_ CHAPTER VII. A LINK WITH CIVILISATION
On the afternoon following Henry's departure, Esther went out for a walk, and she came presently to a pretty little house half hidden in its big garden. A well-kept lawn, richly bathed in sunlight, flashed through the trees; and, opening the gate and following the tree-shaded path along one side of the house, Esther presently mounted to a small terrace, where, as she had hoped, she came upon a dainty little lady watering her flowers.
"Why, Esther, it's you! How sweet of you! I was just dying to see you!" exclaimed the little lady, turning a pretty, but somewhat worn, and brilliantly sad face from her gardening. "Just let me finish this thirsty bed, and then you must give me a kiss. There!"
Then the two embraced; and as Mrs. Myrtilla Williamson held Esther at arm's length and looked at her admiringly,--
"How pretty you look to-day!" she exclaimed, generously. "That new hat's a great success. Didn't I tell you mauve was your colour? Turn round. Yes, dear, you look charming. Where in the world, I wonder, did you all get that grand look of yours from?--I don't mean your good looks merely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have it too; but where did _they_ get it from? You're a puzzle-family--all of you. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in," and she led the way indoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, of which a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots, was to be caught from the terrace.
Everything about Myrtilla Williamson was scrupulously, determinedly dainty, from the flowered tea-gown about her slim, girlish figure,--her predilection for that then novel and suspected garment was regarded as a sure mark of a certain Parisian levity by her neighbours,--to her just a little "precious" enunciation. In France, in the seventeenth century, she would almost certainly have been a visitor at the Hotel Rambouillet, and to-day she was mysteriously and disapprovingly spoken of as "aesthetic." She had a look as if she had tripped out of a Japanese fan, and slept at night in a pot-pourri jar. And she had brains, those good things--brains.
Her name was very like her life, one-half of which might be described as Myrtilla, the other half as Williamson. She was Myrtilla during the day, dabbling with her water-colours, her flowers, or her books; but at six o'clock each afternoon, with the sound of aggressive masculine boots in the hall, her life suddenly changed with a sigh to Williamson. The Williamson half of her life was so clumsily, so grotesquely ill-matched with the Myrtilla half that it was, and probably will always remain, a mystery why she had ever attempted so tasteless and inconvenient an addition,--a mystery, however, far from unique in the history of those mysteriously stupid unhappy marriages with evident boors which refined and charming women will, it is to be feared, go on making to the end of the human chapter.
It was perhaps a day hardly less interesting for Myrtilla than for the young people themselves when she had first met Henry and Esther Mesurier. Before, in the dull bourgeois society into which Williamson had transplanted her from London, she had found none with whom she dared be her natural Myrtilla. There she was expected to be Williamson to the bone. Henry and Esther, however, were only too grateful for Myrtilla, through whom was to come to them the revelation of some minor graces of life for which they had the instincts, but on which they had lacked instruction; and who, still more important, at least for Henry, was to be their first fragile link with certain strenuous new northern writers, translations of whom in every tongue had just then descended, Gothlike, upon Europe, to the great energising of its various literatures. She it was too who first handed them the fretted golden key to the enchanted garden of the Pre-Raphaelites, and the striking head of the young Dante in sepia, which had hung in a sort of shrine-recess in Henry's study, had been copied for him from Rossetti's sketch by Myrtilla's own hand.
She had, too, one of the most precious gifts for friendship, the gift of unselfish and diligent and progressive appreciation of all a friend's good points. She never flattered; but she never missed the smallest opportunity for praise. She was one of those rare people who make you feel happy in yourself, who send you away somehow dignified, profitably raised in your own esteem; just as others have a mysterious power of dejecting you in your proudest moments. If you had any charm, however shy, Myrtilla Williamson would find it, and send you away with a great gush of gratitude to her because it had been found at last. This was perhaps the greatest charm of her clever letters; they were all about "you,"--not, of course, that you didn't want to hear about her. But frequently all she told you of herself was her name. Perhaps she would write in the half-hour that remained between, say, a visit from Esther and the arrival of Williamson, to fix in a few intimate vivid words the charm of their afternoon together, and tell Esther in some new gratifying way what she was to her and why and how she was it; or when Henry had been there--even more carefully in the absence of Williamson--to read her his new poem, she would write him a long letter of literary criticism, just perceptibly vibrating with the emotion she might have felt for the romantic young poet, whom she allowed to call himself her "cavaliere servente," had she not been Williamson as well as Myrtilla, and had she not, as she somewhat unscientifically declared, been old enough to be his mother.
"Well," she said, as they sipped their tea, "so Henry's really gone. He slipped round to bid me a sort of good-bye yesterday, and told me the whole story. On the whole, I'm glad, though I know how you'll miss each other. But I'm sorriest for your mother. Yes, yes, I'm sorry for her. You must try to make it up to her, dear child. I think just that, above all things, would make me fear to be a mother. One can do without children," and there was a certain implication in the conversational atmosphere that children of the name of Williamson had been mercifully spared the world; "but when once they have come into one's life, it must be terrible to see them go out again. I should like to come round and have a little talk with your mother. I wonder if she'd care to see me?"
"So long as you don't come in your tea-gown," said Esther, with a laugh.
"Cruel child!" and then with a way she had of suddenly finding something she wanted to hear of among the interests of her friends, "Now," she said, "tell me something about Mike. I suppose the course of true love runs as smoothly as ever. Happy children! Give him my love when you see him, won't you?"
Esther told all there was to tell about Mike up-to-date, and wished she could have repaid her friend's sympathetic interest with a request for something similar about Williamson. But it was tacitly understood that there was nothing further to be said on that subject, and that the news of Myrtilla's life could hardly again take any more excitingly personal form than the bric-a-brac excitements of art or literature,--though indeed art and literature were, to be just to them, far more than bric-a-brac in the life of Myrtilla Williamson. They were, indeed, it was easy to see, a very sustaining religion for the lonely little woman who, having no children to study, and having completed her studies of Williamson, was driven a good deal upon the study and development of herself. The Williamson half of the day provided her fully with opportunities for the practice of all the philosophy she was likely to acquire from writers ancient and modern, and for the absorption of all the consolation history and biography was likely to afford in the stories of women similarly circumstanced. It is to be feared that Myrtilla not only wore tea-gowns in advance of her time, but was also somewhat prematurely something of a "new" woman; but this was a subject on which she really did very little to "poison" Esther's "young mind." Esther's young mind, in common with those of her two subsequent sisters, was little in need of "poisoning" from outside on such subjects. Indeed, it was a curious phenomenon to observe how all these young minds, sprung from a stock of such ancient, unquestioning faith, had, so to say, been born "poisoned;" or, to state the matter less metaphorically, had all been born with instincts for the most pitiless and effortless reasoning on all subjects human and divine.
As the hour approached when poor Myrtilla must change back to Williamson, Esther rose to say good-bye.
"Come again soon, dear girl; you don't know the good you do me."
The good, dear woman was entirely done by her unwearied, sympathetic discussion of the affairs and dreams of Esther, Mike, and Henry.
"Oh, here is a wonderful new book I intended to talk to you about. You can take it with you; I have finished it. Come next week and tell me what you think of it."
As Esther walked down the path, Myrtilla watched her, and, as she passed out of the gate, waved her a final kiss of parting, and turned indoors. There seemed something ever so sad about her dainty back as it disappeared into the doorway.
"Poor little woman!" said Esther to herself, as she looked to see the title of the book she was carrying. It included a curious Russian name, the correct pronunciation of which she foresaw she must ask Myrtilla on their next meeting. It was "The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff." _