The Bertrams (15 page)

Nor would an angel with a shade of human passion in his temperament have been contented with her forehead. Her mouth had all the richness of youth, and the full enticing curves and ruby colour of Anglo-Saxon beauty. Caroline Waddington was no pale, passionless goddess; her graces and perfections were human, and in being so were the more dangerous to humanity. Her forehead we have said, or should have said, was perfect; we dare not affirm quite so much in praise of her mouth: there was sometimes a hardness there, not in the lines of the feature itself, but in the expression which it conveyed, a want of tenderness, perhaps of trust, and too much self-confidence, it may be, for a woman's character. The teeth within it, however, were never excelled by any that ever graced the face of a woman.

Her nose was not quite Grecian; had it been so, her face might have been fairer, but it would certainly have been less expressive. Nor could it be called
retroussé
, but it had the slightest possible tendency in that direction; and the nostrils were more open, more ready to breathe forth flashes of indignation than is ever the case with a truly Grecian nose.

The contour of her face was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that requires a dimple: full-blown beauty wants no such adventitious aid.

But her eyes! Miss Waddington's eyes!
The eyes are the poet's strongest fortress; it is for their description that he most gathers up his forces and puts forth all his strength. What of her eyes? Well, her eyes were bright enough, large enough, well set in her head. They were clever eyes too—nay, honest eyes also, which is better. But they were not softly feminine eyes. They never hid themselves beneath their soft fringes when too curiously looked into, as a young girl at her window half hides herself behind her curtain. They were bold eyes, I was going to say, but the word would signify too much in their dispraise; daring eyes, I would rather say, courageous, expressive, never shrinking, sometimes also suspicious. They were fit rather for a man than for so beautiful a girl as our Caroline Waddington.

But perhaps the most wonderful grace about her was her walk. "Vera incessu patuit Dea." Alas! how few women can walk! how many are wilfully averse to attempting any such motion! They scuffle, they trip, they trot, they amble, they waddle, they crawl, they drag themselves on painfully, as though the flounces and furbelows around them were a burden too heavy for easy, graceful motion: but, except in Spain, they rarely walk. In this respect our heroine was equal to an Andalusian.

Such and so great were Miss Waddington's outward graces. Some attempt must also be made to tell of those inner stores with which this gallant vessel was freighted; for, after all, the outward bravery is not everything with a woman. It may be that a man in selecting his
wife rarely looks for much else;—for that in addition, of course, to money; but though he has looked for little else, some other things do frequently force themselves on his attention soon after the knot is tied; and as Caroline Waddington will appear in these pages as wife as well as maid, as a man's companion as well as his plaything, it may be well to say now something as to her fitness for such occupation.

We will say, then, that she was perhaps even more remarkable for her strength of mind than for her beauty of person. At present, she was a girl of twenty, and hardly knew her own power; but the time was to come when she should know it and should use it. She was possessed of a stubborn, enduring, manly will; capable of conquering much, and not to be conquered easily. She had a mind which, if rightly directed, might achieve great and good things, but of which it might be predicted that it would certainly achieve something, and that if not directed for good, it might not improbably direct itself for evil. It was impossible that she should ever grow into a piece of domestic furniture, contented to adapt itself to such uses as a marital tyrant might think fit to require of it. If destined to fall into good hands, she might become a happy, loving wife; but it was quite as possible that she should be neither happy nor loving.

Like most other girls, she no doubt thought much of what might be her lot in love—thought much of loving, though she had never yet loved. It has been said that her turn of mind was manly; but it must not on that account be
imagined that her wishes and aspirations were at present other than feminine. Her heart and feelings were those of a girl, at any rate as yet; but her will and disposition were masculine in their firmness.

For one so young, she had great and dangerous faults of character—great, as being injurious to her happiness; and dangerous, as being likely to grow with her years. Her faults were not young faults. Though true herself, she was suspicious of others; though trustworthy, she was not trustful: and what person who is not trustful ever remains trustworthy? Who can be fit for confidence who cannot himself confide? She was imperious, too, when occasion offered itself to her proud spirit. With her aunt, whom she loved, she was not so. Her she was content to persuade, using a soft voice and a soft eye; but with those whom she could not persuade and wished to rule, her voice was sometimes stern enough, and her eye far from soft.

She was a clever girl, capable of talking well, and possessed of more information than most young ladies of the same age. She had been at an excellent school, if any schools are really excellent for young ladies; but there was, nevertheless, something in her style of thought hardly suitable to the softness of girlhood. She could speak of sacred things with a mocking spirit, the mockery of philosophy rather than of youth; she had little or no enthusiasm, though there was passion enough deep seated in her bosom; she suffered from no transcendentalism; she saw nothing through a halo of poetic inspiration: among the various tints of her atmosphere there
was no rose colour; she preferred wit to poetry; and her smile was cynical rather than joyous.

Now I have described my
donna primissima
, with hardly sufficient detail for my own satisfaction, doubtless with far too much for yours, oh, my reader! It must be added, however, that she was an orphan; that she lived entirely with her aunt, Miss Baker; that her father had been in early life a sort of partner with Mr. George Bertram; that Mr. George Bertram was her guardian, though he had hitherto taken but little trouble in looking after her, whatever trouble he may have taken in looking after her money; and that she was possessed of a moderate fortune, say about four thousand pounds.

A picnic undertaken from Jerusalem must in some respects be unlike any picnic elsewhere. Ladies cannot be carried to it in carriages, because at Jerusalem there are no carriages; nor can the provisions be conveyed even in carts, for at Jerusalem there are no carts. The stock of comestibles was therefore packed in hampers on a camel's back, and sent off to the valley by one route, whereas Miss Todd and her friends went on horseback and on donkey-back by another and a longer road.

It may as well be mentioned that Miss Todd was a little ashamed of the magnitude to which her undertaking had attained. Her original plan had merely been this:—that she and a few others should ride through the valleys round the city, and sent a basket of sandwiches to meet them at some hungry point on the road. Now there was a
cortège
of eleven persons,
exclusive of the groom-boys, a boiled ham, sundry chickens, hard-boiled eggs, and champagne. Miss Todd was somewhat ashamed of this. Here, in England, one would hardly inaugurate a picnic to Kensal Green, or the High-gate Cemetery, nor select the tombs of our departed great ones as a shelter under which to draw one's corks. But Miss Todd boasted of high spirits: when this little difficulty had been first suggested to her by Mr. M'Gabbery, she had scoffed at it, and had enlarged her circle in a spirit of mild bravado. Then chance had done more for her; and now she was doomed to preside over a large party of revellers immediately over the ashes of James the Just.

None but Englishmen or Englishwomen do such things as this. To other people is wanting sufficient pluck for such enterprises; is wanting also a certain mixture of fun, honest independence, and bad taste. Let us go into some church on the Continent—in Italy, we will say—where the walls of the churches still boast of the great works of the great masters.—Look at that man standing on the very altar-step while the priest is saying his mass; look at his gray shooting-coat, his thick shoes, his wide-awake hat stuck under one arm, and his stick under the other, while he holds his opera-glass to his eyes. How he shuffles about to get the best point of sight, quite indifferent as to clergy or laity! All that bell-ringing, incense-flinging, and breast-striking is nothing to him: he has paid dearly to be brought thither; he has paid the guide who is kneeling a little behind him;
he is going to pay the sacristan who attends him; he is quite ready to pay the priest himself, if the priest would only signify his wish that way; but he has come there to see that fresco, and see it he will: respecting that he will soon know more than either the priest or his worshippers. Perhaps some servant of the church, coming to him with submissive, almost suppliant gesture, begs him to step back just for one moment. The lover of art glares at him with insulted look, and hardly deigns to notice him further: he merely turns his eye to his Murray, puts his hat down on the altar-step, and goes on studying his subject. All the world—German, Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard—all men of all nations know that that ugly gray shooting-coat must contain an Englishman. He cares for no one. If any one upsets him, he can do much towards righting himself; and if more be wanted, has he not Lord Malmesbury or Lord Clarendon at his back? But what would this Englishman say if his place of worship were disturbed by some wandering Italian?

It was somewhat in this way with Miss Todd. She knew that what she was about to do was rather absurd, but she had the blood of the Todds warm at her heart. The Todds were a people not easily frightened, and Miss Todd was not going to disgrace her lineage. True, she had not intended to feed twelve people over a Jewish sepulchre, but as the twelve people had assembled, looking to her for food, she was not the woman to send them away fasting; so she gallantly led the way through the gate of Jaffa, Sir Lionel attending her on a donkey.

When once out of the town, they turned sharp to the left. Their path lay through the valley of Gihon, through the valley of Hinnom, down among those strange, open sepulchres, deeply excavated in caves on the mountainsides—sepulchres quite unlike those below in the valley of Jehoshaphat. There they are all covered, each stone marking a grave; but here they lie in open catacombs—in caves, at least, of which the entrance is open. The hardy stranger crawling in may lay his hand within the cell—nay, may crawl up into it if he will—in which have mouldered the bones of some former visitor to Jerusalem. For this, so saith tradition, is the field purchased with the reward of iniquity. It was the burying-place for strangers, Aceldama, the field of blood.

But where be these bones now? for the catacombs are mostly empty. Mr. Pott, descending as far as he could into the deepest of them, did at last bring forth a skull and two parts of a back-bone; did present the former with much grace to Miss Jones, who, on beholding it, very nearly fell from off her donkey.

"For shame, Pott," said Mr. Cruse. "How could you handle anything so disgusting? You are desecrating the grave of some unfortunate Mussulman who has probably died within the last fifty years." Mr. Cruse was always intent on showing that he believed none of the traditions of the country.

"It was quite dreadful of you, Mr. Pott," said Miss Jones; "quite dreadful! Indeed, I don't know what you would not do. But I am quite sure he was never a Mahomedan."

"He looked like a Jew, didn't he?" said Pott.

"Oh! I did not see the face; but he was certainly either a Jew or a Christian. Only think. Perhaps those remains have been there for nearly eighteen hundred years. Is it not wonderful? Mamma, it was just here that I lost my parasol."

Sir Lionel had headed the cavalcade with Miss Todd, but George Bertram was true to his new friends, Miss Baker and Miss Waddington. So also, for a time, were Mr. M'Gabbery and Mr. Cruse. As the aunt and niece rode beside each other, a great part of this gallant attention fell upon the former. Indeed, the easiest way of addressing the beauty was often found to be through the beauty's aunt; and it may be doubted whether Mr. M'Gabbery would not have retreated long since in despair, but for the scintillations of civility which fell to him from Miss Baker's good-humour. He had had the good fortune of some previous days' journeying with them on horseback through the desert, and had found that privilege gave him an inestimable advantage over Mr. Cruse. Why should it not also suffice as regarded this newcomer? He had held much commune with himself on the subject that morning; had called himself to task for his own pusillanimity, and had then fortified his courage with the old reflection about fair ladies and faint hearts—and also with a glass of brandy. He was therefore disposed to make himself very unpleasant to poor George if occasion should require.

"How delighted you must have been to see
your father!" said Miss Baker, who, though her temper would not permit her to be uncivil to Mr. M'Gabbery, would readily have dispensed with that gentleman's attendance.

"Indeed, I was. I never saw him before, you know."

"Never saw him, your father, before, Mr. Bertram?" said Caroline. "Why, aunt Mary says that I have seen him."

"I never saw him to remember him. One doesn't count one's acquaintance before seven or eight years of age."

"Your memory must be very bad, then," said Mr. M'Gabbery, "or your childhood's love for your father very slight. I perfectly remember the sweetness of my mother's caresses when I was but three years old. There is nothing, Miss Waddington, to equal the sweetness of a mother's kisses."

"I never knew them," said she. "But I have found an aunt's do nearly as well."