Weighed and Wanting

G >> George MacDonald >> Weighed and Wanting

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When the huge urns and the remnants of food were at length removed, and
the windows had been opened for a minute to change the air, a curtain
rose suddenly at the end of the room, and revealed a small stage
decorated with green branches and artificial flowers, in the center of
it a piano, on the piano music, and at the piano Hester, now first seen,
having reserved her strength for her special duty.

When the assembly caught sight of her turning over the leaves of her
music, a great silence fell. The moment she began to play, all began to
talk. With the first tone of her voice, every other ceased. She had
chosen a ballad with a sudden and powerfully dramatic opening, and, a
little anxious, a little irritated also with their talking while she
played, began in a style that would have compelled attention from a herd
of cattle. But the ballad was a little too long for them, and by the
time it was half sung they had begun to talk again, and exchange
opinions concerning it. All agreed that Miss Raymount had a splendid
voice, but several of those who were there by second-hand invitation
could find a woman to beat her easily! Their criticisms were,
nevertheless, not unfriendly--in general condescending and patronizing.
I believe most of this class regarded their presence as a favor granted
her. Had they not come that she might show off to them, and receive
their approbation! Amongst the poor the most refined and the
coarsest-grained natures are to be met side by side--egg-china and
drain-tubing in the same shop--just as in _respectable_ circles.
The rudeness of the cream of society is more like that of the unwashed
than that of any intermediate class; while often the manners of the
well-behaved poor are equalled by those only of the best bred in the
country.

CHAPTER XVII.

AN UNINVITED GUEST.

Vavasor had not heard of the gathering. In part from doubt of his
sympathy, in part from dislike of talking about doing, Hester had not
mentioned it. When she lifted her eyes at the close of her ballad, not a
little depressed at having failed to secure the interest of her
audience, it was with a great gush of pleasure that she saw near the
door the face of her friend. She concluded that he had heard of her
purpose and had come to help her. Even at that distance she could see
that he was looking very uncomfortable, annoyed, she did not doubt, by
the behavior of her guests. A rush of new strength and courage went from
heart to brain. She rose and advancing to the front of the little stage,
called out, in a clear voice that rang across the buzz and stilled it.

"Mr. Vavasor, will you come and help me?"

Now Vavasor was in reality not a little disgusted at what he beheld. He
had called without a notion of what was going on, and seeing the row of
lights along the gallery as he was making for the drawing-room, had
changed his direction and followed it, knowing nothing of the room to
which it led. Blinded by the glare, and a little bewildered by the
unexpectedness of the sight, he did not at first discern the kind of
company he had entered; but the state of the atmosphere was
unaccountable, and for a moment it seemed as if, thinking to enter
Paradise, he had mistaken and opened the left-hand door. Presently his
eyes coming to themselves, confirmed the fact that he was in the midst
of a notable number of the unwashed. He had often talked with Hester
about the poor, and could not help knowing that she had great sympathy
with them. He was ready indeed as they were now a not unfashionable
subject in some of the minor circles of the world's elect, to talk about
them with any one he might meet. But in the poor themselves he could
hardly be said to have the most rudimentary interest; and that a lady
should degrade herself by sending her voice into such ears, and coming
into actual contact with such persons and their attendant
disgusts--except indeed it were for electioneering purposes--exposing
both voice and person to their abominable remarks, was to him a thing
simply incomprehensible. The admission of such people to a respectable
house, and the entertainment of them as at a music hall, could have its
origin only in some wild semi-political scheme of the old fellow, who
had more crotchets in his head than brain could well hold! It was a
proceeding as disgraceful as extraordinary! Puh! Could the tenth part of
the air present be oxygen? To think of the woman he worshipped being in
such a hell!

The woman he could honor little by any worship he gave her, was far more
secure from evil eyes and evil thoughts in that company than she would
have been in any drawing-room of his world. Her angel would rather see
her where she was.

But the glorious tones ceased, the ballad was at an end, and the next
moment, to his dismay, the voice which in its poetry he had delighted to
imagine thrilling the listeners in a great Belgravian drawing-room came
to him in prose across the fumes of that Bloomsbury music hall, clear
and brave and quiet, asking him, the future earl of Gartley, to come and
help the singer! Was she in trouble? Had her father forced her into the
false position in which she found herself? And did she seek refuge with
him the moment he made his appearance? Certainly such was not the tone
of her appeal! But these reflections flashing through his brain, caused
not a moment's delay in Vavasor's response. With the perfect command of
that portion of his being turned towards the public on which every man
like him prides himself, and with no shadow of expression on his
countenance beyond that of a perfect equanimity, he was instantly on his
way to her, shouldering a path in the gentlest manner through the
malodorous air.

"This comes," he said to himself as he went, "of her foolish parents'
receiving so little company that for the free exercise of her great
talent she is driven to such as this! For song must have audience,
however unfit! There was Orpheus with his! Genius was always eccentric!
If he could but be her protection against that political father, that
Puritan mother, and that idiotic brother of hers, and put an end to this
sort of thing before it came to be talked about!"

He grew bitter as with smiling face but shrinking soul he made his way
through that crowd of his fellow-creatures whose contact was defilement.
He would have lost them all rather than a song of Hester's--and yet that
he would on occasion have lost for a good rubber of whist with certain
players!

He sprang on the stage, and made her a rather low bow.

"Come and sing a duet with me," she said, and indicated one on the piano
before her which they had several times sung together.

He smiled what he meant to look his sweetest smile, and almost
immediately their duet began. They sang well, and the assembly, from
whatever reason--I fancy simply because there were two singing instead
of one, was a little more of an audience than hitherto. But it was plain
that, had there been another rondo of the duet, most would have been
talking again.

Hester next requested Vavasor to sing a certain ballad which she knew
was a great favorite with him. Inwardly protesting and that with
vehemence against the profanation, he obeyed, rendering it so as could
not have failed to please any one with a true notion of song. His
singing was, I confess, a little wooden, as was everything Vavasor did:
being such himself, how could he help his work being wooden? but it was
true, his mode good, his expression in the right direction. They were
nevertheless all talking before he had ended.

After a brief pause, Hester invited a gentleman prepared for the
occasion to sing them something patriotic. He responded with Campbell's
magnificent song, "Ye Mariners of England!" which was received with
hearty cheers.

He was followed by another who, well acquainted with the predilections
of his audience, gave them a specially sentimental song about a chair,
which was not only heard in silence but followed by tremendous cheering.
Possibly it was a luxury to some who had no longer any grandfather to
kick, to cry over his chair; but, like the most part of their brethren,
the poor greatly enjoy having their feelings gently troubled.

Thus the muse of the occasion was gradually sinking to the intellectual
level of the company--with a consequence unforeseen, therefore not
provided against.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CATASTROPHE.

For the tail of the music-kite--the car of the music-balloon rather,
having thus descended near enough to the earth to be a temptation to
some of the walkers afoot, they must catch at it! The moment the
last-mentioned song was ended, almost before its death-note had left the
lips of the singer, one of the friends' friends was on his feet. Without
a word of apology, without the shadow of a request for permission, he
called out in a loud voice, knocking with his chair on the floor,

"Ladies an' gen'lemen, Mr. William Blaney will now favor the company
with a song."

Thereupon immediately a pale pock-marked man, of diminutive height, with
high retreating forehead, and long thin hair, rose, and at once
proceeded to make his way through the crowd: he would sing from the
stage, of course! Hester and Vavasor looked at each other, and one
whisper passed between them, after which they waited the result in
silence. The countenance approaching, kindled by conscious power and
anticipated triumph, showed a white glow through its unblushing
paleness. After the singing one sometimes hears in drawing-rooms, there
is little space for surprise that some of less education should think
themselves more capable of fine things than they are.

Scrambling with knee and hand upon the stage, for the poor fellow was
feeble, the moment he got himself erect with his face to the audience,
he plunged into his song, if song it could be called, executed in a
cracked and strained falsetto. The result, enhanced by the nature of the
song, which was extremely pathetic and dubiously moral, must have been
excruciation to every good ear and every sensitive nature. Long before
the relief of its close arrived Hester had made up her mind that it was
her part to protect her guests from such. It was compensation no doubt
to some present to watch the grotesque contortions of the singer
squeezing out of him the precious pathos of his song--in which he
screwed his eyes together like the man in Browning's "Christmas Eve,"
and opened his mouth in a long ellipse in the middle of one cheek; but
neither was that the kind of entertainment she had purposed. She sat
ready, against the moment when he should end, to let loose the most
thunderous music in her mental _repertoire_, annoyed that she had
but her small piano on the stage. Vanity, however, is as suspicious of
vanity as hate is of hate, and Mr. Blaney, stopping abruptly in the
middle of the long last note, and in doing so changing the word, with
ludicrous result, from a song to a spoken one, screeched aloud, ere she
could strike the first chord,

"I will now favor the company with a song of my own composure."

But ere he had got his mouth into its singing place in his left cheek,
Hester had risen and begun to speak: when she knew what had to be done,
she never hesitated. Mr. Blaney started, and his mouth, after a moment
of elliptic suspense, slowly closed, and returned, as he listened, to a
more symmetrical position in his face.

"I am sorry to have to interfere," said Hester, "but my friends are in
my house, and I am accountable for their entertainment. Mr. Blaney must
excuse me if I insist on keeping the management of the evening in my own
hands."

The vanity of the would-be singer was sorely hurt. As he was too selfish
for the briefest comparison of himself with others, it had outgrown all
ordinary human proportion, and was the more unendurable that no social
consideration had ever suggested its concealment. Equal arrogance is
rarely met save in a mad-house: there conceit reigns universal and
rampant.

"The friends as knows me, and what I can do," returned Mr. Blaney with
calmness, the moment Hester had ended, "will back me up. I have no right
to be treated as if I didn't know what I was about. I can warrant the
song home-made, and of the best quality. So here goes!"

Vavasor made a stride towards him, but scarcely was the ugly mouth half
screwed into singing-place, when Mr. Raymount spoke from somewhere near
the door.

"Come out of that," he shouted, and made his way through the company as
fast as he could.

Vavasor drew back, and stood like a sentinel on guard. Hester resumed
her seat at the piano. Blaney, fancying he had gained his point, and
that, if he began before Mr. Raymount reached him, he would be allowed
to end in peace, again got his mouth into position, and began to howl.
But his host jumping on the stage from behind, reached him at his third
note, took him by the back of the neck, shoved him down, and walked him
through the crowd and out of the room before him like a naughty boy.
Propelling him thus to the door of the house, he pushed him out, closed
it behind him, and re-entering the concert-room, was greeted by a great
clapping of hands, as if he had performed a deed of valor. But,
notwithstanding the miserable vanity and impudence of the man, it had
gone to Hester's heart to see him, with his low visage and puny form, in
the mighty clutch of her father. That which would have made most despise
the poor creature the more, his physical inferiority, made her pity him,
even to pain!

The moment silence was restored, up rose a burly, honest-looking
bricklayer, and said,

"I beg your pardon, miss, but will you allow me to make one remark!"

"Certainly, Mr. Jones," answered Hester.

"It seems to me, miss," said Jones, "as it's only fair play on my part
as brought Blaney here, as I'm sorry to find behave himself so improper,
to say for him that I know he never would ha' done it, if he hadn't have
had a drop as we come along to this 'ere tea-party. That was the cause,
miss, an' I hope as it'll be taken into account, an' considered a
lucidation of his conduct. It takes but very little, I'm sorry to say,
miss, to upset his behavior--not more'n a pint at the outside.--But it
don't last! bless you, it don't last!" he added, in a tone of extreme
deprecation; "there's not a morsel of harm in him, poor fellow--though I
says it as shouldn't! Not as the guv'nor do anything more'n his duty in
puttin' of him out--nowise! I know him well, bein' my wife's
brother--leastways half-brother--for I don't want to take more o' the
blame nor by rights belong to me. When he've got a drop in his nob, it's
always for singin' he is--an' that's the worst of _him_. Thank you
kindly, miss."

"Thank _you_, Mr. Jones," returned Hester. "We'll think no more of
it."

Loud applause followed, and Jones sat down, well satisfied: he had done
what he ought in acknowledging the culprit for his wife's sake, and the
act had been appreciated.

The order of the evening was resumed, but the harmony of the assembly
once disturbed, all hope of quiet was gone. They had now something to
talk about! Everyone that knew Blaney felt himself of importance: had he
not a superior right of opinion upon his behavior? Nor was he without a
few sympathizers. Was he not the same flesh and blood? they said. After
the swells had had it all their own way so long, why shouldn't poor
Blaney have his turn? But those who knew Hester, especially the women of
them, were indignant with him.

Hester sang again and again, but no song would go quite to her mind.
Vavasor also sung several times--as often, that is, as Hester asked him;
but inwardly he was disgusted with the whole affair--as was natural, for
could any fish have found itself more out of the water than he?
Everything annoyed him--most of all that the lady of his thoughts should
have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to
him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such
a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement,
justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a
repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to
understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with
far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. One main
test of our dealings in the world is whether the men and women we
associate with are the better or the worse for it: Vavasor had often
been where at least he was the worse, and no one the better for his
presence. For days a cloud hung over the fair image of Hester in his
mind.

He called on the first possible opportunity to inquire how she was after
her exertions, but avoided farther allusion to the events of the
evening. She thanked him for the help he had given her, but was so far
from satisfied with her experiment, that she too let the subject rest.

Mr. Raymount was so disgusted, that he said nothing of the kind should
ever again take place in his house: he had not bought it to make a
music-hall of it!

If any change was about to appear in Vavasor a change in the fortunes of
the Raymounts prevented it.

What the common judgment calls _luck_ seems to have odd
predilections and prejudices with regard to families as well as
individuals. Some seem invariably successful, whatever they take in
hand; others go on, generation after generation, struggling without a
ray of success; while on the surface appears no reason for the
inequality. But there is one thing in which pre-eminently I do not
believe--that same luck, namely, or chance, or fortune. The Father of
families looks after his families--and his children too.

CHAPTER XIX.

LIGHT AND SHADE.

Light and shade, sunshine and shadow pursue each other over the moral as
over the material world. Every soul has a landscape that changes with
the wind that sweeps its sky, with the clouds that return after its
rain.

It was now the month of March. The middle day of it had been dreary all
over England, dreariest of all, perhaps, in London. Great blasts had
gone careering under a sky whose miles-thick vault of clouds they never
touched, but instead hunted and drove and dashed earth-clouds of dust
into all unwelcoming places, throats and eyes included. Now and then a
few drops would fall on the stones as if the day's fierce misery were
about to yield to sadness; but it did not so yield; up rose again a
great blundering gust, and repentance was lost in rage. The sun went
down on its wrath, and its night was tempestuous.

But the next morning rose bright and glad, looking as if it would make
up for its father's wildness by a gentler treatment of the world. The
wind was still high, but the hate seemed to have gone out of it, and
given place to a laborious jollity. It swept huge clouds over the sky,
granting never a pause, never a respite of motion; but the sky was blue
and the clouds were white, and the dungeon-vault of the world was broken
up and being carted away.

Everything in the room where the Raymounts were one by one assembling to
break their fast, was discolored and dark, whether with age or smoke it
would have needed more than a glance to say. The reds had grown brown,
and the blues a dirty slate-color, while an impression of drab was
prevalent. But the fire was burning as if it had been at it all night
and was glorying in having at length routed the darkness; and in the
middle of the table on the white cloth, stood a shallow piece of red
pottery full of crocuses, the earnest of the spring. People think these
creatures come out of the earth, but there are a few in every place, and
in this house Mark was one of such, who are aware that they come out of
the world of thought, the spirit-land, in order to manifest themselves
to those that are of that land.

Mr. Raymount was very silent, seemed almost a little gloomy, and the
face of his wife was a shade less peaceful in consequence. There was
nothing the matter, only he had not yet learned to radiate. It is hard
for some natures to let their light shine. Mr. Raymount had some light;
he let it shine mostly in reviews, not much in the house. He did not
lift up the light of his countenance on any.

The children were rosy, fresh from their baths, and ready to eat like
breakfast-loving English. Cornelius was half his breakfast ahead of the
rest, for he had daily to endure the hardship of being at the bank by
nine o'clock, and made the best of it by claiming in consequence an
utter immunity from the _petite norale_ of the breakfast-table.
Never did he lose a moment in helping anybody. Even the little Saffy he
allowed with perfect frigidity to stretch out a very long arm after the
butter--except indeed it happened to cross his plate, when he would
sharply rebuke her breach of manners. It would have been all the same if
he had not been going till noon, but now he had hurry and business to
rampart his laziness and selfishness withal. Mark would sooner have gone
without salt to his egg than ask Corney to pass it.

This morning the pale boy sat staring at the crocuses--things like them
peeping out of the spring-mould of his spirit to greet them.

"Why don't you eat your breakfast, Mark, dear?" said his mother.

"I'm not hungry, mamma," he answered.

The mother looked at him a little anxiously. He was not a very vigorous
boy in corporeal matters; but, unlike his father's, his light was almost
always shining, and making the faces about him shine.

After a few minutes, he said, as if unconsciously, his eyes fixed on the
crocuses,

"I can't think how they come!"

"They grow!" said Saffy.

Said her father, willing to set them thinking,

"Didn't you see Hester make the paper flowers for her party?"

"Yes," replied Saffy, "but it would take such a time to make all the
flowers in the world that way!"

"So it would; but if a great many angels took it in hand, I suppose they
could do it."

"That can't be how!" said Saffy, laughing; "for you know they come up
out of the earth, and there ain't room to cut them out there!"

"I think they must be cut out and put together before they are made!"
said Mark, very slowly and thoughtfully.

The supposition was greeted with a great burst of laughter from
Cornelius. In the midst of a refined family he was the one vulgar, and
behaved as the blind and stupid generally behave to those who see what
they cannot see. Mockery is the share they choose in the motions of the
life eternal!

"Stop, stop, Cornelius!" said his father. "I suspect we have a young
philosopher where you see only a silly little brother. He has, I fancy,
got a glimpse of something he does not yet know how to say."

"In that case, don't you think, sir," said Cornelius, "he had better
hold his tongue till he does know how to say it?"

It was not often he dared speak so to his father, but he was growing
less afraid of him, though not through increase of love.

His father looked at him a moment ere he replied, and his mother looked
anxiously at her husband.

"It _would_ be better," he answered quietly, "were he not among
_friends_."

The emphasis with which he spoke was lost on Cornelius.

"They take everything for clever the little idiot says!" he remarked to
himself. "Nobody made anything of _me_ when _I_ was his age!"

The letters were brought in. Amongst them was one for Mr. Raymount with
a broad black border. He looked at the postmark.

"This must be the announcement of cousin Strafford's death!" he said.
"Some one told me she was not expected to live. I wonder how she has
left the property!"

"You did not tell me she was ill!" said his wife.

"It went out of my head. It is so many years since I had the least
communication with her, or heard anything of her! She was a strange old
soul!"

"You used to be intimate with her--did you not, papa?" said Hester.

"Yes, at one time. But we differed so entirely it was impossible it
should last. She would take up the oddest notions as to what I thought,
and meant, and wanted to do, and then fall out upon me as advocating
things I hated quite as much as she did. But that is much the way
generally. People seldom know what they mean themselves, and can hardly
be expected to know what other people mean. Only the amount of mental
and moral force wasted on hating and talking down the non-existent is a
pity."

"I can't understand why people should quarrel so about their opinions,"
said Mrs. Raymount.

"A great part of it comes of indignation at not being understood and
another great part from despair of being understood--and that while all
the time the person thus indignant and despairing takes not the smallest
pains to understand the neighbor whose misunderstanding of himself makes
him so sick and sore."

"What is to be done then?" asked Hester.

"Nothing," answered her father with something of a cynical smile, born
of this same frustrated anxiety to impress his opinions on others.

He took up his letter, slowly broke the large black seal which adorned
it, and began to read it. His wife sat looking at him, and waiting, in
expectation sufficiently mild, to hear its contents.

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