters and my brothers ! ' and bid them hear him. What mattered the horrors of war time in Brescia, if she had been one of the damsels to nurse the wounded Bayard, and afford the chevalier much pastime with her choice singing and playing on the lute 1 She passed from the masque of the carnival and wild revelry under the star-lit night to the quiet cloister where the sunshine rested like a benediction on the little group of monks gazing with delighted admiration at their brother s painting : or she was out in the country-side there, where the hills were blue in the distance, and where the great trees spread out their branches to throw a welcome shadow and the sheep were clustered together, the little ragged boy, his hair all a mass of sunburnt curls, was drawing his rough pictures on his piece of slate, waiting for that dear familiar figure to ride down the grassy glade towards him.

She flitted in and out of the busy workshops, listening to the simple jokes when the jolly craftsmen laughed together in a pause of the day's achievements : she was pressed upon by hurrying images, when she recalled 'the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence,' and so she dallied with her fancies, until with the name of the 'ocean born and earth commanding city,' sights and sounds of enchantment crowded on her, when she lingered to remember how one saw the scene where the high moon sailed over lofty walls of sea-girt palaces, with their porphyry pillars and their costly fronts. Though the action of the human figure was so unreasonably difficult, though the re concilement of values was beyond a joke, yet she would still have faith in the mission of art to delight, to cheer, to find her in the King's Road, Chelsea, as an Ariadne in the Isle of Naxos to show her bright glimpses of a fairyland full of soft sunshine in a clime divine and calm, CHAP. I THE EDUCATION OF ANTONIA 5 'even in this work-a-day world,' thought Antonia, 'and in spite of purblind hanging committees ! ' Yet one may build a palace of delight all one's own, and withdraw from the pressure of the crowd, to enter in and take one's rest and pleasure there.

She stacked some of her pictures up against the wall, and went to the door in answer to a knock. She found a messenger, which was surprising, with a note addressed by her Aunt Jane, which was extraordinary. As she held the letter in her hand, some girls in the passage below called out gaily to her, and came up the stairs making loud conversation to every step. ' Thought you were out,' said Peg, who was not very fresh in experience or attire. ' So I was. I went to the National Gallery.' 'Goodness gracious, whatever for?' cried Maud, pretty and plump, with a beautiful round white neck. ' You can't mean you are going to copy there 1 ' ' I am not quite on the shelf yet,' responded Antonia with indignation. ' You didn't get in the Academy, or at Suffolk Street, did you ? ' asked Maud. ' Same luck here, Tony.

Horrid lot, ain't they ? and poor old Peg tried for the English Art Club, and got chucked too. We're all in the same boat, but never say die ! We are going to the show in Bond Street with Granny, and Peg's going to get a jacket at a sale.' ' I knew she bought all her things at sales,' thought Antonia. Granny was an elderly art student with dyed hair, many neck frills, a liking for beer, and a strong distaste for soap and water. Antonia's friends were disputing. ' I don't see how we can afford the Bond Street show to-day,' said Peg. ' Perhaps they will let the three of us in for two shillings if we try it on,' rejoined the cheerful Maud ; ' but we must go any how, Peg, and blow the expense. Where are you off to this summer, Tony V ' I am staying with friends in Wales,' said Antonia. 'We three are going into Dorsetshire,' said Maud, 'and there are some fellows stopping at the same place.

Only three weeks, but you bet we shall improve the shining hour, Tony ! Did you hear all about our dinner, and Mrs. Tomkins' speech?' 'Mrs. Tomkins !' said Antonia with withering emphasis. ' Oh, it was a capital speech, Tony !' said Peg ; ' all about being met to do honour to our old professor, and what capital work women are doing in art, and Paris, and Degas, and so on, you know. We thought of having a triumphant procession in pinafores, and a meeting with easels and traps in Trafalgar Square.' 'And drinking confusion to the Royal Academy at the fountains, I suppose,' said Antonia. ' But wasn't it a lark, Tony 1 ' said Maud. ' Some of the men began smoking, and the professor didn't like it, and directly Mrs. Tomkins had finished, he jumped up and said the ladies had given them permission to smoke.

Isn't he an old coon ? ( 'It is an old-fashioned survival, certainly,' said Antonia. 1 should have had no idea that he was a gentleman.' ' You are so sarcastic,' said Peg with a faint angry blush. 'Let's be off, Maud; Granny will be howling with rage at Piccadilly Circus.' As they bade farewell to Antonia, her neighbour, a girl who went to University Extension lectures, stood aside to let them pass. ' What an extraordinary fund of animal spirits ! ' she said to Antonia in her thin supercilious voice. ' Do you not think it is rather sensible to catch at things as they go and have a good time 2 ' answered Antonia. ' I cannot help thinking what was sincerity in Botticelli might be affectation nowadays. Besides he was a jovial soul himself, from all accounts.' ' But to be students of art ! ' cried the University Extension student. ' I wish I were as promising a student,' said Antonia. ' Maud has a beautiful sense of colour, and Nan is quite original, or at least, quite recently imported.

But I know you are a Rossetti worshipper, while I think there is some honesty in the cry of no sentiment ! Paint is the trade, not literature ! I do not say that the British fisherman does not become monotonous, and the laundrymaid too, for ever hanging out the clothes, even if she is painted with square brushes. But you cannot deny the school is at first hand.' ' There can be no profit in vulgar realism. There is no art in mere transcription,' said the University Extension student, who did her hair and arranged her dress to a likeness she had discovered in herself to Rossetti's Beatrix. 'I do not see,' said Antonia in contradiction to all her earlier dreaming of the afternoon, 'that there is any profit in going back to the thirteenth century, if you only stick there.' 'Ah ! you should have heard Mr. Perugino Wagner,' cried the neighbour. ' He is so cultured ! ' Antonia waved her hand, and returned to her studio. 'I daresay he is,' she said to herself, 'but I am out of it.

I am out of everything. Everything,' she repeated with bitter though unconscious reference to the obnoxious brilliancy of Mrs. Tomkins — Mrs. Tomkins who made so much more striking an effect than was attainable to Antonia. A glance at her Aunt Jane's letter, which she felt no in clination to open, diverted her attention to a personality equally unpleasant, as she reflected upon her last interview with Mrs. Penrose, when their relations had been less cordial than was even usual. CHAP. I At far intervals Antonia visited her aunt's spare and dreary little house, one in a squeezed-up suburban terrace in a dismal little no-thoroughfare, which was guarded at its adjunct with the fuller stream of life in the high road by an unprepossessing Nonconformist temple ; the peculiarities of situation being perhaps symbolic.

Aunt Jane maintaining an unappeasable aspect towards mankind in general, had never shown any relenting to Antonia, but found it a matter of conscience to entirely reprobate all her niece's wishes and pursuits as unremunerative in this world and inimical to her interests in the next. At their last meeting, however, Antonia had excited her from the usual attitude of frigid disapproval to one of active prohibition, which was succeeded, so genuine was the con sternation she was thrown in, by entreaties that Antonia would regard her wishes. ' But why ? ' Antonia had asked. ' What explanation have you to give? I cannot understand why you object. It seems a mystery.' ' A mystery ! ' her aunt had cried out. ' What do you mean ? Antonia ! what do you mean ? ' She had risen from her chair in anger, trembling, supporting herself by the table.

Antonia, alarmed, ran to fetch a glass of water, which, however, Mrs. Penrose, calmer at her return, refused. 'I don't want it,' she said ; ' I am not ill. It is only your intolerable folly, your preposterous nonsense about wanting holidays . . .' 'Surely you cannot object to holidays as much as all that ! ' cried Antonia. ' Who is it you know at Dinas ? ' ' Mary Tenterden,' said Antonia, and stopped at her aunt's look. ' Tenterden ! ' she muttered. She put her hand out, and feeling for the glass, drank the water Antonia had fetched. ' What is the matter ? ' asked Antonia. Mrs. Penrose made no answer, but sat, her narrow forehead wrinkled, in a painful meditation. 'You cannot have any real objection,' expostulated Antonia, after waiting for her aunt to speak. 'You could not object to Mary.

You would not understand how dear she is ; so simple hearted, so honest; but even you could see that she is quite different from heaps of girls. She is a little gentlewoman. Why, you must have seen her when you inspected me at school, once a quarter, was it not ? ' m Antonia remembered with a pulse of affection Mary's sweet maidenliness ; she longed to rest again on her quiet sincerity, to feel the peace of home in her expression, that gentle satisfaction with a round of trivial duties which Antonia had sometimes guessed at, but never known. What were you saying?' asked her aunt, aroused in the little silence. , 'Only how much I always enjoy coming to see you, aunt, said Antonia. 'You know it is such a treat.' ' Take care, Antonia,' said Mrs. Penrose. ' I will not be trifled with.' ' You are quite melodramatic,' said Antonia. ' I do not mean you are as good as a play, so do not be offended.

I would rather see a play.' 'All this is beside the matter, Antonia,' said Mrs. Penrose. ' It is impossible for you to go to Dinas.' Antonia rose to go, but Mrs. Penrose seized her by the arm. ' Antonia, you do not know what you are doing,' she said. ' I ou must not go to that place. You must not know these people. ' Give me some reason,' said Antonia. Mrs. Penrose hesitated. ' Your father would be very angry if you went.' ' That would not trouble me in the least,' said Antonia. ' It is of no consequence to me what he thinks or what he says, as it is evidently of no consequence to him what I think or feel, or how I live.' ' Your father makes you an allowance.' ' It is a very unsatisfactory allowance,' retorted Antonia. ' You could hardly live without it, I presume, nevertheless,' said Mrs. Penrose, ' with your horribly extravagant notions.' ' Oh, my extravagance ! ' said Antonia wearily, ' that is going over old ground.

And as for my father pretending to have any voice in my affairs, pray when has he ever taken any notice of me at all? I left off writing to him when I was quite a child ; he never wrote to me.' ' While your teaching stops for a few weeks you should save, not spend, said Mrs. Penrose. ' You spend enough all the year round without wasting money on holidays. What do you want that studio for ? ' ' I cannot paint in my bedroom,' said Antonia. ' For all the success you make of your painting,' said Mrs. Penrose acrimoniously, 'you might as well paint in the coal cellar. But stop, listen to me,' she cried as Antonia was leaving her, ' if you are so determined on a holiday, sooner than there should be this mad journey to Wales, I will at any incon venience, any annoyance to myself, to prevent this wicked folly, I will receive you here.' ' Here ! ' cried Antonia. ' Heaven forbid ! ' And so they had parted.

She sat now turning her letter round in her hand, wondering why it should have been sent all the way to Chelsea by a messenger. 'However she beat him down,' she said to herself, 'the journey could not be done under sixpence. And that would leave no profit whatever for the messenger. Yet who pays for CHAP. I THE EDUCATION OF ANTONIA 9 his buttons ? He could not afford all that display if he spent his life running errands purely for the love of mankind, untainted by mercenary consideration.' She considered the handwriting of her Aunt Jane. 'How odd she was ! I wronder if she had any reason beyond wishing to be as disagreeable as possible ? yet what reason could she have ? how unlike her too to pay a messenger ! Why, if even a minimum wage of sixpence came out of her own pocket she must indeed be in deadly earnest.' So she opened her letter.

Inside, without any word from Mrs. Penrose, was a cablegram from Australia, which ran No. The visit to Wales must be absolutely forbidden at any cost. It was the first message from her father Antonia had ever seen, and she sat musing with brightening eyes. ' Then there must be some reason,' she concluded. ' Now, if I can only find it out ! ' She got up to have a final look at her time-table. Naturally she was going by the first train in the morning.

Chapter II

Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest ! At the end of a long day's journey, Antonia arrived at a little gray stone town, over which the mountain peaks had once looked down with pride upon the shining river to see how beautiful a thing they had brought forth, and now peered over each other's shoulders as if discomfited by the patronage which they received in intervals of lawn tennis from the plutocratic villadom new rising on the wooded slopes. Mary Tenterden, dainty little Puritan damsel of the prettiest hand and foot in the Principality, with shy brown eyes and yet a little air of grave dignity — everything about Mary was little and trim and complete — was running along the platform, eager to meet her friend and show her ready sympathy for the tedium of the journey. ' But here you are at last after all ! ' as if that were an unusual consummation to be accepted as a special providence and with glad thanksgiving. 'John is looking after your luggage ; you know we have quite a long way to go.

And this is Aubrey.' Aubrey was a thin, narrow-chested, shambling lad of a probable fifteen or sixteen years. He put his hand in Mary's arm when she was giving her opinion as to the disposal of the luggage and the arrangement of their seats in the carriage. ' John, Tony dear, my brother.' Antonia's experience divided mankind into three classes : men who were nice and had no brains, men who had brains and were not nice, and a third large residue of neither heart nor brain. John Tenterden, good worthy soul, was very nice indeed ; that she knew from old report ; an honest, steady, plodding, and domesticated creature. She turned therefore full of kindly feeling which almost expressed her thought in her look, ' Yes, I am sure you are a thoroughly good fellow,' and received his grave welcome with the idea that she had never disliked her name so little, for he was the sort of person on whom Mauleverer or Chetwynd would be wTasted, and one might as well be what a malignant Fate had ordained Antonia should be, common Smith.

CHAP. II 11 ' Mary,' Aubrey coaxed her, ' ask John to let me come home with you.' 'Dear me, Aubrey,' said Mary, still intent on managing the luggage, for she liked to manage, although John had arranged everything ; ' cannot you ask him yourself ? ' ' Where s the use ? ' inquired Aubrey, who seemed despondent. ' He might listen to you.' Mary laughed. ' Poor dear Aubrey. John, Aubrey wants to come home with us.' John, at the horse's head, turned with solemn reproach to his brother. ' The office is a sacred institution to be kept holy six days of the week ; you can come home on the seventh to labour, and do all that you have to do.' 'I do not think you have got that quite right, somehow,' Antonia objected. ' No,' John assented, dubious too, ' but that's Aubrey's reading, and he is a fellow of firm religious principle ; he would die of inanity sooner than do a stroke of work within the temple . . . of commerce. . . .' Antonia felt rather sorry for Aubrey, but Mary was already consoling him. ' To-day is Wednesday, you know, dear.' So she had time to look at John, and as their eyes met she felt a swift surprise : he was so much younger a man than she had expected, and if there were something about him, an indefinable slouch of the coat, an expression of the brow from which she could imagine him in some abstracted thought, two little vertical lines denting in the forehead, something that hinted this is a bookish man, there was too a totally unlooked-for resolution of bearing so very quiet and easily in restraint that it gave a level of tolerant power : vaguely conscious of dark eyes and a squareness of the jaw, she was only clearly of the mind that she had met him now for the first time and not in Mary's account.

Yet in his care of his sister and the little kindly rough touch on Aubrey's shoulder as he nodded good-bye to the boy, she smiled at a realisation of what Mary had always told her, how good John was. ' Poor Aubrey,' said Mary, ' I think you need not have said that, John dear.' ' He looks rather disconsolate,' smiled Antonia back at Aubrey left standing gloomily at the railway station. ' That is the Grammar School,' said Mary pointing out objects of interest. ' John and Owen went there once when Mr. Crowdy was the master. Mrs. Crowdy is married again, and she was telling me about them on Sunday, and how John nearly burnt her house down with an explosion of chemicals, and they had to have the fire-engine out.' They were soon free of the narrow streets, which took abrupt turns out of each other as with sudden intention of being picturesque always untimely thwarted, and then their way was uphill past the lodging-houses and pretentious villas with their fir plantations and huge notice-boards denouncing trespassers, up by copse and mead and little brawling streams which hastened over mossy rocks and shining pebbles quick down to the broad valley, there where the slow tidal river flowed so lazily past the old church tower, and, almost lost among the marsh lands, went quietly at last into the sea.

The clean sweet air of the country comes always like a revelation to the townsick pilgrim, and first Antonia rejoiced in that before she felt delight with the clear brilliance of the primrose-white evening sky which, overspread by dappling soft gray clouds, summoned the massy hills into dove-purple harmonies, but left the velvet touch of sunset upon the quiet fields. Walking by the horse up the obstinate stretch of road, John turned to look kindly at Antonia, her response to the call of beauty was so sensitive, so unfeigned : and indeed she did not see his look, but with tremulous curve of mouth, bright eyes, and pretty wave of hair blown all about, appeared to him to turn her face like some Renaissance angel a little apart and not concerned in other persons present. A Renaissance angel too, it occurred to him, does not alight directly from the heaven, but, trailing the cloud of glory from Pagan ancestors, reminds you in all the beauty of its fascination that heredity is a most important factor.

Mary recalled Antonia with her constant, cheery talking. ' And I knew you would not be dull, Tony, because you always were able to get lots of fun out of nothing at all. We have to go ever so much higher yet before we get to the old road, and then it is nearly straight, and the lake soon, not very pretty, with a great crag up one side, but there is a cottage, oh .' here it is ; now, would not that do to sketch ? ' ' I do not see, unless we sat on the wall,' said Antonia, turning her head to possible points of view. ' I am afraid it will not compose, Mary.' 'Fancy!' said Mary with hearty admiration. 'That is just like you, Tony ! I never should have thought for a moment about the composition ! I never could understand how you always made your trees look quite on the other side of the road if you wanted them to.

Mine always stick out in the front, like green ostrich feathers all out of curl.' And Antonia felt Mary was at all events a more competent critic than Aunt Jane. 'Mary has a tremendous nerve,' said John ; 'she dashes in where Turner might fear to tread.' He checked the horse. As they had come farther in among the hills they had penetrated to a grander beauty, and while they paused on the bridge, only the mountain stream broke upon the silence. All the cleft of the hills where it came tumbling headlong down was densely wooded, and above the topmost wave of graceful fir there gloomed upon them a magnificent crag, bare precipice for many scores of feet, with misty shadow falling all adown, majestic, solemn. Beyond were other peaks pale with radiance in the sunset sky, but this of so beautiful an outline in its mighty strength dominated the solitude. 'We must do a sunset,' said Mary comfortably.

Antonia put out her hand irritably. ' Oh, as if ' she broke off and said very low, ' one would not dare.' Mary pointed out a diverging road which went to some village of a name striking helpless awe to the unaccustomed ear. 'Yes, and Owen always wanting me to learn Welsh, a useless and impossible language, just because one lives here. Of course it came naturally to him and John, in and out of the cottages when they were boys at Hendra.' ' You speak Welsh ! ' said Antonia to John with much respect for such an attainment. ' If it sounds like Mary's village it must be a splendid accomplishment when one is out of temper. One might express so much feeling without being at all wicked. To run over the names of the adjacent villages must be very soothing now in any moment of stress.' ' You could not get more than two villages in to a moment,' said Mary ; ' they take a long time to say.