I had just received my quarter's allowance of pocket-money, and had
gone into the city to cash the cheque at my father's bankers.
The money paid, I debated for a moment how I should return homewards.
First I thought of walking: then of taking a cab. While I was
considering this frivolous point, an omnibus passed me, going
westward. In the idle impulse of the moment, I hailed it, and got in.
It was something more than an idle impulse though. If I had at that
time no other qualification for the literary career on which I was
entering, I certainly had this one--an aptitude for discovering points
of character in others: and its natural result, an unfailing delight
in studying characters of all kinds, wherever I could meet with them.
I had often before ridden in omnibuses to amuse myself by observing
the passengers. An omnibus has always appeared to me, to be a
perambulatory exhibition-room of the eccentricities of human nature. I
know not any other sphere in which persons of all classes and all
temperaments are so oddly collected together, and so immediately
contrasted and confronted with each other. To watch merely the
different methods of getting into the vehicle, and taking their seats,
adopted by different people, is to study no incomplete commentary on
the infinitesimal varieties of human character--as various even as the
varieties of the human face.
Thus, in addition to the idle impulse, there was the idea of amusement
in my thoughts, as I stopped the public vehicle, and added one to the
number of the conductor's passengers.
There were five persons in the omnibus when I entered it. Two
middle-aged ladies, dressed with amazing splendour in silks and
satins, wearing straw-coloured kid gloves, and carrying highly-scented
pocket handkerchiefs, sat apart at the end of the vehicle; trying to
look as if they occupied it under protest, and preserving the most
stately gravity and silence. They evidently felt that their
magnificent outward adornments were exhibited in a very unworthy
locality, and among a very uncongenial company.
One side, close to the door, was occupied by a lean, withered old man,
very shabbily dressed in black, who sat eternally mumbling something
between his toothless jaws. Occasionally, to the evident disgust of
the genteel ladies, he wiped his bald head and wrinkled forehead with
a ragged blue cotton handkerchief, which he kept in the crown of his
hat.
Opposite to this ancient sat a dignified gentleman and a sickly
vacant-looking little girl. Every event of that day is so indelibly
marked on my memory, that I remember, not only this man's pompous look
and manner, but even the words he addressed to the poor squalid little
creature by his side. When I entered the omnibus, he was telling her
in a loud voice how she ought to dispose of her frock and her feet
when people got into the vehicle, and when they got out. He then
impressed on her the necessity in future life, when she grew up, of
always having the price of her fare ready before it was wanted, to
prevent unnecessary delay. Having delivered himself of this good
advice, he began to hum, keeping time by drumming with his thick
Malacca cane. He was still proceeding with this amusement--producing
some of the most acutely unmusical sounds I ever heard--when the
omnibus stopped to give admission to two ladies. The first who got in
was an elderly person--pale and depressed--evidently in delicate
health. The second was a young girl.
Among the workings of the hidden life within us which we may
experience but cannot explain, are there any more remarkable than
those mysterious moral influences constantly exercised, either for
attraction or repulsion, by one human being over another? In the
simplest, as in the most important affairs of life, how startling, how
irresistible is their power! How often we feel and know, either
pleasurably or painfully, that another is looking on us, before we
have ascertained the fact with our own eyes! How often we prophesy
truly to ourselves the approach of a friend or enemy, just before
either have really appeared! How strangely and abruptly we become
convinced, at a first introduction, that we shall secretly love this
person and loathe that, before experience has guided us with a single
fact in relation to their characters!
I have said that the two additional passengers who entered the vehicle
in which I was riding, were, one of them, an elderly lady; the other,
a young girl. As soon as the latter had seated herself nearly opposite
to me, by her companion's side, I felt her influence on me
directly--an influence that I cannot describe--an influence which I
had never experienced in my life before, which I shall never
experience again.
I had helped to hand her in, as she passed me; merely touching her arm
for a moment. But how the sense of that touch was prolonged! I felt it
thrilling through me--thrilling in every nerve, in every pulsation of
my fast-throbbing heart.
Had I the same influence over her? Or was it I that received, and she
that conferred, only? I was yet destined to discover; but not
then--not for a long, long time.
Her veil was down when I first saw her. Her features and her
expression were but indistinctly visible to me. I could just vaguely
perceive that she was young and beautiful; but, beyond this, though I
might imagine much, I could see little.
From the time when she entered the omnibus, I have no recollection of
anything more that occurred in it. I neither remember what passengers
got out, or what passengers got in. My powers of observation, hitherto
active enough, had now wholly deserted me. Strange! that the
capricious rule of chance should sway the action of our faculties that
a trifle should set in motion the whole complicated machinery of their
exercise, and a trifle suspend it.
We had been moving onward for some little time, when the girl's
companion addressed an observation to her. She heard it imperfectly,
and lifted her veil while it was being repeated. How painfully my
heart beat! I could almost hear it--as her face was, for the first
time, freely and fairly disclosed!
She was dark. Her hair, eyes, and complexion were darker than usual in
English women. The form, the look altogether, of her face, coupled
with what I could see of her figure, made me guess her age to be about
twenty. There was the appearance of maturity already in the shape of
her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed,
unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was
latent. Their languor, when she was silent--that voluptuous languor of
black eyes--was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full
lips (to other eyes, they might have looked _too_ full) struggled to
be eloquent, yet dared not. Among women, there always seems something
left incomplete--a moral creation to be superinduced on the
physical--which love alone can develop, and which maternity perfects
still further, when developed. I thought, as I looked on her, how the
passing colour would fix itself brilliantly on her round, olive cheek;
how the expression that still hesitated to declare itself, would speak
out at last, would shine forth in the full luxury of its beauty, when
she heard the first words, received the first kiss, from the man she
loved!
While I still looked at her, as she sat opposite speaking to her
companion, our eyes met. It was only for a moment--but the sensation
of a moment often makes the thought of a life; and that one little
instant made the new life of my heart. She put down her veil again
immediately; her lips moved involuntarily as she lowered it: I thought
I could discern, through the lace, that the slight movement ripened to
a smile.
Still there was enough left to see--enough to charm. There was the
little rim of delicate white lace, encircling the lovely, dusky
throat; there was the figure visible, where the shawl had fallen open,
slender, but already well developed in its slenderness, and
exquisitely supple; there was the waist, naturally low, and left to
its natural place and natural size; there were the little millinery
and jewellery ornaments that she wore--simple and common-place enough
in themselves--yet each a beauty, each a treasure, on _her._ There was
all this to behold, all this to dwell on, in spite of the veil. The
veil! how little of the woman does it hide, when the man really loves
her!
We had nearly arrived at the last point to which the omnibus would
take us, when she and her companion got out. I followed them,
cautiously and at some distance.
She was tall--tall at least for a woman. There were not many people in
the road along which we were proceeding; but even if there had been,
far behind as I was walking, I should never have lost her--never have
mistaken any one else for her. Already, strangers though we were, I
felt that I should know her, almost at any distance, only by her walk.
They went on, until we reached a suburb of new houses, intermingled
with wretched patches of waste land, half built over. Unfinished
streets, unfinished crescents, unfinished squares, unfinished shops,
unfinished gardens, surrounded us. At last they stopped at a new
square, and rang the bell at one of the newest of the new houses. The
door was opened, and she and her companion disappeared. The house was
partly detached. It bore no number; but was distinguished as North
Villa. The square--unfinished like everything else in the
neighbourhood--was called Hollyoake Square.
I noticed nothing else about the place at that time. Its newness and
desolateness of appearance revolted me, just then. I had satisfied
myself about the locality of the house, and I knew that it was her
home; for I had approached sufficiently near, when the door was
opened, to hear her inquire if anybody had called in her absence. For
the present, this was enough. My sensations wanted repose; my thoughts
wanted collecting. I left Hollyoake Square at once, and walked into
the Regent's Park, the northern portion of which was close at hand.
Was I in love?--in love with a girl whom I had accidentally met in an
omnibus? Or, was I merely indulging a momentary caprice--merely
feeling a young man's hot, hasty admiration for a beautiful face?
These were questions which I could not then decide. My ideas were in
utter confusion, all my thoughts ran astray. I walked on, dreaming in
full day--I had no distinct impressions, except of the stranger beauty
whom I had just seen. The more I tried to collect myself, to resume
the easy, equable feelings with which I had set forth in the morning,
the less self-possessed I became. There are two emergencies in which
the wisest man may try to reason himself back from impulse to
principle; and try in vain:--the one when a woman has attracted him
for the first time; the other, when, for the first time, also, she has
happened to offend him.
I know not how long I had been walking in the park, thus absorbed yet
not thinking, when the clock of a neighbouring church struck three,
and roused me to the remembrance that I had engaged to ride out with
my sister at two o'clock. It would be nearly half-an-hour more before
I could reach home. Never had any former appointment of mine with
Clara been thus forgotten! Love had not yet turned me selfish, as it
turns all men, and even all women, more or less. I felt both sorrow
and shame at the neglect of which I had been guilty; and hastened
homeward.
The groom, looking unutterably weary and discontented, was still
leading my horse up and down before the house. My sister's horse had
been sent back to the stables. I went in; and heard that, after
waiting for me an hour, Clara had gone out with some friends, and
would not be back before dinner.
No one was in the house but the servants. The place looked dull,
empty, inexpressibly miserable to me; the distant roll of carriages
along the surrounding streets had a heavy boding sound; the opening
and shutting of doors in the domestic offices below, startled and
irritated me; the London air seemed denser to breathe than it had ever
seemed before. I walked up and down one of the rooms, fretful and
irresolute. Once I directed my steps towards my study; but retraced
them before I had entered it. Reading or writing was out of the
question at that moment.
I felt the secret inclination strengthening within me to return to
Hollyoake Square; to try to see the girl again, or at least to
ascertain who she was. I strove--yes, I can honestly say, strove to
repress the desire. I tried to laugh it off, as idle and ridiculous;
to think of my sister, of the book I was writing, of anything but the
one subject that pressed stronger and stronger on me, the harder I
struggled against it. The spell of the syren was over me. I went out,
hypocritically persuading myself, that I was only animated by a
capricious curiosity to know the girl's name, which once satisfied,
would leave me at rest on the matter, and free to laugh at my own
idleness and folly as soon as I got home again.
I arrived at the house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front
windows, to keep out the sun. The little slip of garden was left
solitary--baking and cracking in the heat. The square was silent;
desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and
down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I
quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill
whistling--sounding doubly shrill in the silence around--made me look
up.
A tradesman's boy--one of those town Pucks of the highway; one of
those incarnations of precocious cunning, inveterate mischief, and
impudent humour, which great cities only can produce--was approaching
me with his empty tray under his arm. I called to him to come and
speak to me. He evidently belonged to the neighbourhood, and might be
made of some use.
His first answer to my inquiries, showed that his master served the
household at North Villa. A present of a shilling secured his
attention at once to the few questions of any importance which I
desired to put to him. I learned from his replies, that the name of
the master of the house was "Sherwin:" and that the family only
consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Sherwin, and the young lady, their daughter.
My last inquiry addressed to the boy was the most important of all.
Did he know what Mr. Sherwin's profession or employment was?
His answer startled me into perfect silence. Mr. Sherwin kept a large
linen-draper's shop in one of the great London thoroughfares! The boy
mentioned the number, and the side of the way on which the house
stood--then asked me if I wanted to know anything more. I could only
tell him by a sign that he might leave me, and that I had heard
enough.
Enough? If he had spoken the truth, I had heard too much.
A linen-draper's shop--a linen-draper's daughter! Was I still in
love?--I thought of my father; I thought of the name I bore; and this
time, though I might have answered the question, I dared not.
But the boy might be wrong. Perhaps, in mere mischief, he had been
deceiving me throughout. I determined to seek the address he had
mentioned, and ascertain the truth for myself.
I reached the place: there was the shop, and there the name "Sherwin"
over the door. One chance still remained. This Sherwin and the Sherwin
of Hollyoake Square might not be the same.
I went in and purchased something. While the man was tying up the
parcel, I asked him whether his master lived in Hollyoake Square.
Looking a little astonished at the question, he answered in the
affirmative.
"There was a Mr. Sherwin I once knew," I said, forging in those words
the first link in the long chain of deceit which was afterwards to
fetter and degrade me--"a Mr. Sherwin who is now, as I have heard,
living somewhere in the Hollyoake Square neighbourhood. He was a
bachelor--I don't know whether my friend and your master are the
same?"
"Oh dear no, Sir! My master is a married man, and has one
daughter--Miss Margaret--who is reckoned a very fine young lady, Sir!"
And the man grinned as he spoke--a grin that sickened and shocked me.
I was answered at last: I had discovered all. Margaret!--I had heard
her name, too. Margaret!--it had never hitherto been a favourite name
with me. Now I felt a sort of terror as I detected myself repeating
it, and finding a new, unimagined poetry in the sound.
Could this be love?--pure, first love for a shopkeeper's daughter,
whom I had seen for a quarter of an hour in an omnibus, and followed
home for another quarter of an hour? The thing was impossible. And
yet, I felt a strange unwillingness to go back to our house, and see
my father and sister, just at that moment.
I was still walking onward slowly, but not in the direction of home,
when I met an old college friend of my brother's, and an acquaintance
of mine--a reckless, good-humoured, convivial fellow. He greeted me at
once, with uproarious cordiality; and insisted on my accompanying him
to dine at his club.
If the thoughts that still hung heavy on my mind were only the morbid,
fanciful thoughts of the hour, here was a man whose society would
dissipate them. I resolved to try the experiment, and accepted his
invitation.
At dinner, I tried hard to rival him in jest and joviality; I drank
much more than my usual quantity of wine--but it was useless. The gay
words came fainting from my heart, and fell dead on my lips. The wine
fevered, but did not exhilarate me. Still, the image of the dark
beauty of the morning was the one reigning image of my
thoughts--still, the influence of the morning, at once sinister and
seductive, kept its hold on my heart.
I gave up the struggle. I longed to be alone again. My friend soon
found that my forced spirits were flagging; he tried to rouse me,
tried to talk for two, ordered more wine, but everything failed.
Yawning at last, in undisguised despair, he suggested a visit to the
theatre.
I excused myself--professed illness--hinted that the wine had been too
much for me. He laughed, with something of contempt as well as
good-nature in the laugh; and went away to the play by himself
evidently feeling that I was still as bad a companion as he had found
me at college, years ago.
As soon as we parted I felt a sense of relief. I hesitated, walked
backwards and forwards a few paces in the street; and then, silencing
all doubts, leaving my inclinations to guide me as they would--I
turned my steps for the third time in that one day to Hollyoake
Square.
The fair summer evening was tending towards twilight; the sun stood
fiery and low in a cloudless horizon; the last loveliness of the last
quietest daylight hour was fading on the violet sky, as I entered the
square.
I approached the house. She was at the window--it was thrown wide
open. A bird-cage hung rather high up, against the shutter-panel. She
was standing opposite to it, making a plaything for the poor captive
canary of a piece of sugar, which she rapidly offered and drew back
again, now at one bar of the cage, and now at another. The bird hopped
and fluttered up and down in his prison after the sugar, chirping as
if he enjoyed playing _his_ part of the game with his mistress. How
lovely she looked! Her dark hair, drawn back over each cheek so as
just to leave the lower part of the ear visible, was gathered up into
a thick simple knot behind, without ornament of any sort. She wore a
plain white dress fastening round the neck, and descending over the
bosom in numberless little wavy plaits. The cage hung just high enough
to oblige her to look up to it. She was laughing with all the glee of
a child; darting the piece of sugar about incessantly from place to
place. Every moment, her head and neck assumed some new and lovely
turn--every moment her figure naturally fell into the position which
showed its pliant symmetry best. The last-left glow of the evening
atmosphere was shining on her--the farewell pause of daylight over the
kindred daylight of beauty and youth.
I kept myself concealed behind a pillar of the garden-gate; I looked,
hardly daring either to move or breathe; for I feared that if she saw
or heard me, she would leave the window. After a lapse of some
minutes, the canary touched the sugar with his beak.
"There, Minnie!" she cried laughingly, "you have caught the runaway
sugar, and now you shall keep it!"
For a moment more, she stood quietly looking at the cage; then raising
herself on tip-toe, pouted her lips caressingly to the bird, and
disappeared in the interior of the room.
The sun went down; the twilight shadows fell over the dreary square;
the gas lamps were lighted far and near; people who had been out for a
breath of fresh air in the fields, came straggling past me by ones and
twos, on their way home--and still I lingered near the house, hoping
she might come to the window again; but she did not re-appear. At
last, a servant brought candles into the room, and drew down the
Venetian blinds. Knowing it would be useless to stay longer, I left
the square.
I walked homeward joyfully. That second sight of her completed what
the first meeting had begun. The impressions left by it made me
insensible for the time to all boding reflections, careless of
exercising the smallest self-restraint. I gave myself up to the charm
that was at work on me. Prudence, duty, memories and prejudices of
home, were all absorbed and forgotten in love--love that I encouraged,
that I dwelt over in the first reckless luxury of a new sensation.
I entered our house, thinking of nothing but how to see her, how to
speak to her, on the morrow; murmuring her name to myself; even while
my hand was on the lock of my study door. The instant I was in the
room, I involuntarily shuddered and stopped speechless. Clara was
there! I was not merely startled; a cold, faint sensation came over
me. My first look at my sister made me feel as if I had been detected
in a crime.
She was standing at my writing-table, and had just finished stringing
together the loose pages of my manuscript, which had hitherto laid
disconnectedly in a drawer. There was a grand ball somewhere, to which
she was going that night. The dress she wore was of pale blue crape
(my father's favourite colour, on her). One white flower was placed in
her light brown hair. She stood within the soft steady light of my
lamp, looking up towards the door from the leaves she had just tied
together. Her slight figure appeared slighter than usual, in the
delicate material that now clothed it. Her complexion was at its
palest: her face looked almost statue-like in its purity and repose.
What a contrast to the other living picture which I had seen at
sunset!
The remembrance of the engagement that I had broken came back on me
avengingly, as she smiled, and held my manuscript up before me to look
at. With that remembrance there returned, too--darker than ever--the
ominous doubts which had depressed me but a few hours since. I tried
to steady my voice, and felt how I failed in the effort, as I spoke to
her:
"Will you forgive me, Clara, for having deprived you of your ride
to-day? I am afraid I have but a bad excuse--"
"Then don't make it, Basil; or wait till papa can arrange it for you,
in a proper parliamentary way, when he comes back from the House of
Commons to-night. See how I have been meddling with your papers; but
they were in such confusion I was really afraid some of these leaves
might have been lost."
"Neither the leaves nor the writer deserve half the pains you have
taken with them; but I am really sorry for breaking our engagement. I
met an old college friend--there was business too, in the morning--we
dined together--he would take no denial."
"Basil, how pale you look! Are you ill?"
"No; the heat has been a little too much for me--nothing more."
"Has anything happened? I only ask, because if I can be of any use--if
you want me to stay at home--"
"Certainly not, love. I wish you all success and pleasure at the
ball."
For a moment she did not speak; but fixed her clear, kind eyes on me
more gravely and anxiously than usual. Was she searching my heart, and
discovering the new love rising, an usurper already, in the place
where the love of her had reigned before?
Love! love for a shopkeeper's daughter! That thought came again, as
she looked at me! and, strangely mingled with it, a maxim I had often
heard my father repeat to Ralph-- "Never forget that your station is
not yours, to do as you like with. It belongs to us, and belongs to
your children. You must keep it for them, as I have kept it for you."
"I thought," resumed Clara, in rather lower tones than before, "that I
would just look into your room before I went to the ball, and see that
everything was properly arranged for you, in case you had any idea of
writing tonight; I had just time to do this while my aunt, who is
going with me, was upstairs altering her toilette. But perhaps you
don't feel inclined to write?"
"I will try at least."
"Can I do anything more? Would you like my nosegay left in the
room?--the flowers smell so fresh! I can easily get another. Look at
the roses, my favourite white roses, that always remind me of my own
garden at the dear old Park!"
"Thank you, Clara; but I think the nosegay is fitter for your hand
than my table."
"Good night, Basil."
"Good night."
She walked to the door, then turned round, and smiled as if she were
about to speak again; but checked herself, and merely looked at me for
an instant. In that instant, however, the smile left her face, and the
grave, anxious expression came again. She went out softly. A few
minutes afterwards the roll of the carriage which took her and her
companion to the ball, died away heavily on my ear. I was left alone
in the house--alone for the night.