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A Rolling Stone, Vol. I

Chapter XIII

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Chapter XIII.

‘Some lives stand ever on the brink
Of joy. They wait through all life's day
To see hope's sun shine out, and sink,
And drag their sunset-tints to gray.’

Violet Palmer was the niece of one who has already appeared in this narrative. Her father was an elder brother of the Palmer whom we already know. But though so nearly related, even those who knew them best could discover little or no resemblance between the two. It was not only in appearance that they differed: in tastes, habits, and manners they were utterly unlike. And one who knew the history of their family would have found this no cause for surprise.

The elder brother had been brought up during the days of abundance, not to say extravagance; had received a liberal education; had lived in good society; and in his early youth had been so favoured by fortune and so helped by friends that ever since he had found great difficulty in helping himself. The younger brother had been the child of poverty, and under her iron rule his life had been one of work and self-denial. But in this hard taskmistress's page 175 school many useful lessons are taught, and some of the finer virtues encouraged. Though some natures may be warped or stunted by her severity others are strengthened by it. We may generally conclude that those who are soured and disheartened by poverty would not have stood the test of prosperity any better. If Palmer lacked those qualities of culture and refinement which his brother, as a poor proud gentleman had held fast throughout the vicissitudes of colonial life, and if his training had induced him to undervalue such things, he had none of the selfishness, the petty vanity, and the meanness with which weak and pampered natures torment themselves and others. He had never had time to think of himself. He had been the only worker in his family—the one on whom all the others leaned, and to whom they all looked when difficulties overtook them. For them had been spent the best part of his life in doing what others ought to have done for themselves. He was fitted for better work than this. The same energy and good judgment which had helped him in his business would have ensured his success in a much higher profession. But he had been held fast in one position by a hundred disadvantages, till it was too late. Want of education, want of time, want of money, and worse still, the wants of others, had kept him back. How many lives are lost thus?—how many talents are thrown away to satisfy sordid necessity?—to the world's incalculable loss.

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It must be added that Palmer would have been the last person to complain of these disadvantages. He had never grudged his early privations and struggles for the poor helpless brothers and sisters, most of whom were now removed from being a trouble to any one. Those who bear the little burdens often make the most outcry, and the wail for a wasted life and lost opportunities is generally raised by those who have wrought their own sorrow. Palmer would not have allowed any one to condole with him because his life had been wasted. And after all, though such lives may be said to be sacrificed, they are not wasted.

Violet's father was quite another sort of man. There are some persons—there are a great many persons, good, amiable, and not without talent—who cannot exist without being propped. They are destitute of a moral backbone. Mr. Everard Palmer had always been propped by one person and another, until the duty devolved upon his brother. He could do nothing without his advice; he had been partly dependent upon him before he inherited a small property, and he had followed him from England to New Zealand, because separation from his prop would have resulted in his collapse.

Palmer had never tired of acting as a prop, and his brother had never felt ashamed of being propped. He was in a faint way sensible of a superiority to his rough uncultured brother, and he was also sensible of his own weakness. There was, indeed, page 177 some excuse for this: his health had always been feeble. Both brothers had inherited a fatal tendency to consumption, which had brought many of their family to an early grave; but in nothing was the difference between them more marked than in the way one nursed and watched over his defective constitution, trembling at every bad sign, and the other disregarded his health altogether.

As has been implied, Everard Palmer was eminently gentlemanly. He would almost have sacrificed life itself rather than not have been so. Like many another punctilious person, however, he had not in choosing a wife chosen one who even approached to his own high standard. He had been so unfortunate as to marry beneath himself, and we may safely judge that no one who has not done this knows exactly what it amounts to. To have been a fitting match for the very much polished Mr. Everard, Mrs. Palmer should have been endowed with all the charming attributes of a perfect lady. Even Mrs. Palmer's best friends could not say that she was a lady. It was not only that her father had held a position very slightly raised above that of a labourer; it was not only that she herself had, when very young, associated with labourers' daughters, and that she had never acquired more knowledge than would just enable her to read and write fairly well. She might have been all this, and yet not so vulgar, so ill-informed, and so narrow-minded as her husband, to his sorrow, page 178 found her to be before the honeymoon was over.

He had married her for her pretty face—that was the conclusion people were obliged to come to. And Mrs. Palmer was pretty, and had once had a lively, saucy manner, dangerously verging on pertness, but very attractive when it is assumed by those who are sufficiently good-looking. Ugly people should not try it. But after a while pertness and flippancy irritate rather than amuse, and bad temper soon ruins the prettiest face. A house where there was neither peace, cleanliness, nor order, and the companionship of a railing woman, was what the unfortunate Mr. Everard gained by his ill-advised marriage. Mrs. Palmer's querulous voice was seldom silent, and her husband's sole refuge lay in escaping to his own room, leaving her at liberty to scold the maid-of-all-work. Perhaps he could have borne with her temper, however, had other things been right. But many a time he had to blush for her ignorance and ill-manners. She humiliated him before his friends; he was even ashamed to ask them to come into his house. In every trifle of household management and daily life she vexed him. ‘She cannot even set a table out properly,’ confided the poor gentleman to his brother. ‘Would you believe it John, I had to show her how to do it?’

‘Well, I suppose it will be done properly in future, then,’ said his brother, not at all surprised by this affecting information. ‘So long as one page 179 of you knows how things should be done it's all right.’

‘And I don't know how it is,’ went on Mr. Everard, almost with tears in his eyes, ‘but every plain country woman seems to be able to keep a nicer house and to dress herself and her children better than my wife. I am sure I never deny her anything that can be afforded; but I believe if she had five hundred dresses she would keep an old shabby one to wear at the breakfast-table.’

‘Why don't you burn it?’ inquired Palmer, who could always suggest a practical solution of a difficulty.

Mr. Everard sighed and shook his head. He knew better than to burn anything belonging to Mrs. Palmer.

Mr. Everard's great excuse for manifold weaknesses and shortcomings was his bad health; Mrs. Palmer's—alleged as the cause of every discomfort—was her children. It was the children who wearied her to death, who left her no time for anything, who spoilt everything, and disarranged a house which otherwise would have been a striking example of the beauty of order. When it was considered that from their uprising to the moment when their restless little bodies were laid in their beds at night these children ran wild in the garden and the fields, and that Mrs. Palmer dispensed with, as superfluous, one-half of the little cares with which a good woman tends her children, most people failed to see how page 180 they could be responsible for the state either of the house or its mistress. The young Palmers were generally in a sorry plight, with moplike heads of hair, and unmended, stringless, or buttonless garments. A neglected child is one of the saddest sights on this earth; so no wonder that poor Mr. Palmer actually cried over his children, and often with awkward fumbling fingers tried to do little things for them, not to much purpose, however.

As if these miseries had not been sufficient to dispirit and crush him, Mr. Palmer had since his youth always felt the want of money, which is acknowledged to be a great sweetener of even the sourest cup of woe. Though his riches alone may not make him happy, a rich man can escape from a hundred heartaches and troubles which a poor one is compelled to endure. Mr. Palmer had never had money of his own, and his friends would sooner have expected him to discover the secret of perpetual motion than to hear of his making any. He had drudged as a clerk in a telegraph office until a distant relative had thought fit to leave him a small property. On the income from this the family made shift to live, and lived on it somewhat less comfortably than most other families would have done. Thus it was that, from year to year, Mrs. Palmer complained and fretted, the children were arrayed in clothes fit for the rag-basket, and Mr. Everard drooped and pined in his study, where he solaced himself by researches in first one branch of science page 181 and then another. Steady and continuous application to one subject was an impossibility to him; he roved about all over the field of knowledge.

Now, in the deepest and darkest period of privation, before the legacy had been heard of, and when Violet, the eldest daughter, was a little girl in frocks and pinafores, Mr. Wishart, who was then learning farming under Mr. Langridge's care, made the acquaintance of Mr. Everard. He became more and more attracted by the quiet, studious gentleman, and came often to the house. And by and by he began to notice the graceful child whose prettiness even torn frocks and tangled hair could not spoil. It was Violet alone of all the children who was allowed to come into her father's room. She would build houses of his books on the floor, or sit on the hearthrug before the fire, listening with wide-open blue eyes to the conversation between the two friends. She was the spoilt child of the house, or she would not have been favoured in this way. Mrs. Palmer was proud of her because she was handsome. Mr. Palmer was proud of her because, strange to say, she had the promise of all the ladylike graces in which her mother was deficient. Violet knew by intuition what was becoming. She was never at a loss for a pretty speech, never awkward, and from babyhood had all the arts and wiles of a finished coquette. Her aim was to please, and even those who detected her shallowness could not help being pleased.

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Mr. Wishart liked to talk with this interesting little girl. He seldom forgot to bring her some present, so that she began to expect his little gifts of bon-bons, toys, or dolls, and to receive them as a tribute which was her due. The dolls were soon given away to the younger children. Violet had never cared for dolls; what she liked was to be with grown-up people, and fancy herself one of them.

Mr. Wishart had a romantic imagination. This is often a source of happiness to the possessor, but if not accompanied by a sound judgment and curbed occasionally it may become dangerously ensnaring. The idea occurred to him—how delightful to educate one's wife! It was by no means a new idea, but to him it seemed so—nay, more, an inspiration. If it were commonly done, he thought, we should seldom hear of unhappy unions and ill-matched pairs.

There is no man but thinks he knows what a woman should learn, and in what direction her mind should be trained. From the very liberal man, who would give her not only academical honours and a right of entry to every profession, but also the questionable privilege of the ballot-box, to the practical individual who would confine her intellect within the study of books of devotion or treatises on cookery, each believes he has the recipe for the making of a perfect woman. Mr. Wishart did not doubt that he was competent to direct the education of the model woman whom mentally he saw from page 183 afar. And we may be certain he had not allowed his thoughts to wander in this direction without having something more substantial than a vision before his eyes. When his imagination pictured to him that model woman of the future, he saw Violet grown older, and with every grace and charm enhanced.

Schemes like this of Mr. Wishart's seem feasible to no one but the originator. At first he had only Mrs. Palmer on his side. Her vanity was flattered by the proposal, and it exactly suited her indolence to be relieved of the care of one daughter. Her husband was anxious, and doubted. Though he was weak he had always wished to do right. He withstood for some time the arguments prompted by Mr. Wishart's enthusiasm, nor did he surrender to the force which Mrs. Palmer could bring against him, either of artful cajolery or hysterics and sulks. As usual, in serious cases, he sent for his brother.

‘What on earth have I to do with it?’ demanded that person when consulted.

‘Advise me in the matter,’ said Mr. Everard.

‘You should ask that of your own commonsense,’ answered his brother.

‘Oh, but I wanted the assistance of your commonsense. I confess that mine is baffled by this affair. I like Wishart better than anyone I know. If Violet were twenty instead of twelve I would not hesitate a moment.’

‘Are there no young ladies in the neighbourhood older than twelve for Wishart to choose from?’

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‘I should say there are plenty who would not object to be chosen. You know common report says he has been angled for over and over again.’

‘And, most humiliating thought, is caught at last by a mere baby of twelve.’

‘Well; but you don't help me,’ said Mr. Everard. ‘What am I to say to Wishart? I don't like the idea of making promises for a child who is too young to have any say in the matter; but, on the other hand, I believe he will provide for her much better than we can, and if she is not happy in her future life it won't be his fault. I am poor, and our family has lost its position—lost caste, as some people say. I can't expect many suitors like Wishart for my daughters. If I only knew!—perhaps this is the best chance of happiness and a comfortable home little Vi is likely to have; and in that case I should be loth to throw it away.’

‘I suppose he doesn't want to marry this elderly lady of twelve at once?’

‘Certainly not. He wishes to have the control of her education, to provide for her in every way till she is eighteen, and then it will be for her to decide.’

‘Indeed. It seems to me that he runs a great risk. I shouldn't like to venture anything on a young lady's decision six years hence. Six years of expensive education, and at the end of it, as likely as not, the adored one will bestow herself with all her perfections on some one who has gone to neither trouble nor expense in the matter.’

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‘I see you won't think of it seriously. If it had been any one else I should have treated it as ridiculous nonsense, but Wishart has shown himself such a sensible fellow in other things that any proposition of his deserves consideration. What would you say if Violet were your daughter?’

Palmer tilted back his chair, and propped his feet against the mantelpiece.

‘Well?’ inquired Mr. Everard, after a long pause.

‘I tell you what it is, Everard,’ said his brother, ‘I suppose I've advised you in every imaginable thing, from the disposal of your vote to the insurance of your life. I must draw the line somewhere. I really can't pretend to interfere in the marriages of your children.’

‘You are so absurd. You laugh at my difficulties,’ complained Mr. Everard.

‘No, indeed; but I can't and won't advise you in this.’

Palmer jerked back his chair and hastily went out, not heeding the humble appeal from his brother, ‘John, do wait a moment; do be an obliging fellow for once.’

‘Well, Miss Violet,’ said Palmer, as on his way to the gate he espied his niece swinging herself under the boughs of a large willow-tree. ‘They tell me wonderful things of you. Shall I send a doll's silver service as my wedding present?’

‘No, thank you. I have given up my dolls,’ answered the child, with great composure.

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‘Ah, quite too old for that sort of thing,’ said Palmer, and turned to go; but Mrs. Palmer, who had come out to call Violet in, detained him and began to tell him what a comfort it was that she knew what would become of one of the children.

‘Such a great thing for Violet! We couldn't have brought her up in the style she'll have now. She is going to the best school, and is to learn all the accomplishments.’

‘Then it's all settled, is it?’ cried Palmer. ‘Why, Everard didn't say so.’

‘I don't know what Everard wants,’ peevishly replied Mrs. Palmer. ‘He's sure to come round, though; he must see it's the best thing we can do for the child.’

‘I suppose she doesn't know?’ asked Palmer. ‘I'm afraid I made rather a foolish remark to her just now. Of course you've not told her?’

‘That's another thing Everard's been vexed about. As if she wouldn't have found it out soon enough! He worries me to death nearly; he says it'll do her harm, and it ought to have been kept from her.’

‘And I think he is right,’ said Palmer.

The matter drifted into a settled state. Mr. Everard's misgivings were allayed by Violet's happiness at school and her rapid improvement when removed from home influences. He was prouder and fonder of his daughter each time she came home for the holidays. But he began to notice before long how often it was contrived that she page 187 should not spend her holidays at home. The little romance attaching to her position soon became the secret of every schoolfellow, and this, as well as her own personal advantages, marked her out from the other girls, and gave her a great popularity. The lady principal was never harsh with Violet, and there was little reason: she adapted herself so cleverly to Mrs. Plushey's superficial system. She was Mrs. Plushey's pride; always to be depended on for ladylike deportment; always ready to go through a showy pianoforte piece with rattle, tinkle, and crash, or to warble some little song without nervousness or lamentable breakdowns. She was admired and imitated by the other girls, and word of her merits came so often to their parents' ears that she was constantly being invited to spend the holidays at one house or another. Violet soon became a stranger to her own family, and Mrs. Palmer began to feel uncomfortable in her presence during the few times she was at home. Violet was so stylish and so handsomely dressed that her mother would even have qualms of conscience about her morning gowns and the loopy state of her back hair, which never troubled her when Mr. Everard was the only one who saw them.

Though it had not been part of Mr. Wishart's design, this estrangement of Violet from her family, and particularly from her mother, seemed to him not undesirable. He liked Mr. Everard, and respected him, notwithstanding his weaknesses. But he neither page 188 liked nor respected his future mother-in-law, and thus early he had made up his mind that she should have no authority in the house which Violet would be mistress of some day. It was far better for Violet that she should not see much of her mother. Mrs. Palmer's example was not one he would have set before the young schoolgirl whose character (he supposed) was in process of formation. For it never occurred to him that Violet's character might be already formed, nor had he ever considered what sort of a character could be formed in the school of fashionable superficialities where he had placed her. As is often the case with such schools, this was kept by an exceedingly silly woman who had good manners and a poor mind. Mrs. Plushey set little value on those plain and inconspicuous acquirements which make the better part of a fine woman. On the other hand, she delighted in smatterings, and had a vague idea that to know a thing thoroughly was unladylike. She had not transgressed in this way herself, and few of her pupils knew overmuch. Smatterings tell, however, if they are used cleverly. Violet made good use of her smatterings. And although Mr. Wishart soon discovered that she would never be either brilliant or learned, he was easily consoled for her deficiencies. To be charming and amiable was much better. And, no doubt, Violet thought so too.