Dulcimer

“ Pink and white prettiness.’
‘Pink and white!’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘you might say as much as that of a wax doll. Bella’s complexion is as delicate as Dresden china.’
‘Don’t be angry with me, Mrs. Dulcimer, but I must confess I hate Dresden china,’ said Cyril, laughing. ‘But I like Miss Scratchell,’ he added hastily, ‘because she seems good and amiable. She must have a hard life with all those brothers and sisters.’
‘A hard life,’ echoed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Ah, you don’t know what an angel that girl is in her mother’s [190] house. ”

“ There was no beef tea like Rebecca’s, no such calves’ foot jelly.
They went to the Dolphin Hotel at Southampton, and Mr. Dulcimer at once descended upon the old book-shops in the High Street, like a vulture upon carrion—very much like a vulture, since he cared only for the dead. Mrs. Dulcimer took Beatrix for a gentle walk, which meant a contemplation of all [50] the shop windows. Beatrix looked pale and out of spirits.
‘I know you are anxious about Kenrick,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer.
Beatrix blushed. Her conscience smote her for not being anxious enough about her wounded lover. ”

“ He may have grown weary of bearing the sorrow, as people grow weary of bearing pain.’
‘You are probably right,’ said Cyril; ‘yet I should rather believe his death accidental.’
Mrs. Dulcimer went to the Water House, knowing no more than the fact of Mr. Harefield’s sudden death and his daughter’s desolation. She went up [27] to Beatrix’s room, expecting that the stricken girl would throw herself into her arms and pour out all her woes upon that friendly bosom. Mrs. Dulcimer’s frills and puffings and broad bonnet-strings were in a flutter with the importance of her mission. ”

“ Dulcimer, sinking to a mysterious undertone, ‘that perhaps if Beatrix could be made to think that Cyril was fickle and inconstant, and that before he left Little Yafford he had got to care for someone else—you, [187] for instance,’ whispered Mrs. Dulcimer, making a little stab at Bella with her forefinger, ‘it might cure her of her foolish attachment to him. It is ridiculous that she should go on caring for a man who doesn’t love her, when there is a noble young fellow who does love her passionately, and can make her Lady Culverhouse. ”

“ I have read The Serio-Comic, and I can’t see anything wrong. There’s more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie Dulcimer’s real name is Frances Raggles, and she’s the mother of five in the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there’s a brandy-and-soda in every chapter.
Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like Lady Scilly’s pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says “Quite so,” as if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. ”

“ Dulcimer’s critical observations upon the living.
‘As poor as Job, and as proud as Lucifer,’ [3] repeated the Vicar, with his eye upon a stiffish passage in Berkeley.
‘I call it a proper pride,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘And as for poverty, she would have money enough for both. ”

“ Dulcimer’s ward, and it is his duty to see her advantageously settled in life. Now Clement is the very last man to think of such a thing. He considers he has done his duty when he has given Beatrix the run of his library.’
‘Yes,’ said Kenrick. ‘It is dear Dulcimer’s only [174] fault to consider books the beginning, middle, and end of life.’
‘Something must be done,’ declared Mrs. Dulcimer, with a sudden accession of energy. ‘Beatrix ought to marry, and she ought to marry a man of position. I cannot imagine a more suitable husband than yourself. Come, Kenrick, be frank with me. ”

“ Dulcimer. ‘All depends upon how she marries. She ought to marry some one who can give her position. She does not want a rich husband.’
Mr. Dulcimer sighed.
‘If our English Church had what it ought to have, educational establishments for women, I should recommend Beatrix to avoid the rocks and shoals of matrimony, and bestow her wealth upon [59] such an institution. She could live very happily as the foundress and superior of a Protestant convent, like Madame de Maintenon, at St. Cyr.’
‘With this difference,’ said Sir Kenrick. ”

“ The Psaltery was a plectrum instrument derived from the Arab Qanūn; it is rarely absent in paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where musical instruments are represented. The same instrument, increased in the weight of stringing to resist the impact of hammers, is the familiar dulcimer, which, like the hurdy-gurdy and the bagpipe, has seen better days. What was once thought of the dulcimer is shown by the painting that adorns the one drawn in Plate XVII. It seems almost vexatious that we do not know who first adjusted a key-board to a psaltery, and thus constructed a spinet. ”

“ He is as wholly destitute of any moral organs as a jackdaw. One sometimes questions whether these creatures have any more than a reflected mimicry of a human soul—such as the German stories imagine in Cobolds and water spirits. All I can see in Dulcimer is a kind of fun-loving animal. He don't seem to have any moral nature."
"Perhaps," said Nina, "his moral nature is something like the cypress-vine seeds which I planted three months ago, and which have just come up."
"Well, I believe Edward expects to see it along, one of these days," said Anne. "His faith in human nature is unbounded. ”

“ Dulcimer sighed, and opened her workbasket. There were little shirts and flannel swathings to be made for new-comers into this world of troubles—heirs apparent to a life of labour, with a reversionary interest in the workhouse. The Vicar’s wife spread her piece of linen on the table, and began a series of problems with a parallelogram in stiff brown paper, in order to find out how she [14] might get the maximum of baby-shirts out of the minimum of linen. It vexed her that her husband should take life so lightly, and be troubled about a few things, when she was troubled about so many. ”

“ I shaved off my beard and moustache, had my hair and eyebrows dyed black, donned my clerical garb, took a ticket from Euston, and here I am.’
‘Your own mother wouldn’t know you if she were to meet you.’
‘Not much fear of the dowager recognising me, eh?’ asked Mr Dulcimer with a chuckle. Then he added more seriously: ‘If I can only get Bella to myself for an hour while she’s down here—there was no chance of it in town—I’ll know my fate one way or the other. She’s an arrant young flirt, I know; but I’ll have no more of her shilly-shallying ”

“ Dulcimer. ‘You are sure it’s the new shade, are you not, Miss Killick?’ she asked, turning to the dressmaker.
‘Yes, ma’am, it’s quite the new shade,’ answered Miss Killick solemnly.
Beatrix seated herself by the fire, and idly watched the blaze, while Mrs. Dulcimer went on [99] working. There was not much sustained conversation. Everybody except Beatrix was thinking of the dress. Miss Killick and Rebecca had their mouths full of pins, and dropped a few whenever they spoke, like the girl in the fairy tale. After half an hour or so Beatrix rose to go, but Mrs. ”

“ So times there were when Dulcie longed intensely for the home of her childhood, with its shady Devonshire lanes redolent of ripe apples, wild honeysuckle, and the sycamore-trees, and for the midges dancing merrily in the clear sunshine above the stream in which she and Florian were wont to fish together: and but for Shafto and Lady Fettercairn she would have gladly hailed Craigengowan, with its ghost-haunted Howe, its old gate of the legend, Queen Mary's Thorn, and all their lonely adjuncts, could she but share them with Finella ”

“ That pure waxen skin, which always accompanies red-golden hair, was set off to the utmost advantage by the dead black of her deep mourning, and her plump white arms and slender hands were coquettishly set off by long black lace gloves, for Dulcie was dressed for dinner, and her soft white neck shone like satin in contrast to a single row of jet beads, her only other ornament being Florian's locket, on which the startled eyes of Shafto instantly fell. ”

“ Moreover, she had an irrepressible dread of Lady Fettercairn, whose bearing to her was as cold as that of Finella was kind and warm.
'Don't you ever wear flowers in your hair, Miss Carlyon?' said the latter, as she regarded with honest admiration the glories of Dulcie's ruddy hair shot with gold.
'No.'
'Why?'
'So few tints go well with my hair: people call it red,' said Dulcie.
'People who are your enemies.'
'I never had an enemy,' said Dulcie simply.
'That I can well believe. Then it must be those who are envious of your loveliness,' added Finella frankly. ”

“ Can't you see Dulcie buying the bags of creamy kalsomine and the brushes and Janet packing up her pails and scrubbing things?
There never was such a polishing, such a mopping, such a scrubbing such a—whisper!—fumigating—since the old house had been built! They'd sense enough not to try too much. They confined their efforts to the nursery, Janet's basement room and Mademoiselle's old quarters. Dulcie knew she mustn't touch the shepherdesses there. Felice had told her about the battle royal with the sponge, but in the nursery—well, the crossy-eyed nephew couldn't work fast enough to suit Dulcie. ”

“ To Dulcie it seemed that they at least were at home.
She leaned for a moment out of the window and drank—for the last time—a deep draught of the pure air that came from the lovely Scottish landscape over which her eyes wandered, as it stretched away down the fertile and peaceful Howe of the Mearns, the corn deepening into gold, the picturesque houses, luxuriant orchards and gardens; and she bade to each and all farewell, with little regret, perhaps, for with all their beauty they were too intimately associated with the idea of Lady Fettercairn and many a humiliation. ”

“ Dulcie was painfully sensible that the lady of the house had become cold, stiff, and most exacting in manner to her, even condescending to sneer at times, with a well-bred tone and bearing that some high-born ladies can assume when they wish to sting dependants or equals alike.
Finella's other grandmother, my Lady Drumshoddy, had ceased to be quite so indignant at her repulsion to Shafto, as she had a nephew—son of a sister—coming home on leave from India ”

“ How you do bewilder a fellow!'
'Don't begin as usual to pay me clumsy compliments, Shafto, or I shall quit the garden,' said Dulcie, her blue eyes looking with a half-frightened, half-defiant expression into the keen, shifty, and pale grey ones of Shafto, who was somewhat given to persecuting her. ”

“ Kippilaw the nationalist.
The delight of Dulcie on unfolding her epistles was only equalled by the delight and gratitude of Finella on receiving hers.
'Oh Dulcie, Dulcie!' ran the letter of Florian (with the whole of which we do not mean to afflict the reader) , 'while here—thousands of miles away from you—how often my heart sickens with hungry longing for a sight of your face—for the sound of your voice, the sound I may never hear again; for in war time we know not what an hour may bring forth, or on each day if we shall see to-morrow. ”

“ He didn't yet know that a very powerful reason was Dulcie. He was so busy hating her, thinking up things to say back when she let her saucy, slangy phrases loose at him that he didn't know how easily he was learning to love the solemn heavy furniture that surrounded him, the bit of fire in the grate on chilly evenings, and Dulcie herself, poking her head in the door crying,
"How is the majesty of the law? Would it mind lifting a ladder for a poor woiking goil?" ”

“ Dulcibel looked up rather defiantly.
“The valley, of course, George; but Nessie and I will not cross the bridge.”
“No?” George uttered the word half-questioningly.
“Certainly not,” Dulcibel answered. Then a pause; and Dulcibel lifted her eyes anew to meet his. “What do you mean?” she asked involuntarily.
“I had you with me, Dulcie, the last time I was there; and I shall want you this time.”
“You’ll have Joan. I don’t mean to cross that bridge.”
“I should like my wife not to be a slave to causeless fears. Failure in such little battles means loss to one’s self.” ”

“ Never, never again, she said to herself, would she beg for fish for tea if this was what they had to endure. Round and round inside the net she swam, backwards, forwards, upwards, downwards—no outlet was there. If only she could find the way she got in! The thread was so hard and strong, too, that she could do nothing, tear at it with her little hands as she would. She had nothing sharp about her either, not even a pin.
The sea became calmer by degrees, but Dulcie's anxiety grew, and her impatience with it, till the [65] sound of men's voices from above raised her excitement to fever pitch. ”

“ Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. “She cannot be spared. Why should she spare others?”
For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner, but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it, shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. “This woman,” thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark object closing up her view, “is a study.” ”

“ It was becoming evident to him that Dulcie had her own vanities—little pathetic vanities which touched him as he glanced at the reconstructed first communion dress and the drooping hyacinth pinned at the waist, and the cheap white slippers on a foot as slenderly constructed as her long and narrow hands.
“Did your mother die long ago, Dulcie?”
“Yes.”
“In America?”
“In Ireland.”
“You look like her, I fancy—” thinking of Soane. ”