Jessie Fothergill

“ Jerome Wellfield, Nita. Let him fall in love with you if he likes; but don’t you do it,’ she said, deliberately.
‘Aunt Margaret! do you want to insult me?’ she asked, sitting up, pale and breathless with anger.
‘Not at all. I want to warn you. He is very romantic-looking—reminds one of Byron’s heroes, only more agreeable in general society than they would have been; but depend upon it, my dear, it is all looks. No Wellfield ever had a heart for anyone but himself.’
‘Oh, I am so tired of listening to that old story, aunt! You would not say a good word for the Wellfields to save your life. ”

“ Sara looked after him dreamily. ‘What does he mean?’ she speculated. ‘But I know. He finds a change in me; and I am changed, even to myself. Sometimes I think the old spirit has completely left me, and yet how can that be? It will all come right again, I suppose. But I wish—I wish it might be soon.’
She sighed as she put down her palette, and sat down before her easel in the chair which Wilhelmi had lately occupied, and, amid the profound stillness of the quiet afternoon, let her thoughts wander off there where now they were for ever straying. ”

“ It was, perhaps, Jerome Wellfield’s misfortune that these two women loved him so much and so deeply that they let him see too easily how dear he was to them. It is possible that a featherweight might have turned the scale. Had Sara Ford not confessed her love with such an utter frankness and self-abnegation—had he entertained any doubt as to his success with her, surely he must have been more circumspect. ”

“ No; do not try to deny your own goodness. I have felt it every hour since I met you; and to one in my position, every kind thought and gentle action on the part of others is as another bead added to one’s string of pearls.’
Nita was perfectly silent. Her under-lip quivered a little. Tears rushed to her eyes and blinded her. She had kept up all along a brave show of light-heartedness and carelessness; but Wellfield had laid his spell upon her from the first moment of meeting him. So long as he merely talked nonsense to her, she could appear indifferent. ”

“ She was Sara Ford still, but Sara Ford metamorphosed. Wilhelmi sorrowfully told himself one day that there was now more life and spirit in the water-colour sketches which die Kleine, as he called Avice Wellfield, made, than in those of his dearest pupil, of which but lately he had been so proud.
‘I am certain it’s some wretched love affair!’ he muttered, as he strode abstractedly away from the Jägerstrasse towards his own house. ‘Good heavens! to think of that woman’s talent being palsied by some wretched sentimental Schwärmerei; it is horrible. ”

“ Wellfield wandered beside the river into the fields—some broad, pleasant, open fields where the river was wide, and formed a broad, shallow, brawling kind of waterfall. To-night there was a full moon, which, as night fell, replaced the day with a softer brilliance. He mused as he walked, not with the heartbeats and the tumultuous agitation which had shaken Nita, but with vague wonder, and a vague repining. ”

“ She felt absolutely ill. Should she send an excuse, and not go to the drawing-room again to-night? No; certainly not. She would not let anyone see how foolish she was. If she remained upstairs John would be uncomfortable, and would miss her; her father’s quiet evening with the savages would be spoiled; her aunt would wave her green and yellow cap-ribbons in triumph, convinced that her warnings had taken effect, and Wellfield would think her a poor creature, while she—would not see him, nor speak to him, nor touch his hand again till to-morrow morning. ”

“ On that fourth day—the day of Ellen’s return, Sara verily thought once [267] or twice that she was going mad. The horrible strain and tension; the dead, unbroken silence, suspense, waiting; the horrible conviction, which yet she could not prove without this eternity of waiting, that she was being slighted, insulted, betrayed; it formed altogether an ordeal more scorching than any of which her philosophy had hitherto even surmised the existence.
At length, in the evening, she heard a step on the stair; the door was opened, and Ellen entered, looking utterly broken-down and exhausted. ”

“ Wellfield looked as he always did—handsome with a beauty which is given to few men to wear, stately and high-bred more than most men.
‘They make a goodly couple,’ thought the fond father. ‘She is a winsome lass, and he—yes, by gad, there is something in birth and breeding. He looks the right master for a place like this.’
With which jumble of fatherly pride, commercial astuteness, and prudent calculation, he advanced to meet them.
‘John has gone home to dinner,’ said Nita; ‘he’s coming down in the evening.’
Wellfield’s reflections, as he walked towards Brentwood, were far from being agreeable. ”

“ Wilhelmi was an artist to his very [141] soul. Creed, nationality, and rank counted as nothing, and less than nothing, with him. Genius was his care and his watchword. Two years ago he had, he believed, found that Sara Ford had received a spark of the divine fire, and from that moment she had been as his own child to him—his soul’s child, the child of his highest and purest individuality. And as time went on he had thought also to discover in her the industry which some have said is genius. ”

“ Indeed, I am not sure that there may not be duller things for a girl than to live in a beautiful home which she loves, with human interests around her, not many, but deep, with a good father, a good friend, and a good dog as her chief and almost her only associates. Such a life Nita Bolton had led now for seven years—a silent, still, uneventful life, but one which she had always found sufficient, nay, delightful. ”

“ Many a one of the village people, many a ‘lover and his lass,’ would pause to lean upon the top of the gate and hearken to the broken, fitful gusts of sound which came wafted to them from the open window and door. Strange, weird harmonies of Liszt, and Chopin, and Schumann, smote their astonished ears, and songs still stranger and more eerie than the tunes—deep, mournful German melodies, or some wild, homely, [135] Volkslied would float out and strike them with wonder, such music being assuredly for the first time heard in Wellfield. ”

“ It was easy for Jerome Wellfield as he sat exchanging commonplaces at the breakfast-table with Nita—and Nita’s father—to swear to himself that such commonplaces alone should be the yea, yea, and the nay, nay, of his entire conversation with her. When the moment came, in which [81] he found himself alone with her, or apart with her, the old trick of the eyes, the old smoothness of the tongue slips back again, as if by some fatality. So long as she believes him he will make love to her ”

“ John will see me home,’ said Miss Shuttleworth, while John, stooping over Nita, remarked:
‘My child, you appear to have collapsed altogether.’
Aunt Margaret had gone upstairs to take off the green and yellow cap; Nita turned round, and sat up. Her face was pale, and there was an expression of suffering upon it.
‘I tell you what it is,’ said John, ‘you want a little fresh air, Nita. Suppose you and Wellfield come with Aunt Margaret and me to the gate. You are afraid to go alone, you know, being such a coward.’
Nita smiled faintly.
‘Here’s a shawl,’ pursued John. ”

“ As she sat thus alone, feeling her heart very desolate, the door was opened, and John Leyburn came in.
‘John, you!’ she exclaimed, springing up and running to meet him—‘I thought you were going to Monk’s Gate.’
‘So I am: on my way there now. But you didn’t think I should go without looking in upon you—and your father away. You look remarkably desolate.’
‘Do I? Everyone has gone, and it is dull.’
‘If I had thought of it, I wouldn’t have gone to see Wellfield to-night. I would have come and sat with you, my dear. Are you cold, Nita? What’s the matter? Where’s your little red shawl? ”

“ Wilhelmi, who looked grave and concerned, did not speak for a short time. At last he said:
‘Do you know that poor Goldmark died this morning?’
‘Did he!’ exclaimed Sara, a rapid flash of sorrow and sympathy passing over her face. ‘How very sad! Such a talent and such a career cut off in that manner.’
‘Ay, sad enough. But there are sadder things than for a career to be [143] cut off by death. There is the palsy of self-satisfaction, which has virtually killed the very finest talent over and over again, while leaving the body as strong and flourishing as ever. ”

“ When you fall in love with some one, and he asks you to marry him, you will do so of course, since you are neither a nun, nor a lunatic, nor in any way a perverse or ill-conditioned person,’ he answered tranquilly, while Nita looked at him in startled amazement, her heart beating with the same strange sense of a thrilling new emotion as she had this morning experienced. In all their nineteen years of brother and sisterhood, John had never dared—was ‘dared’ the word to use? No—it had never occurred to John to speak to her in such a manner as did this man whom she had first met yesterday. ”

“ Nita had always led a remarkably quiet life. Her friends in or about Wellfield were very few; she had not a single intimate girlfriend. Her father, and still more her cousin, John Leyburn, had always been her greatest confidants. All things that a sister may say to and confide in a brother whom she esteems and loves, and in whom she has the most boundless trust and confidence, Nita had always been in the habit of saying to and confiding in John Leyburn. ”

“ The choir consisted of a number of young men and women accommodated with seats in the west gallery, a conspicuous position, close to the organ; and to do justice to their exalted places, no doubt, they were in the habit of attiring themselves in the very height of the Wellfield fashion, which fashion, for brilliance of hue and boldness of contrast, would have put to shame Solomon in all his glory. Jerome found himself seated next to Miss Margaret Shuttleworth, who looked uncompromising. ”

“ Ay! give us peace; though every moment we are off our knees we may be doing, thinking, planning, hoping that which will destroy peace, yet, Power that we invoke, heed not that, but, since we fall on our knees, and set it to music, and are for the moment in earnest—‘Give us peace!’ It is a cry common to all ”

“ I [202] have let my love master me, instead of being myself master of my love. And I am punished for it.’
‘And will you go on dreaming? Will you not rather try to awaken?’
Sara looked at him, and thought of Jerome—of the love she bore him. Subdue that, make it bondslave to her art, second to something else? She knew that if she meant to be what she had all along striven for—a great artist, that she must do so; the question was, could she? Had she not been in reality the slave of her love for Wellfield, since it had arisen, since he had told her he loved her? ”

“ A background of vine-covered, autumn-tinted Italian hills, and in the foreground a richly picturesque group of men and maidens, women and children, in every attitude of beauty and grace that could be imagined. In the very centre stood a splendidly handsome woman, dark, tall, and amply formed, in an Italian peasant’s dress; her arms were thrown upwards as she shook a tambourine and looked behind her to a youth who raised a spray of deeply tinted vine-leaves to bind them in her abundant strong black hair. ”

“ She rebelled, momentarily.
‘Really, you are very—my nerves——’
‘Are quite strong enough to carry you home, and point out to me the way round by Clyderhow, which is the road I intend to take to Wellfield Abbey. There is no reason why you should not do your shopping too,’ he added, gently.
‘Impossible!’ said Nita, in so decided a voice that he at once resolved that it should, on the contrary, become possible. With the exercise of power grew the delight in it. Cost what it might, Nita should go to Clyderhow, and do her shopping, because he wished it. ”

“ Why had he not known of all this reverse of circumstances a few months earlier, before he had met Sara Ford and learnt to love her? If Sara had not been there, imperiously commanding his love, how easy it would have been to accept Father Somerville’s outspoken counsel, to make love to Nita Bolton (this with a calm obliviousness or ignoring of the fact that what he had done that afternoon was, if not love-making, at least an excellent imitation of [57] it) , marry her, and once more enjoy his own. ”

“ Sara did not love Falkenberg—she loved Jerome Wellfield; but the former he believed and grasped at. Every sign of devotion on Rudolf’s part put a weapon into his hands for the furtherance of his plan. He heard glowing accounts of Falkenberg’s riches and great possessions; of his status in the world of finance; of his interviews with royal and imperial personages and their ministers; of what changes a word of his could work in the state of the Börse; in short, every word that Frau Goldmark said convinced him that here was a splendid alliance, waiting [258] for Sara Ford to ratify it ”

“ Sara Ford, as Thusnelda, is also seated upon the ground at the foot of the tree, clad in a loose, flowing white dress of some fine soft web. Leaning a little over towards the warrior, she rests her weight upon her left hand, and appears to question him with amazement and indignation. The music stopped, and behind the scenes some one read a portion of that magnificent scene—a scene such as perhaps no one but Heinrich von Kleist could have written quite in that way. ”

“ But far more wonderful to Avice was the way in which her friend had, as it were, transformed herself from the collected, well-bred, sophisticated young lady of to-day, into an ancient Teuton chieftainess, a primal Germanic mother, in whose beautiful face there were not wanting passion and fierceness—whoso reads the rest of the play may learn the pitiless brutal vengeance which Thusnelda wreaked upon Ventidius—not wanting her elements of ‘the tiger and the ape.’ And yet how grand she was—how majestic! ”