Scenes of Clerical Life

Chapter 4

I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the

truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably

disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they

imagined. Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say

that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of

brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier

to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to

enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that

opinion.

Besides, think of all the virtuous declamation, all the penetrating

observation, which had been built up entirely on the fundamental position

that the Countess was a very objectionable person indeed, and which would

be utterly overturned and nullified by the destruction of that premiss.

Mrs. Phipps, the banker's wife, and Mrs. Landor, the attorney's wife, had

invested part of their reputation for acuteness in the supposition that

Mr. Bridmain was not the Countess's brother. Moreover, Miss Phipps was

conscious that if the Countess was not a disreputable person, she, Miss

Phipps, had no compensating superiority in virtue to set against the

other lady's manifest superiority in personal charms. Miss Phipps's

stumpy figure and unsuccessful attire, instead of looking down from a

mount of virtue with an aureole round its head, would then be seen on the

same level and in the same light as the Countess Czerlaski's Diana-like

form and well-chosen drapery. Miss Phipps, for her part, didn't like

dressing for effect--she had always avoided that style of appearance

which was calculated to create a sensation.

Then what amusing innuendoes of the Milby gentlemen over their wine would

have been entirely frustrated and reduced to nought, if you had told them

that the Countess had really been guilty of no misdemeanours which

demanded her exclusion from strictly respectable society; that her

husband had been the veritable Count Czerlaski, who had had wonderful

escapes, as she said, and who, as she did _not_ say, but as was said in

certain circulars once folded by her fair hands, had subsequently given

dancing lessons in the metropolis; that Mr. Bridmain was neither more nor

less than her half-brother, who, by unimpeached integrity and industry,

had won a partnership in a silk-manufactory, and thereby a moderate

fortune, that enabled him to retire, as you see, to study politics, the

weather, and the art of conversation at his leisure. Mr. Bridmain, in

fact, quadragenarian bachelor as he was, felt extremely well pleased to

receive his sister in her widowhood, and to shine in the reflected light

of her beauty and title. Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician,

or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. Mr. Bridmain

had put his neck under the yoke of his handsome sister, and though his

soul was a very little one--of the smallest description indeed--he would

not have ventured to call it his own. He might be slightly recalcitrant

now and then, as is the habit of long-eared pachyderms, under the thong

of the fair Countess's tongue; but there seemed little probability that

he would ever get his neck loose. Still, a bachelor's heart is an

outlying fortress that some fair enemy may any day take either by storm

or stratagem; and there was always the possibility that Mr. Bridmain's

first nuptials might occur before the Countess was quite sure of her

second. As it was, however, he submitted to all his sister's caprices,

never grumbled because her dress and her maid formed a considerable item

beyond her own little income of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to

lead with her a migratory life, as personages on the debatable ground

between aristocracy and commonalty, instead of settling in some spot

where his five hundred a-year might have won him the definite dignity of

a parochial magnate.

The Countess had her views in choosing a quiet provincial place like

Milby. After three years of widowhood, she had brought her feelings to

contemplate giving a successor to her lamented Czerlaski, whose fine

whiskers, fine air, and romantic fortunes had won her heart ten years

ago, when, as pretty Caroline Bridmain, in the full bloom of

five-and-twenty, she was governess to Lady Porter's daughters, whom he

initiated into the mysteries of the _pas de bas_, and the lancers'

quadrilles. She had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony with

Czerlaski, who had taken her to Paris and Germany, and introduced her

there to many of his old friends with large titles and small fortunes. So

that the fair Caroline had had considerable experience of life, and had

gathered therefrom, not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom,

but much external polish, and certain practical conclusions of a very

decided kind. One of these conclusions was, that there were things more

solid in life than fine whiskers and a title, and that, in accepting a

second husband, she would regard these items as quite subordinate to a

carriage and a settlement. Now, she had ascertained, by tentative

residences, that the kind of bite she was angling for was difficult to be

met with at watering-places, which were already preoccupied with

abundance of angling beauties, and were chiefly stocked with men whose

whiskers might be dyed, and whose incomes were still more problematic; so

she had determined on trying a neighbourhood where people were extremely

well acquainted with each other's affairs, and where the women were

mostly ill-dressed and ugly. Mr. Bridmain's slow brain had adopted his

sister's views, and it seemed to him that a woman so handsome and

distinguished as the Countess must certainly make a match that might lift

himself into the region of county celebrities, and give him at least a

sort of cousinship to the quarter-sessions.

All this, which was the simple truth, would have seemed extremely flat to

the gossips of Milby, who had made up their minds to something much more

exciting. There was nothing here so very detestable. It is true, the

Countess was a little vain, a little ambitious, a little selfish, a

little shallow and frivolous, a little given to white lies.--But who

considers such slight blemishes, such moral pimples as these,

disqualifications for entering into the most respectable society! Indeed,

the severest ladies in Milby would have been perfectly aware that these

characteristics would have created no wide distinction between the

Countess Czerlaski and themselves; and since it was clear there _was_ a

wide distinction--why, it must lie in the possession of some vices from

which they were undeniably free.

Hence it came to pass that Milby respectability refused to recognize the

Countess Czerlaski, in spite of her assiduous church-going, and the deep

disgust she was known to have expressed at the extreme paucity of the

congregations on Ash-Wednesdays. So she began to feel that she had

miscalculated the advantages of a neighbourhood where people are well

acquainted with each other's private affairs. Under these circumstances,

you will imagine how welcome was the perfect credence and admiration she

met with from Mr. and Mrs. Barton. She had been especially irritated by

Mr. Ely's behaviour to her; she felt sure that he was not in the least

struck with her beauty, that he quizzed her conversation, and that he

spoke of her with a sneer. A woman always knows where she is utterly

powerless, and shuns a coldly satirical eye as she would shun a Gorgon.

And she was especially eager for clerical notice and friendship, not

merely because that is quite the most respectable countenance to be

obtained in society, but because she really cared about religious

matters, and had an uneasy sense that she was not altogether safe in that

quarter. She had serious intentions of becoming _quite_ pious--without

any reserves--when she had once got her carriage and settlement. Let us

do this one sly trick, says Ulysses to Neoptolemus, and we will be

perfectly honest ever after--

[Greek: all edu gar toi ktema tes uikes labien

tolma dikaioi d' authis ekphanoumetha.]

The Countess did not quote Sophocles, but she said to herself, 'Only this

little bit of pretence and vanity, and then I will be _quite_ good, and

make myself quite safe for another world.'

And as she had by no means such fine taste and insight in theological

teaching as in costume, the Rev. Amos Barton seemed to her a man not only

of learning--_that_ is always understood with a clergyman--but of much

power as a spiritual director. As for Milly, the Countess really loved

her as well as the preoccupied state of her affections would allow. For

you have already perceived that there was one being to whom the Countess

was absorbingly devoted, and to whose desires she made everything else

subservient--namely, Caroline Czerlaski, _nee_ Bridmain.

Thus there was really not much affectation in her sweet speeches and

attentions to Mr. and Mrs. Barton. Still their friendship by no means

adequately represented the object she had in view when she came to Milby,

and it had been for some time clear to her that she must suggest a new

change of residence to her brother.

The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in

the way we have imagined to ourselves. The Countess did actually leave

Camp Villa before many months were past, but under circumstances which

had not at all entered into her contemplation.