Christie Johnstone
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Charles Reade >> Christie Johnstone
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12 Etext by James Rusk, jrusk@mac-email.com. Italics are indicated by the
underscore character (_). Acute accents are indicated by a single quote
(') after the vowel, while grave accents have a single quote before the
vowel. All other accents are ignored.
CHRISTIE JOHNSTONE.
A NOVEL.
by Charles Reade
I dedicate all that is good in this work to my mother.--C. R.,
NOTE.
THIS story was written three years ago, and one or two topics in it are
not treated exactly as they would be if written by the same hand to-day.
But if the author had retouched those pages with his colors of 1853, he
would (he thinks) have destroyed the only merit they have, viz., that of
containing genuine contemporaneous verdicts upon a cant that was
flourishing like a peony, and a truth that was struggling for bare life,
in the year of truth 1850.
He prefers to deal fairly with the public, and, with this explanation and
apology, to lay at its feet a faulty but genuine piece of work.
CHAPTER I.
VISCOUNT IPSDEN, aged twenty-five, income eighteen thousand pounds per
year, constitution equine, was unhappy! This might surprise some people;
but there are certain blessings, the non-possession of which makes more
people discontented than their possession renders happy.
Foremost among these are "Wealth and Rank." Were I to add "Beauty" to the
list, such men and women as go by fact, not by conjecture, would hardly
contradict me.
The fortunate man is he who, born poor, or nobody, works gradually up to
wealth and consideration, and, having got them, dies before he finds they
were not worth so much trouble.
Lord Ipsden started with nothing to win; and naturally lived for
amusement. Now nothing is so sure to cease to please as pleasure--to
amuse, as amusement. Unfortunately for himself he could not at this
period of his life warm to politics; so, having exhausted his London
clique, he rolled through the cities of Europe in his carriage, and
cruised its shores in his yacht. But he was not happy!
He was a man of taste, and sipped the arts and other knowledge, as he
sauntered Europe round.
But he was not happy.
"What shall I do?" said _l'ennuye'._
"Distinguish yourself," said one.
"How?"
No immediate answer.
"Take a _prima donna_ over," said another.
Well, the man took a _prima donna_ over, which scolded its maid from the
Alps to Dover in the _lingua Toscana_ without the _bocca Romana,_ and
sang in London without applause; because what goes down at La Scala does
not generally go down at Il Teatro della Regina, Haymarket.
So then my lord strolled into Russia; there he drove a pair of horses,
one of whom put his head down and did the work; the other pranced and
capricoled alongside, all unconscious of the trace. He seemed happier
than his working brother; but the biped whose career corresponded with
this playful animal's was not happy!
At length an event occurred that promised to play an adagio upon Lord
Ipsden 's mind. He fell in love with Lady Barbara Sinclair; and he had no
sooner done this than he felt, as we are all apt to do on similar
occasions, how wise a thing he had done!
Besides a lovely person, Lady Barbara Sinclair had a character that he
saw would make him; and, in fact, Lady Barbara Sinclair was, to an
inexperienced eye, the exact opposite of Lord Ipsden.
Her mental impulse was as plethoric as his was languid.
She was as enthusiastic as he was cool.
She took a warm interest in everything. She believed that government is a
science, and one that goes with _copia verborum._
She believed that, in England, government is administered, not by a set
of men whose salaries range from eighty to five hundred pounds a year,
and whose names are never heard, but by the First Lord of the Treasury,
and other great men.
Hence she inferred, that it matters very much to all of us in whose hand
is the rudder of that state vessel which goes down the wind of public
opinion, without veering a point, let who will be at the helm.
She also cared very much who was the new bishop. Religion--if not
religion, theology--would be affected thereby.
She was enthusiastic about poets; imagined their verse to be some sort of
clew to their characters, and so on.
She had other theories, which will be indicated by and by; at present it
is enough to say that her mind was young, healthy, somewhat original,
full of fire and faith, and empty of experience.
Lord Ipsden loved her! it was easy to love her.
First, there was not, in the whole range of her mind and body, one grain
of affectation of any sort.
She was always, in point of fact, under the influence of some male mind
or other, generally some writer. What young woman is not, more or less, a
mirror? But she never imitated or affected; she was always herself, by
whomsoever colored.
Then she was beautiful and eloquent; much too high-bred to put a
restraint upon her natural manner, she was often more _naive,_ and even
brusk, than your would-be aristocrats dare to be; but what a charming
abruptness hers was!
I do not excel in descriptions, and yet I want to give you some carnal
idea of a certain peculiarity and charm this lady possessed; permit me to
call a sister art to my aid.
There has lately stepped upon the French stage a charming personage,
whose manner is quite free from the affectation that soils nearly all
French actresses--Mademoiselle Madeleine Brohan! When you see this young
lady play Mademoiselle La Segli'ere, you see high-bred sensibility
personified, and you see something like Lady Barbara Sinclair.
She was a connection of Lord Ipsden's, but they had not met for two
years, when they encountered each other in Paris just before the
commencement of this "Dramatic Story," "Novel" by courtesy.
The month he spent in Paris, near her, was a bright month to Lord Ipsden.
A bystander would not have gathered, from his manner, that he was warmly
in love with this lady; but, for all that, his lordship was gradually
uncoiling himself, and gracefully, quietly basking in the rays of Barbara
Sinclair.
He was also just beginning to take an interest in subjects of the
day--ministries, flat paintings, controversial novels, Cromwell's
spotless integrity, etc.--why not? They interested her.
Suddenly the lady and her family returned to England. Lord Ipsden, who
was going to Rome, came to England instead.
She had not been five days in London, before she made her preparations to
spend six months in Perthshire.
This brought matters to a climax.
Lord Ipsden proposed in form.
Lady Barbara was surprised; she had not viewed his graceful attentions in
that light at all. However, she answered by letter his proposal which had
been made by letter.
After a few of those courteous words a lady always bestows on a gentleman
who has offered her the highest compliment any man has it in his power to
offer any woman, she came to the point in the following characteristic
manner:
"The man I marry must have two things, virtues and vices--you have
neither. You do nothing, and never will do anything but sketch and hum
tunes, and dance and dangle. Forget this folly the day after to-morrow,
my dear Ipsden, and, if I may ask a favor of one to whom I refuse that
which would not be a kindness, be still good friends with her who will
always be
"Your affectionate _Cousin,_
"BARBARA SINCLAIR."
Soon after this effusion she vanished into Perthshire, leaving her cousin
stunned by a blow which she thought would be only a scratch to one of his
character.
Lord Ipsden relapsed into greater listlessness than before he had
cherished these crushed hopes. The world now became really dark and blank
to him. He was too languid to go anywhere or do anything; a republican
might have compared the settled expression of his handsome, hopeless face
with that of most day-laborers of the same age, and moderated his envy of
the rich and titled.
At last he became so pale as well as languid that Mr. Saunders
interfered.
Saunders was a model valet and factotum; who had been with his master
ever since he left Eton, and had made himself necessary to him in their
journeys.
The said Saunders was really an invaluable servant, and, with a world of
obsequiousness, contrived to have his own way on most occasions. He had,
I believe, only one great weakness, that of imagining a beau-ideal of
aristocracy and then outdoing it in the person of John Saunders.
Now this Saunders was human, and could not be eight years with this young
gentleman and not take some little interest in him. He was flunky, and
took a great interest in him, as stepping-stone to his own greatness. So
when he saw him turning pale and thin, and reading one letter fifty
times, he speculated and inquired what was the matter. He brought the
intellect of Mr. Saunders to bear on the question at the following angle:
"Now, if I was a young lord with 20,000 pounds a year, and all the world
at my feet, what would make me in this way? Why, the liver! Nothing else.
"And that is what is wrong with him, you may depend."
This conclusion arrived at, Mr. Saunders coolly wrote his convictions to
Dr. Aberford, and desired that gentleman's immediate attention to the
case. An hour or two later, he glided into his lord's room, not without
some secret trepidation, no trace of which appeared on his face. He
pulled a long histrionic countenance. "My lord," said he, in soft,
melancholy tones, "your lordship's melancholy state of health gives me
great anxiety; and, with many apologies to your lordship, the doctor is
sent for, my lord."
"Why, Saunders, you are mad; there is nothing the matter with me."
"I beg your lordship's pardon, your lordship is very ill, and Dr.
Aberford sent for."
"You may go, Saunders."
"Yes, my lord. I couldn't help it; I've outstepped my duty, my lord, but
I could not stand quiet and see your lordship dying by inches." Here Mr.
S. put a cambric handkerchief artistically to his eyes, and glided out,
having disarmed censure.
Lord Ipsden fell into a reverie.
"Is my mind or my body disordered? Dr. Aberford!--absurd!--Saunders is
getting too pragmatical. The doctor shall prescribe for him instead of
me; by Jove, that would serve him right." And my lord faintly chuckled.
"No! this is what I am ill of"--and he read the fatal note again. "I do
nothing!--cruel, unjust," sighed he. "I could have done, would have done,
anything to please her. Do nothing! nobody does anything now--things
don't come in your way to be done as they used centuries ago, or we
should do them just the same; it is their fault, not ours," argued his
lordship, somewhat confusedly; then, leaning his brow upon the sofa, he
wished to die. For, at that dark moment life seemed to this fortunate man
an aching void; a weary, stale, flat, unprofitable tale; a faded flower;
a ball-room after daylight has crept in, and music, motion and beauty are
fled away.
"Dr. Aberford, my lord."
This announcement, made by Mr. Saunders, checked his lordship's reverie.
"Insults everybody, does he not, Saunders?"
"Yes, my lord," said Saunders, monotonously.
"Perhaps he will me; that might amuse me," said the other.
A moment later the doctor bowled into the apartment, tugging at his
gloves, as he ran.
The contrast between him and our poor rich friend is almost beyond human
language.
Here lay on a sofa Ipsden, one of the most distinguished young gentlemen
in Europe; a creature incapable, by nature, of a rugged tone or a coarse
gesture; a being without the slightest apparent pretension, but refined
beyond the wildest dream of dandies. To him, enter Aberford, perspiring
and shouting. He was one of those globules of human quicksilver one sees
now and then for two seconds; they are, in fact, two globules; their head
is one, invariably bald, round, and glittering; the body is another in
activity and shape, _totus teres atque rotundus;_ and in fifty years they
live five centuries. _Horum Rex Aberford_--of these our doctor was the
chief. He had hardly torn off one glove, and rolled as far as the third
flower from the door on his lordship's carpet, before he shouted:
"This is my patient, lolloping in pursuit of health. Your hand," added
he. For he was at the sofa long before his lordship could glide off it.
"Tongue. Pulse is good. Breathe in my face."
"Breathe in your face, sir! how can I do that?" (with an air of mild
doubt.)
"By first inhaling, and then exhaling in the direction required, or how
can I make acquaintance with your bowels?"
"My bowels?"
"The abdomen, and the greater and lesser intestines. Well, never mind, I
can get at them another way; give your heart a slap, so. That's your
liver. And that's your diaphragm."
His lordship having found the required spot (some people that I know
could not) and slapped it, the Aberford made a circular spring and
listened eagerly at his shoulder-blade; the result of this scientific
pantomime seemed to be satisfactory, for he exclaimed, not to say bawled:
"Halo! here is a viscount as sound as a roach! Now, young gentleman,"
added he, "your organs are superb, yet you are really out of sorts; it
follows you have the maladies of idle minds, love, perhaps, among the
rest; you blush, a diagnostic of that disorder; make your mind easy,
cutaneous disorders, such as love, etc., shall never kill a patient of
mine with a stomach like yours. So, now to cure you!" And away went the
spherical doctor, with his hands behind him, not up and down the room,
but slanting and tacking, like a knight on a chess-board. He had not made
many steps before, turning his upper globule, without affecting his
lower, he hurled back, in a cold business-like tone, the following
interrogatory:
"What are your vices?"
"Saunders," inquired the patient, "which are my vices?"
"M'lord, lordship hasn't any vices," replied Saunders, with dull,
matter-of-fact solemnity.
"Lady Barbara makes the same complaint," thought Lord Ipsden.
"It seems I have not any vices, Dr. Aberford," said he, demurely.
"That is bad; nothing to get hold of. What interests you, then?"
"I don't remember."
"What amuses you?"
"I forget."
"What! no winning horse to gallop away your rents?"
"No, sir!"
"No opera girl to run her foot and ankle through your purse?"
"No, sir! and I think their ankles are not what they were."
"Stuff! just the same, from their ankles up to their ears, and down again
to their morals; it is your eyes that are sunk deeper into your head.
Hum! no horses, no vices, no dancers, no yacht; you confound one's
notions of nobility, and I ought to know them, for I have to patch them
all up a bit just before they go to the deuce."
"But I have, Doctor Aberford."
"What!"
"A yacht! and a clipper she is, too."
"Ah!--(Now I've got him.)"
"In the Bay of Biscay she lay half a point nearer the wind than Lord
Heavyjib."
"Oh! bother Lord Heavyjib, and his Bay of Biscay."
"With all my heart, they have often bothered me."
"Send her round to Granton Pier, in the Firth of Forth."
"I will, sir."
"And write down this prescription." And away he walked again, thinking
the prescription.
"Saunders," appealed his master.
"Saunders be hanged."
"Sir!" said Saunders, with dignity, "I thank you."
"Don't thank me, thank your own deserts," replied the modern
Chesterfield. "Oblige me by writing it yourself, my lord, it is all the
bodily exercise you will have had to-day, no doubt."
The young viscount bowed, seated himself at a desk, and wrote from
dictation:
"DR. ABERFORD'S PRESCRIPTION.
"Make acquaintance with all the people of low estate who have time to be
bothered with you; learn their ways, their minds, and, above all, their
troubles."
"Won't all this bore me?" suggested the writer.
"You will see. Relieve one fellow-creature every day, and let Mr.
Saunders book the circumstances."
"I shall like this part," said the patient, laying down his pen. "How
clever of you to think of such things; may not I do two sometimes?"
"Certainly not; one pill per day. Write, Fish the herring! (that beats
deer-stalking.) Run your nose into adventures at sea; live on tenpence,
and earn it. Is it down?"
"Yes, it is down, but Saunders would have written it better."
"If he hadn't he ought to be hanged," said the Aberford, inspecting the
work. "I'm off, where's my hat? oh, there; where's my money? oh, here.
Now look here, follow my prescription, and
You will soon have Mens sana in corpore sano; And not care whether the
girls say yes or say no;
neglect it, and--my gloves; oh, in my pocket--you will be _blase'_ and
_ennuye',_ and (an English participle, that means something as bad); God
bless you!"
And out he scuttled, glided after by Saunders, for whom he opened and
shut the street door.
Never was a greater effect produced by a doctor's visit; patient and
physician were made for each other. Dr. Aberford was the specific for
Lord Ipsden. He came to him like a shower to a fainting strawberry.
Saunders, on his return, found his lord pacing the apartment.
"Saunders," said he, smartly, "send down to Gravesend and order the yacht
to this place--what is it?"
"Granton Pier. Yes, my lord."
"And, Saunders, take clothes, and books, and violins, and telescopes, and
things--and me--to Euston Square, in an hour."
"Impossible,' my lord," cried Saunders, in dismay. "And there is no train
for hours."
His master replied with a hundred-pound note, and a quiet, but wickedish
look; and the prince of gentlemen's gentleman had all the required items
with him, in a special train, within the specified time, and away they
flashed, northward.
CHAPTER II.
IT is said that opposite characters make a union happiest; and perhaps
Lord Ipsden, diffident of himself, felt the value to him of a creature so
different as Lady Barbara Sinclair; but the lady, for her part, was not
so diffident of herself, nor was she in search of her opposite. On the
contrary, she was waiting patiently to find just such a man as she was,
or fancied herself, a woman.
Accustomed to measure men by their characters alone, and to treat with
sublime contempt the accidents of birth and fortune, she had been a
little staggered by the assurance of this butterfly that had proposed to
settle upon her hand--for life.
In a word, the beautiful writer of the fatal note was honestly romantic,
according to the romance of 1848, and of good society; of course she was
not affected by hair tumbling back or plastered down forward, and a
rolling eye went no further with her than a squinting one.
Her romance was stern, not sickly. She was on the lookout for iron
virtues; she had sworn to be wooed with great deeds, or never won; on
this subject she had thought much, though not enough to ask herself
whether great deeds are always to be got at, however disposed a lover may
be.
No matter; she kept herself in reserve for some earnest man, who was not
to come flattering and fooling to her, but look another way and do
exploits.
She liked Lord Ipsden, her cousin once removed, but despised him for
being agreeable, handsome, clever, and nobody.
She was also a little bitten with what she and others called the Middle
Ages, in fact with that picture of them which Grub Street, imposing on
the simplicity of youth, had got up for sale by arraying painted glass,
gilt rags, and fancy, against fact.
With these vague and sketchy notices we are compelled to part, for the
present, with Lady Barbara. But it serves her right; she has gone to
establish her court in Perthshire, and left her rejected lover on our
hands.
Journeys of a few hundred miles are no longer described.
You exchange a dead chair for a living chair, Saunders puts in your hand
a new tale like this; you mourn the superstition of booksellers, which
still inflicts uncut leaves upon humanity, though tailors do not send
home coats with the sleeves stitched up, nor chambermaids put travelers
into apple-pie beds as well as damp sheets. You rend and read, and are at
Edinburgh, fatigued more or less, but not by the journey.
Lord Ipsden was, therefore, soon installed by the Firth side, full of the
Aberford.
The young nobleman not only venerated the doctor's sagacity, but half
admired his brusquerie and bustle; things of which he was himself never
guilty.
As for the prescription, that was a Delphic Oracle. Worlds could not have
tempted him to deviate from a letter in it.
He waited with impatience for the yacht; and, meantime, it struck him
that the first part of the prescription could be attacked at once.
It was the afternoon of the day succeeding his arrival. The Fifeshire
hills, seen across the Firth from his windows, were beginning to take
their charming violet tinge, a light breeze ruffled the blue water into a
sparkling smile, the shore was tranquil, and the sea full of noiseless
life, with the craft of all sizes gliding and dancing and courtesying on
their trackless roads.
The air was tepid, pure and sweet as heaven; this bright afternoon,
Nature had grudged nothing that could give fresh life and hope to such
dwellers in dust and smoke and vice as were there to look awhile on her
clean face and drink her honeyed breath.
This young gentleman was not insensible to the beauty of the scene. He
was a little lazy by nature, and made lazier by the misfortune of wealth,
but he had sensibilities; he was an artist of great natural talent; had
he only been without a penny, how he would have handled the brush! And
then he was a mighty sailor; if he had sailed for biscuit a few years,
how he would have handled a ship!
As he was, he had the eye of a hawk for Nature's beauties, and the sea
always came back to him like a friend after an absence.
This scene, then, curled round his heart a little, and he felt the good
physician was wiser than the tribe that go by that name, and strive to
build health on the sandy foundation of drugs.
"Saunders! do you know what Dr. Aberford means by the lower classes?"
"Perfectly, my lord."
"Are there any about here?"
"I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord."
"Get me some"--_(cigarette)._
Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful _empressement,_ but an
internal shrug of his shoulders.
He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a double
expression on his face--pride at his success in diving to the very bottom
of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence.
He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, _sotto voce,_ but
impressively, "This is low enough, my lord." Then glided back, and
ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever
opened a door to in the whole course of his perfumed existence.
On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad
lace border, stiffened and arched over the forehead, about three inches
high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered.
They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns,
confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the
waist; short woolen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and
white, most vivid in color; white worsted stockings, and neat, though
high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted
cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower
part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or
gathered up toward the front, and the second, of the same color, hung in
the usual way.
Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood
mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows.
The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk;
glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold, and a
blue eye, which, being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took the
luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty.
Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle, and a leg with a noble
swell; for Nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on the ideas of
ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who, with their
airy-like sylphs and their smoke-like verses, fight for want of flesh in
woman and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties.
_They are,_ my lads.--_Continuez!_
These women had a grand corporeal trait; they had never known a corset!
so they were straight as javelins; they could lift their hands above
their heads!--actually! Their supple persons moved as Nature intended;
every gesture was ease, grace and freedom.
What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and brightness of
their costume, they came like meteors into the apartment.
Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet politeness
with which he would have received two princes of the blood, said, "How do
you do?" and smiled a welcome.
"Fine! hoow's yoursel?" answered the dark lass, whose name was Jean
Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face.
"What'n lord are ye?" continued she; "are you a juke? I wad like fine to
hae a crack wi' a juke."
Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied, _sotto
voce,_ "His lordship is a viscount."
"I didna ken't," was Jean's remark. "But it has a bonny soond."
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