Miss Cairns, of whom Mary Sutherland had spoken
to her aunt, was an unmarried lady of thirty-four.
She had read much for the purpose of remembering it
at examinations ; had taken the of Bachelor of
Science; had written two articles on Woman Suffrage,
and one on the Higher Education of Women, for a
Radical review; and was an earnest contender for the
right of her sex to share in all public functions.
Having in her student days resolved not to marry,
she had kept her resolution, and endeavored to
persuade other girls to follow her example, which a
few, who could not help themselves, did. But, as she
approached her fortieth year, and found herself tiring
of books, lectures, university examinations of women,
and second-hand ideas in general, she ceased to dissuade
her friends from marrying, and even addicted herself
with some zest to advising and gossiping on the subject
of their love affairs. With Mary Sutherland, who had
been her pupil, and was one of her most intimate friends,
she frequently corresponded on the subject of Art, for
which she had a vast reverence, based on extensive
reading and entire practical ignorance of the subject.
She knew Adrian, and had gained Mary's gratitude by
pronouncing him a great artist, though she had not seen
his works. In person she was a slight, plain woman, with
small features, soft brown hair, and a pleasant expresion.
Much sedentary plodding had accustomed her to delicate
health, but had not soured her temper, or dulled
her habitual cheerfulness.
Early in September, she wrote to Mary Sutherland.
Newton Villa, Windsor,
4th September.
Dearest Mary—Many thanks for your pleasant letter, which makes me long to be at the seaside. I am sorry to hear that you are losing interest in your painting. Tell Mr Herbert that I am surprised at his not keeping you up to your work better. When you come back, you shall have a good lecture from me on the subject of lukewarm endeavor and laziness generally: however, if you are really going to study music instead, I excuse you.
"You will not be pleased to hear that the singing class is broken up. Mr Jack, unstable as dynamite, exploded yesterday, and scattered our poor choir in dismay to their homes. It happened in this way. There was a garden party at Mrs. Griffith's, to which all the girls were invited; and accordingly they appeared at class in gay attire, and were rather talkative and inattentive. Mr Jack arrived punctually, looking black as thunder. He would not even acknowledge my greeting. Just before he came in, Louisa White had been strumming over a new set of quadrilles; and she unfortunately left the music on the desk of the pianoforte. Mr Jack, without saying a word to us, sat down on the music stool, and, of course, saw poor Louisa's quadrilles, which he snatched, tore across, and threw on the floor. There was a dead silence, and Louisa looked at me, expecting me to interfere, but—I confess it—I was afraid to. Even you, audacious as you are, would have hesitated to provoke him. We sat looking at him ruefully whilst he played some chords, which he did as if he hated the piano. Then he said in a weary voice, 'Go on, go on.' I asked him what we should go on with. He looked savagely at me, and said, "Anything. Don't—” He said the rest to himself; but I think he meant, 'Don't sit there sstaring like a fool.' I distributed some music in a hurry, and put a copy before him. He was considerate enough not to tear that; but he took it off the desk and put it aside. Then he began playing the acccompaniment without book. We begain again and again and again, he listening with brooding desparation, like a man suffering from neuralgia. His silence alarmed me more than anything; for he usually shouts at us, and, if we sing a wrong note, sings the right one in a tremendous Voice. This went on for about twenty-five minutes, during which, I must confess, we got worse and Worse. At last Mr Jack rose, gave one terrible look at us, and buttoned his coat. The eyes of all were upon me—as if I could do anything. "Are you going Mr Jack!" No answer. "We shall see you on Friday as usual, I suppose Mr Jack?"
"Never, never again, by Heaven!" With this reply, made in a tortured voice with intense fervor, he walked out. Then arose a Babel of invective against Mr Jack, with infinite contradiction, and some vehement defence of him. Louisa White, torn quadrille in hand, began it by declaring that his conduct was disgraceful. 'No wonder,' cried Jane Lawrence, 'with Hetty Grahame laughing openly at him from the ottoman.' 'It was at the singing I laughed,' said Hetty indignantly: 'it was enough to make anyone laugh.' After this everybody spoke at once; but at last each agreed that all the rest had behaved very badly, and that Mr Jack had been scandalously treated. I thought, and I still think, that Mr. Jack has to thank his own ill-temper for the bad singing; and I will take care that he shall not have a second chance of being rude to me (I know by experience that it is a mistake to allow professors to trample on unprotected females), but of course I did not say so to the girls, as I do not wish to spoil his very unexpected popularity with them. He is a true male tyrant, and, like all idle women, they love tyrants—for which treachery to their working sisters they ought to be whipped and sent to bed. He is now, forsooth, to be begged to shew grace to his repentant handmaids, and to come down as usual on Friday, magnanimously overlooking his own bad behavior of yesterday. Can you manage to bring this about. You know him better than any of us; and we regard you as the proprietress of the class. Your notion that Mr. Jack objects to your join- ing it when you return to Windsor, is a piece of your crotchety nonsense. I asked him whether he expected you to do so, and he said he hoped so. That was not yesterday, of course, but at the previous lesson, when he was in unusually good spirits. So please try and induce his royal highness to come back to us. If you do not, I shall have to write myself, and then all will be lost; for I will encourage no living man to trample on my sex, even when they deserve it; and if I must write, Seigneur Jack shall have a glimpse of my mind. Please let me know soon what you can do for us: the girls are impatient to know the issue, and they keep calling and bothering me with questions. I will send you all the local news in my next letter, as it is too near post hour to add anything to this.—
Yours, dearest Mary, most affectionately.
"Letitia Cairns."
Mary forthwith, in a glow of anger, wrote and despatched the following to Church Street, Kensington.
Bonchurch,
5th September."Dear Mr Jack—
I have been very greatly surprised and pained by hearing from my friend Miss Cairns that you have abruptly thrown up the class she was kind enough to form for you at Windsor. I have no right to express any opinion upon your determination not to teach her friends any more; but as I introduced you to her, I cannot but feel that I have been the means of exposing her to an affront which has evidently wounded her deeply. However, Miss Cairns, far from making any complaint, is anxious that you should continue your lessons, as it is the general desire of the class that you should do so—
Yours sincerely,
Mary Sutherland.
Early next afternoon, Miss Cairns was alone In her drawing room, preparing a lecture for a mutual improvement society which she had founded in Windsor. A servant came in.
"Please, Miss Tisha, can you see Mr Jack?"
Miss Cairns laid down her pen, and gazed at the woman. "Mr Jack! It is not his usual day."
"No, Miss, but it's him. I said you was busy; and he asked whether you told me to tell him so. I think he's in a wus temper than last day."
"You had better bring him up," said Miss Cairns, touching her hair to test it, and covering up her manuscript. Jack came in hurriedly, and cut short her salutation by exclaiming in an agitated manner, "Miss Cairns I received a letter—an infamous letter. It says that you accuse me of having affronted you, and given up my I here, and other monstrous things. I have c>me to ask you whether you really said anything of the sort, and, if so, from whom you have heard these slanders."
"I certainly never told anyone that you affronted me," said Miss Cairns, turning pale. "I may have said that you gave up the class rather abruptly; but—"
"But who told you that I had given up the class? Why did you believe it before you had given me an opportunity of denying—of repudiating it. You do not know me, Miss Cairns. I have an unfortunate manner sometimes, because I am, in a worldly sense, an unfortunate man, though in my real life, heaven knows, a most happy and fortunate one. But I would cut off my right hand sooner than insult you. I am incapable of ingratitude; and I have the truest esteem and regard for you, not only because you have been kind to me but because I appreciate the noble qualities which raise you above your sex. So far from neglecting or wishing to abandon your friends, I have taken special pains with them, and shall always do so on your account, in spite of their magpie frivolity. You have seen for yourself my efforts to make them sing. But it is the accusation of rudeness to you personally that I am determined to refute. Who is the author of it?"
"I assure you," said Miss Cairns, blushing, "that you did not offend me; and whoever told you I complained of your doing so must have misunderstood me. But as to your giving up the class—"
"Aye, aye. Somebody must have told you that."
"You told me that yourself, Mr. Jack."
He looked quickly at her, taken aback. Then he frowned obstinately, and began walking to and fro. "Ridiculous!" he said, impatiently. "I never said such a thing. You have made a mistake. "
"But—"
"How could I possibly have said it when the idea never entered my head?"
"All I can say is," said Miss Cairns, firmly, being somewhat roused, "that when I asked you whether you were coming- again, you answered most emphatically, 'Never'"
Jack stood still and considered a moment. "No, no." he said, recommencing his walk, "I said nothing of the kind."
She made no comment, but looked timidly at him, and drummed on the writing with her finger.
"At least," he said, stopping again, "I may have said so thoughtlessly—as a mere passing remark. I meant nothing by it. I was little put out by the infernal manner in which the class behaved. Perhaps you did not perceive my annoyance, and so took whatever I said too seriously."
"Yes, I think that must have been it," said Miss Cairns slyly. "It was all a mistake of mine, I suppose you will continue our lessons as if nothing had happened."
"Of course, certainly. Nothing has happened."
"I am so sorry that you should have had the trouble of coming all the way from London. It is too bad."
"Well, well, it is not your fault, Miss Cairns. It cannot be helped.
"May I ask, from whom did you hear of my mistake?"
"From whom! From Miss Sutherland, of course. There is no one else living under heaven who would have the heart to write such venom."
"Miss Sutherland is a dear friend of mine, Mr Jack."
"She is no friend of mine. Though I lived in her house for months, I never gave her the least cause of enmity against me. Yet she has never lost an opportunity of stabbing at me."
"You are mistaken, Mr. Jack—won't you sit down: I beg your pardon for not asking you before—Miss Sutherland has not the least enmity to you."
"Read that," said Jack, producing the letter. Miss Cairns read it, and felt ashamed of it. "I cannot imagine what made Mary write that," she said. "I am sure my letter contained nothing that could justify her remark about me."
"Sheer cruelty—want of consideration for others— natural love of inflicting pain. She has an overbearing disposition. Nothing is more hateful than an overbearing disposition."
"You do not understand her, Mr Jack. She is only hasty. You will find that she wrote on the spur of the moment, fancying that I was annoyed. Pray think no more of it."
"It does not matter, Miss Cairns. I will not meet her again; and I request you never to mention her name in my presence."
"But she is going, I hope, to join the class on her return from Bonchurch."
"The day she enters it, I leave it. I am in earnest. You may move heaven and earth more easily than me—on this point."
"Really, Mr Jack, you are a little severe. Do not be offended if I say that you might find in your own impatience some excuse for hers."
Jack recoiled. "My impatience!" he repeated slowly. "I, who have hardened myself into a stone statue of dogged patience, impatient!" He glared at her; ground his teeth; and continued vehemently, "Here am I, a master of my profession—no easy one to master—rotting, and likely to continue rotting unheard in the midst of a pack of shallow panders, who make a hotch-potch of what they can steal from better men, and share the spoil with the corrupt performers who thrust it upon the public for them. Either this or the accursed drudgery of teaching, or grinding an organ at the pleasure of some canting villain of a parson, or death by starvation, is the lot of a musician in this centuty. I have, in spite of this, never composed one page of music bad enough for publication or performance. I have drudged with pupils when I could get them, starved in a garret when I could not; endured to have my works returned to me unopened or declared inexecutable by shopkeepers and lazy conductors, written new ones without any hope of getting even a hearing for them; dragged myself by excess of this fruitless labor out of horrible fits of despair that come out my own nature; and throughout it all have neither complained nor prostituted myself to write shopware. I have listened to complacent assurances that publishers and concert-givers are only too anxious to get good, original work—that it is their own interest to do so. As if the dogs would know original work if they saw it: or rather as if they would not instinctively turn away from anything good and genuine! All this I have borne without suffering from it— without the humiliation of finding it able to give me one moment of disappointment or resentment; and now you tell me that I have no patience, because I have no disposition to humor the caprices of idle young ladies. I am accustomed to hear such things from fools—or I was when I had friends; but I expected more sense from you."
Miss Cairns struggled with this speech in vain. All but the bare narrative in it seemed confused and inconsequent to her. "I did not know," she said, looking perplexedly at him. "It never occurred to me that—at least—" She stopped, unable to arrange her ideas. Then she exclaimed, "And do you really love music, Mr. Jack?"
"What do you mean?" said he sternly.
"I thought you did not care for anything. I always felt that you knew your business; we all felt so; but we never thought you had any enthusiasm. Do not be angry with me for telling you so; for I am very glad to find that I was wrong."
Jack's features relaxed. He rose, and took another turn across the room, chuckling. "I am not fond of teaching," he said; "but I must live. And so you all thought that an ugly man could not be a composer. Or was it because I don't admire the drawling which you all flatter yourselves is singing, eh? I am not like the portraits of Mozart, Miss Cairns."
"I am sure we never thought of that, only somehow we agreed that you were the very last person in the world to—to—"
"Ha! ha! Just so. I do not look like a writer of serenades. However, you were right about the enthusiasm. I am no enthusiast: I leave that to the ladies. Did you ever hear of an enthusiastically honest man, or an enthusiastic shoemaker? Never, and you are not likely to hear of an enthusiastic composer—at least not until after he is dead. No. He chuckled again, but seemed suddenly to recollect himself; for he added stiffly, "I beg your pardon. I am detaining you."
"Not in the least," said Miss Cairns, so earnestly that she blushed afterwards. "If you are not engaged, I wish you would stay for B few minutes and do me at favor."
"Certainly. Most certainly," he said. Then he added suspiciously, "What is it?"
"Only to play something for me before you go—if you don't mind." Her tone expressed that intense curiosity to witness a musical performance which is so common among unmusical people whose interest in the art has been roused by reading. Jack understood it quite well; but he seemed disposed to humor her.
"You want to see the figure work," he said good-humoredly. "Very well. What shall it be?"
Miss Cairns, ignorant of music, but unaccustomed to appear ignorant of anything, was at a loss. "Some- thing classical then," she ventured. "Do you know Thalberg's piece called 'Moses in Egypt'? I believe that is very fine; but it is also very difficult, is it not?"
He started, and looked at her with such an extraordinary grin that she almost began to mistrust him. Then he said, apparently to himself, "Candor, Jack, candor. You once thought so, perhaps, yourself."
He twisted his fingers until their joints crackled; shook his shoulders and gnashed his teeth once or twice at the keyboard. Then he improvised a set of variations on the prayer fr<>m "Moses" which served Miss Cairns's turn quite as well as if they had been note for note Thalberg's. She listened, deeply impressed, and was rather jarred when he suddenly stopped and rose, saying, "Well, well: enough tomfoolery, Miss Cairns."
"Not at all," she said. "I have enjoyed it greatly. Thank you very much."
"By the bye," he said abruptly, "I am not to be asked to play for your acquaintances. Don't go and talk about me: the mechanical toy will not perform for anyone else."
"But is not that a pity, when you can give such pleasure?"
"Whenever I am in the humor to play, I play; sometimes without being asked. But I am not always in the humor, whereas people are always ready to pretend that they like listening to me, particularly those who are as deaf to music as they are to everything else that is good. And one word more, Miss Cairns. If your friends think me a mere schoolmaster, let them continue to think so. I live alone, and I sometimes talk more about myself than I intend. I did so today. Don't repeat what I said."
"Certainly not, since you do not wish me to."
Jack looked into his hat; considered a moment; then made her a bow—a ceremony which he always performed with solemnity—and went away. Miss Cairns sat down by herself, and forgot all about her lecture. More accustomed to store her memory than to exercise her imagination she had a sensation of novelty in reflecting on the glimpse that she had got of Jack's private life, and the possibilities which it suggested. Her mother came in presently, to inquire concerning the visitor; but Miss Cairns merely told who he was, and mentioned carelessly that the class was to go on as before. Mrs Cairns, who disapproved of Jack, said she was sorry to hear it. Her daughter, desiring to give utterance to her thoughts, and not caring to confide in her mother, recollected that she had to write to Mary. This second letter ran thus:
Newton Villa, Windsor.
6th September."Dearest Mary—I am going to give you a severe scolding for what you have done at Mr. Jack. He has just been here with your wicked letter, furious, and evidently not rembering a bit what he said last day. About the class, which he positively denies having given up; but he is very angry with you—not without reason, I think. Why will you be pugnacious? I tried to make your peace; but, for the present, at least, he is implacable. He is a very strange man. I think he is very clever; but I do not understamd him, though I have passed my life among professors and clever people of all sorts, and fancied I had exhausted the species. My logic and mathematics are no avail when I try to grapple with Mr Jack: he belongs, I think, to those regions of art which you have often urged me to explore, but of which, unhappily, I know hardly anything. I got him into good humor after a great deal of trouble, and actually asked him to play for me, which he did, most magnificently. You must never let him know that I told you this because he made me promise not to tell anyone and I am sure he is a terrible person to betray. His real character—so far as I can make it out—is quite different than what we all supposed—I must break off here to go to dinner. I have no doubt he will relent towards you after a time: his wrath does not endure forever.—
Ever your affectionate,
Letita Cairns
Miss Cairns had no sooner sent this to the post than she began to doubt whether it would not have been better to have burnt it.