"Love in a cottage" is a time-honoured phrase, which changes its significance considerably, according to the lips that utter it. To some persons, Love in a cottage would be suggestive of dreary obscurity, privation, cold mutton, and one maid-of-all-work. To others, it might mean a villa with its lawn running down to the Thames, a basket-phaeton and pair of ponies, and the modest simplicity of footmen without powder. To another class of minds, again, Love in a cottage might stand for a comprehensive hieroglyph of honest affection, sufficiently robust to live and thrive even on a diet of cold mutton, and warm-blooded enough to defy the nip of poverty's east winds.
Lady Seely had joked, in her cheerful, candid way, with her niece-in-law about her establishment in life, and had said, "Well, Castalia, you'll have love in a cottage, at all events! Some people are worse off. And at your age, you know (quite between ourselves), you must think yourself lucky to get a husband at all."
Miss Kilfinane had made some retort to the effect that she did not intend to remain all her life in a cottage, with or without love; and that if Lord Seely could do nothing for Ancram, she (Castalia) had other connections who might be more influential.
But, in truth, Castalia did think that she could be quite content to live with Algernon Errington under a thatched roof; having only a conventional and artificial conception of such a dwelling, derived chiefly from lithographed drawing-copies. It was not, of course, that Castalia Kilfinane did not know that thatched hovels are frequently comfortless, ill-ventilated, "the noted haunt of" earwigs, and limited in the accommodation necessary for a genteel family. But such knowledge was packed away in some quite different department of her mind from that which habitually contemplated her own personal existence, present and future. Wiser folks than Castalia are apt to anticipate exceptions to general laws in their own favour.
Castalia was undoubtedly in love with Algernon. That is to say, she would have liked better to be his wife in poverty and obscurity, than to accept a title and a handsome settlement from any other man whom she had ever seen; although she would probably have taken the latter had the chance been offered to her.
Nor is that bringing so hard an accusation against her as may at first sight appear. She would have liked best to be Algernon's wife; but for penniless Castalia Kilfinane to marry a poor man when she might have had a rich one, would have required her to disregard some of the strongest and most vital convictions of the persons among whom she lived. Let their words be what they might, their deeds irrefragably proved that they held poverty to be the one fatal, unforgiven sin, which so covered any multitude of virtues as utterly to hide and overwhelm them. You could no more expect Castalia to be impervious to this creed, than you could expect a sapling to draw its nourishment from a distant soil, rather than from the earth immediately around its roots. To be sure there have been vigorous young trees that would strike out tough branching fibres to an incredible distance, in search of the food that was best for them. Such human plants are rare; and poor narrow-minded, ill-educated Castalia was not of them.
Had she been much beloved, it is possible that she might have ripened into sweetness under that celestial sunshine. But it was not destined to be hers.
In some natures the giving even of unrequited love is beautifying to the character. But I think that in such cases the beauty is due to that pathetic compassion which blends with all love of a high nature for a lower one. Do you think that all the Griseldas believe in their lords' wisdom and justice? Do you fancy that the fathers of prodigal sons do not oftentimes perceive the young vagabonds' sins and shortcomings with a terrible perspicuity that pierces the poor fond heart like sharp steel? Do you not know that Cordelia saw more quickly and certainly than the sneering, sycophant courtiers, every weakness and vanity of the rash, choleric old king? But there are hearts in which such knowledge is transmuted not into bitter resentment, but into a yearning, angelic pity. Only, in order to feel this pity, we must rise to some point above the erring one. Now poor Castalia had been so repressed by "low ambition," and the petty influences of a poverty ever at odds with appearances, that the naturally weak wings of her spirit seemed to have lost all power of soaring.
The earliest days Mrs. Algernon Errington spent in her new home were passed in making a series of disagreeable discoveries. The first discovery was that a six-roomed brick cottage is, practically, a far less commodious dwelling than any she had hitherto lived in. The walls of Ivy Lodge (that was the name of the little house, which had not a twig of greenery to soften its bare red face) appeared so slight that she fancied her conversation could be overheard by the passersby in the road. The rooms were so small that her dress seemed to fill them to overflowing, although those were not the days of crinolines and long trains. The little staircase was narrow and steep. The kitchen was so close to the living rooms that, at dinner-time, the whole house seemed to exhale a smell of roast mutton. The stowing away of her wardrobe taxed to the utmost the ingenuity of her maid. And the few articles of furniture which Lady Seely had raked out from disused sitting-rooms, appeared almost as Brobdingnagian in Ivy Lodge as real tables and chairs would seem beside the furniture of a doll's house.
A second discovery—made very quickly after her arrival in Whitford—was still more unpleasant. It was this: that a fine London-bred lady's-maid is an inconvenient and unmanageable servant to introduce into a small humble household. Poor Castalia "couldn't think what had come to Slater!" And Slater went about with a thunderous brow and sulky mouth, conveying by her manner a sort of contemptuous compassion for her mistress, and a contempt by no means compassionate for everybody else in the house.
The stout Whitford servant-of-all-work offended her beyond forgiveness, on the very first day of their acquaintance, by bluntly remarking that well-cooked bacon and cabbage was a good-enough dinner for anybody; and that if Mrs. Slater had see'd as many hungry folks as she (Polly) had, she would say her grace and fall-to with a thankful heart instead of turning up her nose, and picking at good wholesome victuals with a fork! Moreover, Polly was not in the least awe-stricken by Mrs. Slater's black silk gown, or the gold watch she wore at her belt. She observed, cheerfully, that such-like fine toggery was all very well at church or chapel; and, for her part, she always had, and always would, put a bit of a flower in her bonnet on Sundays, and them mississes as didn't like it must get some one else to serve 'em. But, when she was about her work, she liked to be dressed in working clothes. And a servant as wanted to bring second-hand parlour manners into the kitchen seemed to her a poor cretur'—neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring.
All which indignities Slater visited on her mistress, finding it impossible to disconcert or repress Polly, who only laughed heartily at her genteelest flights.
But these things were not the worst. The worst was that Algernon showed very plainly a disinclination to sympathise with his wife's annoyance, and his intention of withdrawing himself from all domestic troubles, as if he considered them to be clearly no concern of his. Mrs. Errington, indeed, would have come to the rescue of her daughter-in-law, but neither of Mrs. Algernon's servants were disposed to submit to Mrs. Errington's authority. And the good lady was no more inclined than her son to take trouble and expose herself to unpleasantness for any one else's sake.
Castalia and her mother-in-law did not grow more attached to each other the more intimate their acquaintance became. They had one sentiment in common—namely, love for Algernon. But this sentiment did not tend to unite them. Indeed—putting the rivalry of lovers out of the question, of course—it would be a mistake to conclude that because A and B both love C, therefore A and B must love each other. Mrs. Errington thought that Castalia worried Algernon by complaints. Castalia thought that Mrs. Errington was often a thorn in her son's side by reason of her indulgence in the opposite feelings; that is to say, over-sanguine and boastful prognostications.
"My dear Algy," his mother would say, "there is not the least doubt that you have a brilliant career before you. Y............