Mrs. Monnerie’s eyelids, on the other hand, with a faintly fluttering motion, remained closed from the first bar to the last—a method of appreciation I experimented with for a moment but quickly abandoned; while at the first clash of the keys, Sir Walter had dexterously contrived to slide himself out of the room by the door at which he had unexpectedly entered it on my first visit. Such was the social situation when, after murmurs of gratitude and applause, Miss Templemaine took up her gloves and rose from the piano, and Mrs. Monnerie reopened herself to the outer world with the ejaculation, “That’s right. Now, my dear!”
The summons was to me. My moment had come, but I was prepared for it. In my last ordeal I had broken down because I had chosen a poem that was a kind of secret thing in my mind. So, after receiving Lady Pollacke’s letter, I had hunted about for a recitation as short, but less personal: one, I mean, whose sentiments I didn’t mind. And since Mrs. Bullace had chosen two of Mrs. Browning’s pieces for her triumph on New Year’s Eve, I argued that she knew the parish taste, and that I could do no better. Of course, too, composure over what I was going to do was far more important than the composition.
“Prepared for it,” I said just now, but I meant it only in the sense that one prepares for a cold bath. There was still the plunge. I clasped my hands, stood up. Ceiling and floor gently rocked a little. There seemed to be faces—faces everywhere, and every eye in them was fixed on me. Thus completely encompassed, I could find no refuge from them, for unfortunately my Hypnos was completely obliterated from view by the lady with the lorgnette. So I fixed my attention, instead, on the window, where showed a blank break of clear, fair, blue sky between the rain-clouds of afternoon. A nervous cough from Lady Pollacke plunged me over, and I announced my title: “The Weakest Thing,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning:—
“Which is the weakest thing of all
Mine heart can ponder?
The sun, a little cloud can pall
With darkness yonder!
The cloud, a little wind can move
Where’er it listeth;
The wind, a little leaf above,
Though sere, resisteth!What time that yellow leaf was green,
My days were gladder:
Now on its branch each summer-sheen
May find me sadder!
Ah, me! a leaf with sighs can wring
My lips asunder—
Then is my heart the weakest thing
Itself can ponder.Yet, Heart, when sun and cloud are pined
And drop together;
And at a blast which is not wind,
The forests wither,
Thou, from the darkening, deathly curse
To glory breakest—
The Strongest of the Universe
Guarding the weakest.”
The applause, in which Miss Templemaine generously joined, was this time quite unconcealed, and Lady Pollacke’s sister’s last “Touching” had hardly died away when Mrs. Monnerie added her approbation.
“Charming, perfectly charming,” she murmured, eyeing me like a turtledove. “But tell me, my dear, why that particular poem? It seemed to have even less sense than usual.”
“No‑o; ye‑es,” breathed Lady Pollacke, and many heads nodded in discreet accord.
“Doesn’t—er—perhaps, Mrs. Browning dwell rather assiduously on the tragic side of life?” Mr. Crimble ventured to inquire.
Lady Pollacke jerked her head, either in the affirmative or in the negative, and looked inquiringly at Mrs. Monnerie, who merely drooped her eyes a little closer towards me and smiled, almost as if she and I were in a little plot together.
“What do you say, Miss M.?”
“Well, Mrs. Monnerie,” I replied a little nervously, for all eyes were turned on me, “I don’t think I know myself what exactly the poem means—the who’s and what’s—and what the blast was which was not wind. But I thought it was a poem which everyone would understand as much as possible of.”
To judge from the way she quivered in her chair, though quite inaudibly, Mrs. Monnerie was extremely amused at this criticism.
“And that is why you chose it?”
“Well, yes,” said I, “you see, when one is listening to poetry, not reading it to oneself, I mean, one hasn’t time to pry about for all its bits of meaning, but only just to get the general—general—”
“Aroma?” suggested Mrs. Monnerie.
“Yes—aroma.”
“And the moral?”
The silence that hung over this little exchange was growing more and more dense. Luckless Miss M.! She only plunged herself deeper into it by her reply that, “Oh, there’s nothing very much in the moral, Mrs. Monnerie. That’s quite ordinary. At least I read about that in prose, why, before I was seven!”
“Touch—” began that further voice, but was silenced by a testy lift of Mrs. Monnerie’s eyelid. “Indeed!” she said, “and couldn’t you, wouldn’t you, now, give me the prose version? That’s more my mark.”
“It was in a little nursery lesson-book of mine, called The Observing Eye; letters about snails and coral insects and spiders and things—” I paused. “A book, rather, you know, for Sundays. But my—my family and I—”
“Oh, but do,” cried Lady Pollacke in a voice I should hardly have recognized, “I adore snails.”
Once more I was cornered. So I steeled myself anew, and stumbled through the brief passage in the squat, blue book. It tells how—
“The history of each one of the animals we have now considered, teaches us that our kind God watches over the wants and the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures. We see that He gives to them, not only the sagacity and the instruments which they need for catching their food, but that He also provides them with some means of defending themselves. We learn by their history that the gracious Eye watches under the mighty waters, as well as over the earth, and that no creature can stop doing His will without His eye seeing it.”
XXV
Once more I sat down, but this time in the midst of what seemed to me a rather unpleasant silence, as if the room had
