CHAPTER XXV.
OUT IN THE COLD
Paul Brion, meanwhile, plodded on in his old groove, which no longer fitted him as it used to do, and vexed the soul of his benevolent landlady with the unprecedented shortness of his temper. She didn't know how to take him, she said, he was that cantankerous and "contrairy: " but she triumphantly recognised the result that she had all along expected would follow a long course of turning night into day, and therefore was not surprised at the change in him. "Your brain is over-wrought," she said, soothingly, when one day a compunctious spirit moved him to apologise for his moroseness; "your nervous system is unstrung. You've been going on too long, and you want a spell. You just take a holiday straight off, and go right away, and don't look at an ink-bottle for a month. It will save you a brain fever, mark my words." But Paul was consistent in his perversity, and refused to take good advice. He did think, for a moment, that he might as well have a little run and see how his father was getting on; and for several days he entertained the more serious project of "cutting" the colony altogether and going to seek his fortune in London. All the same, he stayed on with Mrs. M'Intyre, producing his weekly tale of political articles and promiscuous essays, and sitting up all night, and sleeping all the morning, with his habitual irregular regularity. But the flavour had gone out of work and recreation alike, and not all Mrs. Aarons's blandishments, which were now exercised upon him for an hour or two every Friday evening, were of any avail to coax it back again. Those three Miss Kings, whom his father had sent to him, and whom Mrs. Duff-Scott had taken away from him, had spoiled the taste of life. That was the fact, though he would not own it. "What care I? They are nothing to me," he used to say to himself when fighting an occasional spasm of rage or jealousy. He really persuaded himself very often that they were nothing to him, and that his bitter feeling was caused solely by the spectacle of their deterioration. To see them exchanging all their great plans and high aspirations for these vulgar social triumphs – giving up their studies at the Library to attend dancing classes, and to dawdle about the Block, and gossip in the Exhibition – laying aside their high-bred independence to accept the patronage of a fine lady who might drop them as suddenly as she took them up – was it not enough to make a man's heart bleed?
As for Patty, he made up his mind that he could never forgive her. Now and then he would steal out upon his balcony to listen to a Schubert serenade or a Beethoven sonata in the tender stillness of a summer night, and then he would have that sensation of bleeding at the heart which melted, and unnerved, and unmanned him; but, for the most part, every sight and sound and reminiscence of her were so many fiery styptics applied to his wound, scorching up all tender emotions in one great angry pain. Outwardly he shunned her, cut her – withered her up, indeed – with his ostentatiously expressed indifference; but secretly he spent hours of the day and night dogging her from place to place, when he ought to have been at work or in his bed, merely that he might get a glimpse of her in a crowd, and some notion of what she was doing. He haunted the Exhibition with the same disregard for the legitimate attractions of that social head-centre as prevailed with the majority of its visitors, to whom it was a daily trysting-place; and there he had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing her every now and then. Once she was in the Indian Court, so fragrant with sandalwood, and she was looking with ardent eyes at gossamer muslins and embroidered cashmeres, while young Westmoreland leaned on the glass case beside her in an attitude of insufferable familiarity. It was an indication, to the jealous lover, that the woman who had elevated her sex from the rather low place that it had held in his estimation before he knew her, and made it sacred to him for her sake, was, after all, "no better than the rest of them." He had dreamed of her as a man's true helpmate and companion, able to walk hand in hand with him on the high roads of human progress, and finding her vocation and her happiness in that spiritual and intellectual fellowship; and here she was lost in the greedy contemplation of a bit of fine embroidery that had cost some poor creature his eyesight already, and was presently to cost again what would perhaps provision a starving family for a twelvemonth – just like any other ignorant and frivolous female who had sold her soul to the demon of fashion. He marched home to Myrtle Street with the zeal of the reformer (which draws its inspiration from such unsuspected sources) red-hot in his busy brain. He lit his pipe, spread out his paper, dipped his pen in the ink-bottle, and began to deal with the question of "Woman's Clothes in Relation to her Moral and Intellectual Development" in what he conceived to be a thoroughly impersonal and benevolent temper. His words should be brief, he said to himself, but they should be pregnant with suggestive truth. He would lay a light touch upon this great sore that had eaten so deeply into one member of the body politic, causing all the members to suffer with it; but he would diagnose it faithfully, without fear or favour, and show wherein it had hindered the natural advancement of the race, and to what fatal issues its unchecked development tended. It was a serious matter, that had too long been left unnoticed by the leaders of the thought of the day. "It is a problem," he wrote, with a splutter of his pen, charging his grievance full tilt with his most effective term; "it is, we conscientiously believe, one of the great problems of this problem-haunted and problem-fighting age – one of the wrongs that it is the mission of the reforming Modern Spirit to set right – though the subject is so inextricably entangled and wrapped up in its amusing associations that at present its naked gravity is only recognised by the philosophic few. It is all very well to make fun of it; and, indeed, it is a very good thing to make fun of it – for every reform must have a beginning, and there is no better weapon than just and judicious ridicule wherewith Reason can open her attack upon the solid and solemn front of time-honoured Prejudice. The heavy artillery of argument has no effect until the enemy has contracted an internal weakness by being made to imbibe the idea that he is absurd. A little wit, in the early stage of the campaign, is worth a deal of logic. But still there it stands – this great, relentless, crushing, cruel CUSTOM (which requires capital letters to emphasise it suitably) – and there are moments when we can't be witty about it – when our hearts burn within us at the spectacle of our human counterpart still, with a few bright exceptions, in the stage of intellectual childhood, while we fight the battle of the world's progress alone – "
Here the typical strong-minded female, against whom he had fulminated in frequent wrath, suddenly appeared before him, side by side with a vision of Patty in her shell-pink Cup dress; and his sword arm failed him. He paused, and laid down his pen, and leaned his head on his hand; and he was thereupon seized with a raging desire to be rich, in order that he might buy Indian embroideries for his beloved, and clothe her like a king's daughter in glorious apparel. Somehow that remarkable paper which was to inaugurate so vast a revolution in the social system never got written. At least, it did not for two or three years, and then it came forth in so mild a form that its original design was unrecognisable. (N.B. – In this latest contribution to the Dress Reform Question, women, to the peril of their immortal intellects, were invited to make themselves as pretty as they could, no hard condition being laid upon them, save that they should try to dress to please the eyes of men instead of to rival and outshine each other – that they should cultivate such sense of art and reason as might happily have survived in them – and, above all, from the high principles of religion and philanthropy, that they should abstain from bringing in new fashions violently – or, indeed, at all – leaving the spirit of beauty and the spirit of usefulness to produce their healthy offspring by the natural processes. In the composition of this paper he had the great advantage of being able to study both his own and the woman's point of view.)
The next day he went to the Exhibition again, and again he saw Patty, with no happier result than before. She was standing amongst the carriages with Mr. Smith – popularly believed to have been for years on the look-out for a pretty young second wife – who was pointing out to her the charms of a seductive little lady's phaeton, painted lake and lined with claret, with a little "dickey" for a groom behind; no doubt tempting her with the idea of driving such a one of her own some day. This was even more bitter to Paul than the former encounter. He could bear with Mr. Westmoreland, whose youth entitled him to place himself somewhat on an equality with her, and whom, moreover, his rival (as he thought himself) secretly regarded as beneath contempt; but this grey-bearded widower, whose defunct wife might almost have been her grandmother, Paul felt he could not bear, in any sort of conjunction with his maiden queen, who, though in such dire disgrace, was his queen always. He went hastily away that he might not see them together, and get bad thoughts into his head – such as, for instance, that Patty might be contemplating the incredible degradation of matrimony with the widower, in order to be able to drive the prettiest pony carriage in town.
He went away, but he came back again in a day or two. And then he saw her standing in the nave, with Mr. Smith again, looking at Kate Kelly, newly robed in black, and prancing up and down, in flowing hair and three-inch veil, and high heels and furbelows, putting on all sorts of airs and graces because, a few hours before, Ned had crowned his exploits and added a new distinction to the family by being hung in gaol; and she (Patty) could not only bear that shabby and shameless spectacle, but was even listening while Mr. Smith cut jokes about it – this pitiful demolishment of our imagined Kate Kelly, our Grizell Hume of the bush – and smiling at his misplaced humour. The fact being that poor Patty was aware of her lover's proximity, and was moved to unnatural and hysteric mirth in order that he might not carry away the mistaken notion that she was fretting for him. But Paul, who could see no further through a stone wall than other men, was profoundly shocked and disgusted.
And yet once more he saw his beloved, whom he tried so hard to hate. On the night of the 17th – a Wednesday night – he had yawned through an uninteresting, and to him unprofitable, session of the Assembly, dealing with such mere practical matters as the passing in committee of clauses of railway bills and rabbit bills, which neither enlivened the spirits and speeches of honourable members nor left a press critic anything in particular to criticise; and at a few minutes after midnight he was sauntering through the streets to his office, and chanced to pass the Town Hall, where the great ball of the Exhibition year was going on. It was not chance, perhaps, that led him that way – along by the chief entrance, round which carriages and cabs were standing in a dense black mass, and where even the pavements were too much crowded by loiterers to be comfortable to the pedestrian abroad on business. But it was chance that gave him a glimpse of Patty at the only moment of the night when he could have seen her. As he went by he looked up at the lighted vestibule with a sneer. He was not himself of the class which went to balls of that description – he honestly believed he had no desire to be, and that, as a worker for his bread, endowed with brains instead of money, he was at an infinite advantage over those who did; but he knew that the three Miss Kings would be numbered with the elect. He pictured Patty in gorgeous array, bare-necked and bare-armed, displaying her dancing-class acquirements for the edification of the gilded youth of the Melbourne Club, whirling round and round, with flushed cheeks and flying draperies, in the arms of young Westmoreland and his brother hosts, intoxicated with flattery and unwholesome excitement, and he made up his mind that she was only beginning the orgy of the night, and might be expected to trail home, dishevelled, when the stars grew pale in the summer dawn. However, as this surmise occurred to him it was dispelled by the vision of Mrs. Duff-Scott coming out of the light and descending the flight of steps in front of him. He recognised her majestic figure in spite of its wraps, and the sound of her voice directing the major to call the carriage up. She had a regal – or, I should rather say, vice-regal – habit of leaving a ball-room early (generally after having been amongst the first to be taken to supper), as he might have known had he known a little more about her. It was one of the trivial little customs that indicated her rank. Paul looked up at her for a moment, to make sure that she had all her party with her; and then he drew into the shadow of a group of bystanders to watch them drive off.
First came the chaperon herself, with Eleanor leaning lightly on her arm, and a couple of hosts in attendance. Eleanor was not bare-armed and necked, nor was she dishevelled; she had just refreshed herself with chicken and champagne, and was looking as composed and fair and refined as possible in her delicate white gown and unruffled yellow hair – like a tall lily, I feel I ought (and for a moment was tempted) to add, only that I know no girl ever did look like a lily since the world was made, nor ever will, no matter what the processes of evolution may come to. This pair, or quartette, were followed by Elizabeth, escorted on one side by the little major and on the other by big Mr. Yelverton. She, too, had neither tumbled draperies nor towsled head, but looked serene and dignified as usual, holding a bouquet to her breast with the one hand, and with the other thriftily guarding her skirts from contact with the pavement. But Mr. Brion took no notice of her. His attention was concentrated on his Patty, who appeared last of all, under the charge of that ubiquitous widower (whom he was beginning to hate with a deadly hatred), Mr. Smith. She was as beautiful as – whatever classical or horticultural object the reader likes to imagine – in the uncertain light and in her jealous lover's estimation, when she chanced, after stepping down to his level, to stand within a couple of yards of him to wait for the carriage. No bronze, or dead leaf, or half-ripe chestnut (to which I inadvertently likened it) was fit to be named in the same breath with that wavy hair that he could almost touch, and not all the jewellers' shops in Melbourne could have furnished a comparison worthy of her lovely eyes. She, too, was dressed in snowy, foamy, feathery white (I use these adjectives in deference to immemorial custom, and not because they accurately describe the finer qualities of Indian muslin and Mechlin lace), ruffled round her white throat and elbows in the most delicately modest fashion; and not a scrap of precious stone or metal was to be seen anywhere to vulgarise the maidenly simplicity of her attire. He had never seen her look so charming – he had never given himself so entirely to the influence of her beauty. And she stood there, so close that he could see the rise and fall of the laces on her breast with her gentle breathing, silent and patient, paying no attention to the blandishments of her cavalier, looking tired and pre-occupied, and as far as possible from the condition in which he had pictured her. Yet, when presently he emerged from his obscurity, and strode away, he felt that he had never been in such a rage of wrath against her. And why, may it be asked? What had poor Patty done this time? She had not known that he was there beside her. It was the greatest offence of all that she had committed, and the culmination of his wrongs.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WHAT PAUL COULD NOT KNOW
It was a pity that Paul Brion, looking at Patty's charming figure in the gaslight, could not have looked into her heart. It is a pity, for us all, that there is no Palace of Truth amongst our sacred edifices, into which we could go – say, once a week – and show ourselves as we are to our neighbours and ourselves. If we could know our friends from our enemies, whom to trust and whom to shun – if we could vindicate ourselves from the false testimony of appearances in the eyes of those whom we love and by whom we desire to be loved – not to speak of larger privileges – what a different world it would be! But we can't, unfortunately. And so Paul carried away with him the impression that his Patty had become a fine lady – too fine to have any longer a thought for him – than which he had never conceived a baser calumny in his life.
Nor was he the only one who misread her superficial aspect that night. Mrs. Duff-Scott, the most discerning of women, had a fixed belief that her girls, all of them, thoroughly enjoyed their first ball. From the moment that they entered the room, a few minutes in advance of the Governor's party, received by a dozen or two of hosts drawn up in line on either side of the doorway, it was patent to her that they would do her every sort of credit; and this anticipation, at any rate, was abundantly realised. For the greater part of the evening she herself was enthroned under the gallery, which roofed a series of small drawing-rooms on this occasion, eminently adapted to matronly requirements; and from her arm-chair or sofa corner she looked out through curtains of æsthetic hues upon the pretty scene which had almost as fresh an interest for her to-night as it had for them. And no mother could have been more proud than she when one or other was taken from her side by the most eligible and satisfactory partners, or when for brief minutes they came back to her and gave her an opportunity to pull out a fold or a frill that had become disarranged, or when at intervals during their absence she caught sight of them amongst the throng, looking so distinguished in their expensively simple toilettes – those unpretending white muslins upon which she had not hesitated to spend the price of her own black velvet and Venetian point, whereof the costly richness was obvious to the least instructed observer – and evidently receiving as much homage and attention as they well knew what to do with. Now it was Eleanor going by on the arm of a naval foreigner, to whom she was chatting in that pure German (or equally pure French) that was one of her unaccountable accomplishments, or dancing as if she had danced from childhood with a more important somebody else. Now it was Patty, sitting bowered in azaleas on the steps under the great organ, while the Austrian band (bowered almost out of sight) discoursed Strauss waltzes over her head, and Mr. Smith sat in a significant attitude on the crimson carpet at her feet. And again it was Elizabeth, up in the gallery, which was a forest of fern trees to-night, sitting under the shade of the great green fronds with Mr. Yelverton, who had such an evident partiality for her society. Strange to say, Mrs. Duff-Scott, acute as she was in such matters, had never thought of Mr. Yelverton as a possible husband, and did not so think of him now – while noting his proceedings. She was taking so deep an interest in him as a philanthropist and social philosopher that she forgot he might have other and less exceptional characteristics; and she left off scheming for Elizabeth when Mr. Smith made choice of Patty, and was fully occupied in her manoeuvres and anxieties for the welfare of the younger sisters. That Patty should be the second Mrs. Smith she had quite made up her mind, and that Eleanor should be Mrs. Westmoreland was equally a settled thing. With these two affairs approaching a crisis together, she had quite enough to think of; and, with the prospect of losing two of her children so soon after becoming possessed of them, she was naturally in no hurry to deprive herself of the third. She was beginning to regard Elizabeth as destined to be her surviving comfort when the others were gone, and therefore abandoned all matrimonial projects on her behalf. Concerning Patty, the fairy godmother felt that her mind was at rest; half-a-dozen times in an hour and a half did she see the girl in some sort of association with Mr. Smith – who finally took her in to supper, and from supper to the cloak-room and carriage. For her she had reached the question of the trousseau and whom she would invite for bridesmaids. About Eleanor she was not so easy. It did not seem that Mr. Westmoreland lived up to his privileges; he did not dance with her at all, and was remarkably attentive to a plain heiress in a vulgar satin gown and diamonds. However, that was nothing. The bachelors of the club had all the roomful to entertain, and were obliged to lay aside their private preferences for the occasion. He had made his attentions to Eleanor so conspicuous that his proposal was only required as a matter of form; and Mrs. Duff-Scott felt that she would rather get the fuss of one engagement over before another came on. So, when the dissipations of the night were past, she retired from the field with a pleasant sense of almost unalloyed success, and fondly believed that her pretty protégées were as satisfied with the situation as she was.
But she was wrong. She was mistaken about them all – and most of all about Patty. When she first came into the room, and the fairy-land effect of the decorations burst upon her – when she passed up the lane of bachelor hosts, running the gauntlet of their respectful but admiring observation, like a young queen receiving homage – when the little major took her for a slow promenade round the hall and made her pause for a moment in front of one of the great mirrors that flanked the flowery orchestra, to show her herself in full length and in the most charming relief against her brilliant surroundings – the girl certainly did enjoy herself in a manner that bordered closely upon intoxication. She said very little, but her eyes were radiant and her whole face and figure rapturous, all her delicate soul spread out like a flower opened to the sunshine under the sensuous and artistic influences thus suddenly poured upon her. And then, after an interval of vague wonder as to what it was that was missing from the completeness of her pleasure – what it was that, being absent, spoiled the flavour of it all – there came an overpowering longing for her lover's presence and companionship, that lover without whom few balls are worth the trouble of dressing for, unless I am much mistaken. And after she found out that she wanted Paul Brion, who was not there, her gaiety became an excited restlessness, and her enjoyment of the pretty scene around her changed to passionate discontent. Why was he not there? She curled her lip in indignant scorn. Because he was poor, and a worker for his bread, and therefore was not accounted the equal of Mr. Westmoreland and Mr. Smith. She was too young and ardent to take into account the multitudes of other reasons which entirely removed it from the sphere of social grievances; like many another woman, she could see only one side of a subject at a time, and looked at that through a telescope. It seemed to her a despicably vulgar thing, and an indication of the utter rottenness of the whole fabric of society, that a high-born man of distinguished attainments should by common consent be neglected and despised simply because he was not rich. That was how she looked at it. And if Paul Brion had not been thought good enough for a select assembly, why had she been invited? Her answer to this question was a still more painful testimony to the generally improper state of things, and brought her to long for her own legitimate and humble environment, in which she could enjoy her independence and self-respect, and (which was the idea that tantalised her most just now) solace her lover with Beethoven sonatas when he was tired of writing, and wanted a rest. From the longing to see him in the ballroom, to have him with her as other girls had their natural counterparts, to share with her in the various delights of this great occasion, she fell to longing to go home to him – to belong to Myrtle Street and obscurity again, just as he did, and because he did. Why should she be listening to the Austrian band, eating ices and strawberries, rustling to and fro amongst the flowers and fine ladies, flaunting herself in this dazzling crowd of rich and idle people, while he plodded at his desk or smoked a lonely pipe on his balcony, out of it all, and with nothing to cheer him? Then the memory of their estrangement, and how it had come about, and how little chance there seemed now of any return to old relations and those blessed opportunities that she had so perversely thrown away, wrought upon her high-strung nerves, and inspired her with a kind of heroism of despair. Poor, thin-skinned Patty! She was sensitive to circumstances to a degree that almost merited the term "morbid," which is so convenient as a description of people of that sort. A ray of sunshine would light up the whole world, and show her her own pathway in it, shining into the farthest future with a divine effulgence of happiness and success; and the patter of rain upon the window on a dark day could beat down hope and discourage effort as effectually as if its natural mission were to bring misfortune. At one moment she would be inflated with a proud belief in herself and her own value and dignity, that gave her the strength of a giant to be and do and suffer; and then, at some little touch of failure, some discovery that she was mortal and a woman liable to blunder, as were other women, she would collapse into nothing and fling herself into the abysses of shame and self-condemnation as a worthless and useless thing. When this happened, her only chance of rescue and restoration in her own esteem was to do penance in some striking shape – to prove herself to herself as having some genuineness of moral substance in her, though it were only to own honestly how little it was. It was above all things necessary to her to have her own good opinion; what others thought of her was comparatively of no consequence.
She had been dancing for some time before the intercourse with Mr. Smith, that so gratified Mrs. Duff-Scott, set in. The portly widower found her fanning herself on a sofa in the neighbourhood of her chaperon, for the moment unattended by cavaliers; and, approaching her with one of the frequent little plates and spoons that were handed about, invited her favour through the medium of three colossal strawberries veiled in sugar and cream.
"I am so grieved that I am not a dancing man," he sighed as she refused his offering on the ground that she had already eaten strawberries twice; "I would ask leave to inscribe my humble name on your programme, Miss Patty."
"I don't see anything to grieve about," she replied, "in not being a dancing man. I am sure I don't want to dance. And you may inscribe your name on my programme and welcome" – holding it out to him. "It will keep other people from doing it."
The delighted old fellow felt that this was indeed meeting him half way, and he put his name down for all the available round dances that were to take place before morning, with her free permission. Then, as the band struck up for the first of them, and the people about them began to crystallise into pairs and groups, and the smart man-o'-wars men stretched their crimson rope across the hall to divide the crowd, Mr. Smith took his young lady on his arm and went off to enjoy himself. First to the buffet, crowned with noble icebergs to cool the air, and groaning with such miscellaneous refreshment that supper, in its due course, came to her as a surprise and a superfluity, where he insisted that she should support her much-tried strength (as he did his own) with a sandwich and champagne. Then up a narrow staircase to the groves above – where already sat Elizabeth in a distant and secluded bower with Mr. Yelverton, lost, apparently, to all that went on around her. Here Mr. Smith took a front seat, that the young men might see and envy him, and set himself to the improvement of his opportunity.
"And so you don't care about dancing," he remarked tenderly; "you, with these little fairy feet! I wonder why that is?"
"Because I am not used to it," said Patty, leaning her white arms on the ledge in front of her and looking down at the shining sea of heads below. "I have been brought up to other accomplishments."
"Music," he murmured; "and – and – "
"And scrubbing and sweeping, and washing and ironing, and churning and bread-making, and cleaning dirty pots and kettles," said Patty, with elaborate distinctness.
"Ha-ha!" chuckled Mr. Smith. "I should like to see you cleaning pots and kettles! Cinderella after twelve o'clock, eh?"
"Yes," said she; "you have expressed it exactly. After twelve o'clock – what time is it now? – after twelve o'clock, or it may be a little later, I shall be Cinderella again. I shall take off my glass slippers, and go back to my kitchen." And she had an impulse to rise and run round the gallery to beg Elizabeth to get permission for their return to their own lodgings after the ball; only Elizabeth seemed to be enjoying her tête-à-tête so much that she had not the heart to disturb her. Then she looked up at Mr. Smith, who stared at her in a puzzled and embarrassed way. "You don't seem to believe me," she said, with a defiant smile. "Did you think I was a fine lady, like all these other people?"