A Simpleton

C >> Charles Reade >> A Simpleton


Lady Cicely shrugged her beautiful shoulders a little at that; but she
continued to do the visiting, and to enjoy the simple, innocent rapture
with which she was received.

This lady's pronunciation of many words was false or affected. She
said "good murning" for "good morning," and turned other vowels to
diphthongs, and played two or three pranks with her "r's." But we cannot
be all imperfection: with her pronunciation her folly came to a full
stop. I really believe she lisped less nonsense and bad taste in a year
than some of us articulate in a day. To be sure, folly is generally
uttered in a hurry, and she was too deplorably lazy to speak fast on any
occasion whatever.

One day Mrs. Staines took her up-stairs, and showed her from the back
window her husband pacing the yard, waiting for patients. Lady Cicely
folded her arms, and contemplated him at first with a sort of zoological
curiosity. Gentleman pacing back yard, like hyena, she had never seen
before.

At last she opened her mouth in a whisper, "What is he doing?"

"Waiting for patients."

"Oh! Waiting--for--patients?"

"For patients that never come, and never will come."

"Cuwious! How little I know of life."

"It is that all day, dear, or else writing."

Lady Cicely, with her eyes fixed on Staines, made a motion with her hand
that she was attending.

"And they won't publish a word he writes."

"Poor man!"

"Nice for me; is it not?"

"I begin to understand," said Lady Cicely quietly; and soon after
retired with her invariable composure.

Meantime, Dr. Staines, like a good husband, had thrown out occasional
hints to Mrs. Lucas that he had a wife, beautiful, accomplished, moped.
More than that, he went so far as to regret to her that Mrs. Staines,
being in a neighborhood new to him, saw so little society; the more so,
as she was formed to shine, and had not been used to seclusion.

All these hints fell dead on Mrs. Lucas. A handsome and skilful doctor
was welcome to her: his wife--that was quite another matter.

But one day Mrs. Lucas saw Lady Cicely Treherne's carriage standing at
the door. The style of the whole turnout impressed her. She wondered
whose it was.

On another occasion she saw it drive up, and the lady get out. She
recognized her; and the very next day this parvenue said adroitly, "Now,
Dr. Staines, really you can't be allowed to hide your wife in this way.
(Staines stared.) Why not introduce her to me next Wednesday? It is my
night. I would give a dinner expressly for her; but I don't like to do
that while my husband is in Naples."

When Staines carried the invitation to his wife, she was delighted, and
kissed him with childish frankness.

But the very next moment she became thoughtful, uneasy, depressed. "Oh,
dear; I've nothing to wear."

"Oh, nonsense, Rosa. Your wedding outfit."

"The idea! I can't go as a bride. It's not a masquerade."

"But you have other dresses."

"All gone by, more or less; or not fit for such parties as SHE gives. A
hundred carriages!"

"Bring them down, and let me see them."

"Oh yes." And the lady, who had nothing to wear, paraded a very fair
show of dresses.

Staines saw something to admire in all of them. Mrs. Staines found more
to object to in each.

At last he fell upon a silver-gray silk, of superlative quality.

"That! It is as old as the hills," shrieked Rosa.

"It looks just out of the shop. Come, tell the truth; how often have you
worn it?"

"I wore it before I was married."

"Ay, but how often?"

"Twice. Three times, I believe."

"I thought so. It is good as new."

"But I have had it so long by me. I had it two years before I made it
up."

"What does that matter? Do you think the people can tell how long a
dress has been lurking in your wardrobe? This is childish, Rosa. There,
with this dress as good as new, and your beauty, you will be as much
admired, and perhaps hated, as your heart can desire."

"I am afraid not," said Rosa naively. "Oh, how I wish I had known a week
ago."

"I am very thankful you did not," said Staines dryly.

At ten o'clock Mrs. Staines was nearly dressed; at a quarter past ten
she demanded ten minutes; at half-past ten she sought a reprieve; at a
quarter to eleven, being assured that the street was full of carriages,
which had put down at Mrs. Lucas's, she consented to emerge; and in a
minute they were at the house.

They were shown first into a cloak-room, and then into a tea-room, and
then mounted the stairs. One servant took their names, and bawled them
to another four yards off, he to another about as near, and so on; and
they edged themselves into the room, not yet too crowded to move in.

They had not taken many steps, on the chance of finding their hostess,
when a slight buzz arose, and seemed to follow them.

Rosa wondered what that was; but only for a moment; she observed a tall,
stout, aquiline woman fix an eye of bitter, diabolical, malignant hatred
on her; and as she advanced, ugly noses were cocked disdainfully, and
scraggy shoulders elevated at the risk of sending the bones through the
leather, and a titter or two shot after her. A woman's instinct gave her
the key at once; the sexes had complimented her at sight; each in
their way; the men with respectful admiration; the women, with their
inflammable jealousy and ready hatred in another of the quality they
value most in themselves. But the country girl was too many for them:
she would neither see nor bear, but moved sedately on, and calmly
crushed them with her Southern beauty. Their dry, powdered faces could
not live by the side of her glowing skin, with nature's delicate gloss
upon it, and the rich blood mantling below it. The got-up beauties,
i.e., the majority, seemed literally to fade and wither as she passed.

Mrs. Lucas got to her, suppressed a slight maternal pang, having
daughters to marry, and took her line in a moment; here was a decoy
duck. Mrs. Lucas was all graciousness, made acquaintance, and took a
little turn with her, introducing her to one or two persons; among the
rest, to the malignant woman, Mrs. Barr. Mrs. Barr, on this, ceased to
look daggers and substituted icicles; but on the hateful beauty moving
away, dropped the icicles, and resumed the poniards.

The rooms filled; the heat became oppressive, and the mixed odors of
flowers, scents, and perspiring humanity, sickening. Some, unable to
bear it, trickled out of the room, and sat all down the stairs.

Rosa began to feel faint. Up came a tall, sprightly girl, whose pertness
was redeemed by a certain bonhomie, and said, "Mrs. Staines, I
believe? I am to make myself agreeable to you. That is the order from
headquarters."

"Miss Lucas," said Staines.

She jerked a little off-hand bow to him, and said, "Will you trust her
to me for five minutes?"

"Certainly." But he did not much like it.

Miss Lucas carried her off, and told Dr. Staines, over her shoulder, now
he could flirt to his heart's content.

"Thank you," said he dryly. "I'll await your return."

"Oh, there are some much greater flirts here than I am," said the ready
Miss Lucas; and whispering something in Mrs. Staines's ear, suddenly
glided with her behind a curtain, pressed a sort of button fixed to a
looking-glass door. The door opened, and behold they were in a delicious
place, for which I can hardly find a word, since it was a boudoir and
a conservatory in one: a large octagon, the walls lined from floor to
ceiling with looking-glasses of moderate width, at intervals, and with
creepers that covered the intervening spaces of the wall, and were
trained so as to break the outline of the glasses without greatly
clouding the reflection. Ferns, in great variety, were grouped in a
deep crescent, and in the bight of this green bay were a small table
and chairs. As there were no hot-house plants, the temperature was very
cool, compared with the reeking oven they had escaped; and a little
fountain bubbled, and fed a little meandering gutter that trickled away
among the ferns; it ran crystal clear over little bright pebbles and
shells. It did not always run, you understand; but Miss Lucas turned a
secret tap, and started it.

"Oh, how heavenly!" said Rosa, with a sigh of relief; "and how good of
you to bring me here!"

"Yes; by rights I ought to have waited till you fainted. But there is no
making acquaintance among all those people. Mamma will ask such crowds;
one is like a fly in a glue-pot."

Miss Lucas had good nature, smartness, and animal spirits; hence arose
a vivacity and fluency that were often amusing, and passed for very
clever. Reserve she had none; would talk about strangers, or friends,
herself, her mother, her God, and the last buffoon-singer, in a breath.
At a hint from Rosa, she told her who the lady in the pink dress was,
and the lady in the violet velvet, and so on; for each lady was defined
by her dress, and, more or less, quizzed by this show-woman, not exactly
out of malice, but because it is smarter and more natural to decry than
to praise, and a little medisance is the spice to gossip, belongs to it,
as mint sauce to lamb. So they chatted away, and were pleased with
each other, and made friends, and there, in cool grot, quite forgot
the sufferings of their fellow-creatures in the adjacent Turkish bath,
yclept society. It was Rosa who first recollected herself. "Will not
Mrs. Lucas be angry with me, if I keep you all to myself?"

"Oh no; but I'm afraid we must go into the hot-house again. I like the
greenhouse best, with such a nice companion."

They slipped noiselessly into the throng again, and wriggled about, Miss
Lucas presenting her new friend to several ladies and gentlemen.

Presently Staines found them, and then Miss Lucas wriggled away; and in
due course the room was thinned by many guests driving off home, or to
balls, and other receptions, and Dr. Staines and Mrs. Staines went home
to the Bijou. Here the physician prescribed bed; but the lady would not
hear of such a thing until she had talked it all over. So they compared
notes, and Rosa told him how well she had got on with Miss Lucas, and
made a friendship. "But for that," said she, "I should be sorry I went
among those people, such a dowdy."

"Dowdy!" said Staines. "Why, you stormed the town; you were the great
success of the night, and, for all I know, of the season." The wretch
delivered this with unbecoming indifference.

"It is too bad to mock me, Christie. Where were your eyes?"

"To the best of my recollection, they were one on each side of my nose."

"Yes, but some people are eyes and no eyes."

"I scorn the imputation; try me."

"Very well. Then did you see that lady in sky-blue silk, embroidered
with flowers, and flounced with white velvet, and the corsage point
lace; and oh, such emeralds?"

"I did; a tall, skinny woman, with eyes resembling her jewels in color,
though not in brightness."

"Never mind her eyes; it is her dress I am speaking of. Exquisite; and
what a coiffure! Well, did you see HER in the black velvet, trimmed so
deep with Chantilly lace, wave on wave, and her head-dress of crimson
flowers, and such a riviere of diamonds; oh, dear! oh, dear!"

"I did, love. The room was an oven, but her rubicund face and
suffocating costume made it seem a furnace."

"Stuff! Well, did you see the lady in the corn-colored silk, and poppies
in her hair?"

"Of course I did. Ceres in person. She made me feel hot, too; but I
cooled myself a bit at her pale, sickly face."

"Never mind their faces; that is not the point."

"Oh, excuse me; it is always a point with us benighted males, all eyes
and no eyes."

"Well, then, the lady in white, with cherry-velvet bands, and a white
tunic looped with crimson, and headdress of white illusion, a la vierge,
I think they call it."

"It was very refreshing; and adapted to that awful atmosphere. It was
the nearest approach to nudity I ever saw, even amongst fashionable
people."

"It was lovely; and then that superb figure in white illusion and gold,
with all those narrow flounces over her slip of white silk glacee, and a
wreath of white flowers, with gold wheat ears amongst them, in her hair;
and oh! oh! oh! her pearls, oriental, and as big as almonds!"

"And oh! oh! oh! her nose! reddish, and as long as a woodcock's."

"Noses! noses! stupid! That is not what strikes you first in a woman
dressed like an angel."

"Well, if you were to run up against that one, as I nearly did, her nose
WOULD be the thing that would strike you first. Nose! it was a rostrum!
the spear-head of Goliah."

"Now, don't, Christopher. This is no laughing matter. Do you mean you
were not ashamed of your wife? I was."

"No, I was not; you had but one rival; a very young lady, wise
before her age; a blonde, with violet eyes. She was dressed in light
mauve-colored silk, without a single flounce, or any other tomfoolery
to fritter away the sheen and color of an exquisite material; her sunny
hair was another wave of color, wreathed with a thin line of white
jessamine flowers closely woven, that scented the air. This girl was the
moon of that assembly, and you were the sun."

"I never even saw her."

"Eyes and no eyes. She saw you, and said, 'Oh, what a beautiful
creature!' for I heard her. As for the old stagers, whom you admire so,
their faces were all clogged with powder, the pores stopped up, the true
texture of the skin abolished. They looked downright nasty, whenever
you or that young girl passed by them. Then it was you saw to what a
frightful extent women are got up in our day, even young women, and
respectable women. No, Rosa, dress can do little for you; you have
beauty--real beauty."

"Beauty! That passes unnoticed, unless one is well dressed."

"Then what an obscure pair the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medicis
must be."

"Oh! they are dressed--in marble."

Christopher Staines stared first, then smiled.

"Well done," said he, admiringly. "That IS a knockdown blow. So now you
have silenced your husband, go you to bed directly. I can't afford you
diamonds; so I will take care of that little insignificant trifle, your
beauty."

Mrs. Staines and Mrs. Lucas exchanged calls, and soon Mrs. Staines could
no longer complain she was out of the world. Mrs. Lucas invited her to
every party, because her beauty was an instrument of attraction she knew
how to use; and Miss Lucas took a downright fancy to her; drove her in
the park, and on Sundays to the Zoological Gardens, just beginning to be
fashionable.

The Lucases rented a box at the opera, and if it was not let at the
library by six o'clock, and if other engagements permitted, word was
sent round to Mrs. Staines, as a matter of course, and she was taken to
the opera. She began almost to live at the Lucases, and to be oftener
fatigued than moped.

The usual order of things was inverted; the maiden lady educated the
matron; for Miss Lucas knew all about everybody in the Park, honorable
or dishonorable; all the scandals, and all the flirtations; and whatever
she knew, she related point-blank. Being as inquisitive as voluble, she
soon learned how Mrs. Staines and her husband were situated. She took
upon her to advise her in many things, and especially impressed upon
her that Dr. Staines must keep a carriage, if he wanted to get on in
medicine. The piece of advice accorded so well with Rosa's wishes, that
she urged it on her husband again and again.

He objected that no money was coming in, and therefore it would be
insane to add to their expenses. Rosa persisted, and at last worried
Staines with her importunity. He began to give rather short answers.
Then she quoted Miss Lucas against him. He treated the authority with
marked contempt; and then Rosa fired up a little. Then Staines held his
peace; but did not buy a carriage to visit his no patients.

So at last Rosa complained to Lady Cicely Treherne, and made her the
judge between her husband and herself. Lady Cicely drawled out a prompt
but polite refusal to play that part. All that could be elicited from
her, and that with difficulty, was, "Why quall with your husband about a
cawwige; he is your best fwiend."

"Ah, that he is," said Rosa; "but Miss Lucas is a good friend, and she
knows the world. We don't; neither Christopher nor I."

So she continued to nag at her husband about it, and to say that he was
throwing his only chance away.

Galled as he was by neglect, this was irritating, and at last he could
not help telling her she was unreasonable. "You live a gay life, and I
a sad one. I consent to this, and let you go about with these Lucases,
because you were so dull; but you should not consult them in our private
affairs. Their interference is indelicate and improper. I will not set
up a carriage till I have patients to visit. I am sick of seeing our
capital dwindle, and no income created. I will never set up a carriage
till I have taken a hundred-guinea fee."

"Oh! Then we shall go splashing through the mud all our days."

"Or ride in a cab," said Christopher, with a quiet doggedness that left
no hope of his yielding.

One afternoon Miss Lucas called for Mrs. Staines to drive in the Park,
but did not come up-stairs; it was an engagement, and she knew Mrs.
Staines would be ready, or nearly. Mrs. Staines, not to keep her
waiting, came down rather hastily, and in the very passage whipped out
of her pocket a little glass, and a little powder puff, and puffed her
face all over in a trice. She was then going out; but her husband called
her into the study. "Rosa, my dear," said he, "you were going out with a
dirty face."

"Oh!" cried she, "give me a glass."

"There is no need of that. All you want is a basin and some nice
rain-water. I keep a little reservoir of it."

He then handed her the same with great politeness. She looked in his
eye, and saw he was not to be trifled with. She complied like a lamb,
and the heavenly color and velvet gloss that resulted were admirable.

He kissed her and said, "Ah! now you are my Rosa again. Oblige me by
handing over that powder-puff to me." She looked vexed, but complied.
"When you come back I will tell you why."

"You are a pest," said Mrs. Staines, and so joined her friend, rosy with
rain-water and a rub.

"Dear me, how handsome you look to-day!" was Miss Lucas's first remark.

Rosa never dreamed that rain-water and rub could be the cause of her
looking so well.

"It is my tiresome husband," said she. "He objects to powder, and he has
taken away my puff."

"And you stood that?"

"Obliged to."

"Why, you poor-spirited little creature, I should like to see a husband
presume to interfere with me in those things. Here, take mine."

Rosa hesitated a little. "Well--no--I think not."

Miss Lucas laughed at her, and quizzed her so on her allowing a man to
interfere in such sacred things as dress and cosmetics, that she came
back irritated with her husband, and gave him a short answer or two.
Then he asked what was the matter.

"You treat me like a child--taking away my very puff."

"I treat you like a beautiful flower, that no bad gardener shall wither
whilst I am here."

"What nonsense! How could that wither me? It is only violet powder--what
they put on babies."

"And who are the Herods that put it on babies?"

"Their own mothers, that love them ten times more than the fathers do."

"And kill a hundred of them for one a man ever kills. Mothers!--the most
wholesale homicides in the nation. We will examine your violet-powder:
bring it down here."

While she was gone he sent for a breakfast-cupful of flour, and when she
came back he had his scales out, and begged her to put a teaspoonful of
flour into one scale and of violet powder into another. The flour kicked
the beam, as Homer expresses himself.

"Put another spoonful of flour."

The one spoonful of violet powder outweighed the two of flour.

"Now," said Staines, "does not that show you the presence of a mineral
in your vegetable powder? I suppose they tell you it is made of white
violets dried, and triturated in a diamond mill. Let us find out what
metal it is. We need not go very deep into chemistry for that." He
then applied a simple test, and detected the presence of lead in large
quantities. Then he lectured her: "Invisible perspiration is a process
of nature necessary to health and to life. The skin is made porous for
that purpose. You can kill anybody in an hour or two by closing the
pores. A certain infallible ass, called Pope Leo XII., killed a little
boy in two hours, by gilding him to adorn the pageant of his first
procession as Pope. But what is death to the whole body must be
injurious to a part. What madness, then, to clog the pores of so
large and important a surface as the face, and check the invisible
perspiration: how much more to insert lead into your system every day
of your life; a cumulative poison, and one so deadly and so subtle, that
the Sheffield file-cutters die in their prime, from merely hammering on
a leaden anvil. And what do you gain by this suicidal habit? No plum has
a sweeter bloom or more delicious texture than the skin of your
young face; but this mineral filth hides that delicate texture, and
substitutes a dry, uniform appearance, more like a certain kind of
leprosy than health. Nature made your face the rival of peaches, roses,
lilies; and you say, 'No; I know better than my Creator and my God; my
face shall be like a dusty miller's.' Go into any flour-mill, and there
you shall see men with faces exactly like your friend Miss Lucas's. But
before a miller goes to his sweetheart, he always washes his face. You
ladies would never get a miller down to your level in brains. It is a
miller's DIRTY face our mono-maniacs of woman imitate, not the face a
miller goes a-courting with."

"La! what a fuss about nothing!"

"About nothing! Is your health nothing? Is your beauty nothing? Well,
then, it will cost you nothing to promise me never to put powder on your
face again."

"Very well, I promise. Now what will you do for me?"

"Work for you--write for you--suffer for you--be self-denying for
you--and even give myself the pain of disappointing you now and
then--looking forward to the time when I shall be able to say 'Yes' to
everything you ask me. Ah! child, you little know what it costs me to
say 'No' to YOU."

Rosa put her arms round him and acquiesced. She was one of those who
go with the last speaker; but, for that very reason, the eternal
companionship of so flighty and flirty a girl as Miss Lucas was
injurious to her.

One day Lady Cicely Treherne was sitting with Mrs. Staines, smiling
languidly at her talk, and occasionally drawling out a little plain good
sense, when in came Miss Lucas, with her tongue well hung, as usual, and
dashed into twenty topics in ten minutes.

This young lady in her discourse was like those little oily beetles you
see in small ponds, whose whole life is spent in tacking--confound them
for it!--generally at right angles. What they are in navigation was Miss
Lucas in conversation: tacked so eternally from topic to topic, that no
man on earth, and not every woman, could follow her.

At the sight and sound of her, Lady Cicely congealed and stiffened.
Easy and unpretending with Mrs. Staines, she was all dignity, and even
majesty, in the presence of this chatterbox; and the smoothness with
which the transfiguration was accomplished marked that accomplished
actress the high-bred woman of the world.

Rosa, better able to estimate the change of manner than Miss Lucas was,
who did not know how little this Sawny was afflicted with misplaced
dignity, looked wistfully and distressed at her. Lady Cicely
smiled kindly in reply, rose, without seeming to hurry,--catch her
condescending to be rude to Charlotte Lucas,--and took her departure,
with a profound and most gracious courtesy to the lady who had driven
her away.

Mrs. Staines saw her down-stairs, and said, ruefully, "I am afraid
you do not like my friend Miss Lucas. She is a great rattle, but so
good-natured and clever."

Lady Cicely shook her head. "Clevaa people don't talk so much nonsense
before strangaas."

"Oh, dear!" said Rosa. "I was in hopes you would like her."

"Do YOU like her?"

"Indeed I do; but I shall not, if she drives an older friend away."

"My dyah, I'm not easily dwiven from those I esteem. But you undastand
that is not a woman for me to mispwonownce my 'ah's befaw--NOR FOR YOU
TO MAKE A BOSOM FWIEND OF--WOSA STAINES."

She said this with a sudden maternal solemnity and kindness that
contrasted nobly and strangely with her yea-nay style, and Mrs. Staines
remembered the words years after they were spoken.

It so happened that after this Mrs. Staines received no more visits from
Lady Cicely for some time, and that vexed her. She knew her sex enough
to be aware that they are very jealous, and she permitted herself to
think that this high-minded Sawny was jealous of Miss Lucas.

This idea, founded on a general estimate of her sex, was dispelled by a
few lines from Lady Cicely, to say her family and herself were in deep
distress; her brother, Lord Ayscough, lay dying from an accident.

Then Rosa was all remorse, and ran down to Staines to tell him. She
found him with an open letter in his hand. It was from Dr. Barr, and
on the same subject. The doctor, who had always been friendly to him,
invited him to come down at once to Hallowtree Hall, in Huntingdonshire,
to a consultation. There was a friendly intimation to start at once, as
the patient might die any moment.