With a Serious Vindication of her
Prototypes
Or Flaxius in England
‘And thus outspoke ye Oracle:
A very truth to thee I tell:
If thou canst a woman finde,
With such an earth-subduing minde
And with soule so stern and deepe,
That she can a secret keepe.
Then know of verie truth that she
A great Enchauntresse soon will be,
A queen in soothe or faery.’
It was five o’clock tea at Lady Puddlebrooke’s—a
somewhat famous weekly rendezvous, which many
called ‘The Meet,’ because there assembled on the
occasion so many gallant hunters of gossip, and
harriers of character, who were soon let slip in full
cry of the chronique scandaleuse of the day. The
which chronicle, be it remarked, by the way, is by far
the most wonderful flying leaf, as such journals were
once called, which was ever compiled, since every
soul implicitly believes that there is in it the name
of Everybody else, and that all which is said of others
in it is true, while their own names are never there—or,
if there, invariably attached to falsehoods, and
out of place.
Now, while all the good Christians, philanthropists,
nobly honest agnostics, angelic virgins
who had been presented, dignified and ferocious
matrons, clergymen, positivists, and other seekers
after truth, were—as a nasty, cynical journalist who
was present, remarked—‘ravening and battening on
their garbage,’ which meant repeating what they had
read in the society papers, or preparing what would
soon appear in them, Flaxius had withdrawn to
a quiet corner and an easy sofa, where he was joined
by Miss Jesabelle Rockhard, a lady of whom all
her friends said: ‘It certainly cannot be denied that
she is good-looking’; others limiting this praise to
‘distinguée,’ while some reduced it to ‘striking,’
which she certainly was, being a hard hitter in conversation,
and not above fibbing when it came to a
scratch. That she was ‘highly intelligent’ and an
esprit fort, gifted with the unscrupulousness which
she herself graced with the name of Will, was manifested
at a glance, and impressively set forth by the
first utterance of her voice to any reader of the human
heart.
She was between afternoon and twilight as
regarded age, and of very limited means; facts
which she stated with the utmost candour to everybody.
Nor was she devoid of a certain intuition or
clairvoyance as regarded ability in others, as she
had creditably shown by divining that Flaxius was
a character. She determined that she would draw
him out to the last hair, and completely ascertain all
there was in him. In forming this resolution she
had, as the Americans express it, unconsciously,
‘taken out a mighty big contract,’ which was the
further impeded by the fact that the party of the
other part knew exactly how much stock she held,
and what was her capital, while she—poor little soul—knew
nothing at all as to the resources of the
adversary.
But she came up to the assault gallantly. There
was something in her very smile with its pinch
in the lips, and in the ring of her keen voice,
which seemed to say: ‘I’m arch and airy, with
the gay, sarcastic tone of society; you must
accept all my stings with a delighted air—and
you’ll be in bad form if you don’t. Beware!
beware!’
‘Ah, Mr. Flaxius, just as one would expect—withdrawn
from the gossiping, frivolous crowd. You
set up to be intellectual, I believe.’
There are certain very common and very silly
speeches of this kind current, which tease sensible
people, because they are hard to answer. So true is
it that a fool can roll a stone into a well which fifty
wise men cannot get out. But Flaxius replied with
divine suavity:
‘If being out of the swim is a sign of setting up to
be intellectual, then, I suppose, as you are here, that
you also advance the same claim, and would fain
remind me of it.’ Here the smile was beautifully
genial, as if to say: ‘’Tis all my fun.’
‘Confound his cheeky impudence!’ thought Miss
Jesabelle. And she promptly countered.
‘So you do set up to be intellectual, then? Oh,
you needn’t deny it—you’ve admitted it.’
‘True,’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘and I have heard from
other people the same of you. And yet I am not
sure,’ he added, in so dreamy, meditative a manner,
that he seemed to be thinking of anything except
Miss Rockhard, ‘that ’tis not better to be able
to set oneself up independently—though ever so
little—than to have to rely on others to do it
for us!’
And looking at Miss Jesabelle with a smile that
was child-like and bland, he added:
‘Ask me some more of those hard questions,
please!’
‘I really believe,’ answered the lady with some
acerbity (‘Aha!’ thought Flaxius, ‘the first blood
drawn!’)—‘that you must have belonged to the Disagreeable
Club, whose members make a practice of
irritating and retorting, like cabmen.’
‘Ah!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘if I had not, I should
have been indeed ill-qualified for conversation with
an advanced young lady of the fin de siècle. How
often she reminds me of a Spanish fairy-tale. May
I tell it?’ he asked, like a little boy.
‘Oh, certainly, if it amuses you,’ replied the young
lady in a tone half-contemptuously vexed, yet half
interested in this extraordinary stranger.
‘Once upon a time,’ said Flaxius, ‘there were
three brothers, and the two elder were a pair of
awful blackguards.’
‘Truly, it begins beautifully!’ remarked Miss
Rockhard scornfully.
‘Doesn’t it?’ quoth Flaxius gleefully. ‘And it’s
nothing to what’s a-coming. Well, there was a
king of the country, and he had a beautiful daughter—at
least she was distinguée, or what you might call
stunning, for she was awful at being disagreeable,
and could shut up any man in chaff, or worse—not
to draw it too fine. And if anybody dared to answer
her—oh, then she became angry!
‘Now the king, finding that his daughter kept his
court all the time in an uproar, issued a proclamation,
saying that whoever could beat the princess
in abuse should have her to wife, and welcome.
Then the two elder brothers rejoiced, each being
sure that he would win the prize. But the younger,
who was a sort of Saint Johnny, with no great gift
of the gab, went and sat sorrowfully in the woods,
weeping to think he had no chance to win the
princess, and wishing he had passed his boyhood in
playing chuck-farthing, and hanging about the docks
with other little guttersnipes, and had not wasted it
in going to school and church and penny-readings.
‘And while he sat there weeping, and eating a
great slice of water-melon, mingling his tears with
the seeds, there came by an Irish fairy of his
acquaintance.
‘“An’ what is it yees wape‑in an’ bodderin’ about,
alanna?” she asked kindly.
‘Then the youth told her his trouble, and how he
would like to win the princess, but wanted that copia
verborum, or elegant “fluency of sass,” as it is called
in America, which was necessary to secure it.
‘“Och, monoma diaoul! and tear and agers!”
exclaimed the fairy, “sure, if it’s nothin’ but blay-gairdin’
is naded, it’s mesilf that’ll tache ye how to
bate thim all intoirely. Pattherin’ an’ cantin’ is it!
and me here that blissed the great Daniel O’Connell
in his cradle, an’ gave him the illigant spache that
shut up all the sass in Parliamint.
‘“Great O’Connell, the Libherather,
An’ salvathor of Oireland’s oisle!
‘“Whoop! Fa‑na‑ballah, and Erin-go-braugh!”
cried the fairy as she danced in a ring, brandishing
her broom. “And now, ye divil, sit down till I give
yees a lisson in polite litherature.”
‘I forbear for certain reasons to give you the conversation
which occurred between the princess and
the two brothers, in which they were utterly silenced.
Then, turning to the youngest, she exclaimed scornfully:
‘“And I suppose you, with your white egg-fruit
face of an idiotic scallawag, set up for being intellectual—intellectual
enough to smash me—that is, if
you know what the word means, you Number Three
Mackerel with the head gone!”
‘“It is just like your ante-penultimate superfluitancy
to mundivagate anent my candicancy,’ replied the
youth indignantly. ‘Thou tramontarian tomboy-trollope
and trull-cat, thou quadruplicate quean,
mopsy minx, and metaphrastic harridame—reintegrated
in thy deligration even to conquassentiality—thou
mere projectile of an eolipile—nay, I go so
far as to call thee a true ultimatum of the fourth
effusion—dug up by a divarication of conduplicated
metatarsity—thou art all this as thy conscience
deterrates … yea and thou art moreover addicted
to lipothymy and all such enormities and vices!”
‘Thereupon the princess gave it to him back, with
all that there is in Grose’s Slang Dictionary, and
Romany to boot—which was pretty bad; but when
he retorted with a passage from Browning’s Sordello,
she gave it up, and fell into a fit of rage, foaming at
the mouth. And having recovered, she married him,
and they lived like the devil ever after.’
Now Flaxius had the gift of voice, and with it that
of the story-teller, to the degree of well-nigh transcending
language itself; for one could read the full
meaning of every word in his intonation, and eyes
and gestures; these latter were never extravagant,
but strangely significant, as they well might be, since
he knew as only the priests of old knew the wonderful
Sign Language which men have found of late
years on every Etruscan vase—much of which is
still found even among the peasant-children of Italy.
And as a small group of guests had gathered round
to hear the legend, there were roars of final laughter,
in which Miss Jesabelle herself joined with a good-will,
for she had begun to realise that there was a
lion in this man, and as the story had been told for
her, she shrewdly made the very best of it.
‘You tell a fairy-tale so well,’ she said to Flaxius,
when they were again together, and no one near, ‘as
to make one regret that there are no more fairies or
magic, or rather that such fancies never were.’
‘And if there were,’ replied the sage, ‘you and the
world would still necessarily remain in ignorance of
them.’
‘Permit me,’ replied Miss Rockhard, ‘to differ with
you. I presume,’ she added, with a slightly sarcastic
expression, ‘that I am quite as likely as you are to
be acquainted, or possibly familiar, with all that has
been investigated by science—the London Library
and British Museum being open to all—and I can
assure you that despite Madame Blavatsky and
Mr. Sinnett and Colonel Olcott—very nice men
they are—not the slightest scientific proof of the
existence of fairies or magic has ever been detected.’
‘Very true,’ rejoined Flaxius imperturbably. ‘I
did not say that they existed. I only assert that,
from the very nature of things, if they do, they must
be concealed from man as he now is. The more
indubitable proof of such occult matters would
bring about a premature confusion in humanity
which would have disastrous results.’
‘I presume not, in certain minds at least,’ said
Miss Rockhard, with an expression which denoted
that she considered herself to be one of this favoured
few. ‘How can you explain however,’ she added,
‘that few, if any, know the mysteries?’
‘Simply because there are so few people living
who can keep a secret or hold their tongues. The
one great or tremendous task of the ancient priesthoods,
as of the modern Jesuits, was not to get great
ideas, but to train men to keep quiet, and not to
tell tales out of school.’
‘There again you are quite wrong,’ remarked the
lady. ‘If mere firm reticence would attract revelation,
I, certainly, would be among the favoured. On
that subject you need not speak further, for it simply
does not admit discussion. I have kept,’ she added,
‘in my time a secret of vast importance, on which
the fate of a great family depended, for many
months, till it all blew over.’
‘And then,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘came the great
blow-up in consequence of her blowing, or letting
it out. I remember it all. Truly she deserves a
lesson for all this. Do you know,’ he added
amiably, ‘I think, Miss Rockhard, that this matter
may possibly be tested. There is an ugly little
old story about certain nuns who wanted a Pope
to make female confessors, and he promised to do
so if they would keep a box unopened for a day.
They all swore on their salvation to do so;
but the Pope was hardly out of the convent
before they all ran to the box and lifted the lid,
when out flew a bird, which vanished through the
window.’
‘If you think that a silly and slanderous old tale,
which is only disgraceful to one who tells it, is an
argument,’ said the lady, ‘I have no more to say.’
‘But I have this to suggest,’ replied Flaxius. ‘I
have heard—for I do not assert it—that there is even
now in London a person who is endowed with such
strangely supernatural gifts that she may be ranked
with the witches or fairies.’
‘At a guinea a visit, I presume,’ remarked Miss
Rockhard with her sarcastic smile more fully
developed than ever. ‘Merci, my means do not
permit of such expensive researches into occult
philosophy.’
‘Ah, that is the most remarkable part of it all,’
replied Flaxius. ‘She takes nothing; nay, she
invariably makes very valuable gifts; but on the
strictest conditions of secrecy—and she is to the
last degree exacting in this respect—as also that
those whom she favours shall be gifted with superior
intellects—not led by mere curiosity.’
‘And you expect me to believe this?’
‘Certainly not. I never said a word as to belief.
I only say that I believe you will incur no kind of
risk or cost if you seek her.’
‘And you will obtain access for me to your
witch?’
‘She is not my witch, and I have no desire whatever
to send you to her. I only say that if you
will promise on your honour to observe sacred
secrecy even as to knowing of her existence, I will
give you her address.’
‘Very well, I swear!’
‘She lives in Devonshire Street, near Regent’s
Park. There is her card. But I give you every
warning. What you seek will require great truth,
secrecy, and self-command. And remember’—here
the face of Flaxius assumed an expression which
Miss Rockhard had not seen before, and under which
she for an instant quailed, it was so marvellously
strange and dignified, as if he had forgotten himself
into grandeur—‘remember that if you succeed,
I shall expect no thanks, and if you fail,
yours alone is the responsibility.’
‘Oh, I accept it,’ replied Miss Rockhard, recovering
her flippancy. ‘Thanks awfully. I accept the
entire responsibility. What fun!’
And so with all her grace and vanity she swept
away.
At four o’clock on the following afternoon—or
‘morning,’ as it is called by those who probably
look for midnight at fourteen o’clock—Miss Rockhard
found herself in Devonshire Street, seeking the
dwelling of the witch-fairy. And it was very
naturally with an intensely sarcastic smile that she
finally discovered on a door a small silver plate
bearing the words:
‘I might have expected it would be some humbug
of the kind!’ thought the fair Jesabelle. ‘I wonder
whether the fairy drops her h’s. But let us enter
all the same into this Egyptian Hall and take a
miracle or two.’
She rang, and was admitted by a very pretty
maid to a hall which was somewhat singularly, but
most artistically, decorated with antique objects, the
real meaning of which was, however, hardly apparent;
and was then conducted up a broad old staircase to
a large salon, in which the visitor detected a most
extraordinary and original taste, as regards furniture,
without the least obtrusive sign of expenditure
or cost. There was not a thing in the room
which looked as if it had been the ‘gem’ of a
bric‑a-brac shop, or worthy a place in the great
Rothschild pawnbroker collection of Frankfort, or
bought at a Demiduffer sale, and many of the
antiques would not have been valued at twopence
by the Jew; but even Miss Rockhard, albeit her
archæology was of the slenderest, save on Chippendale,
lace, Japaneseries, Chineseries, crockeries, glass,
Sèvres, and rococery in general, or trash in particular,
could not help admitting that there was a
hidden depth of knowledge and artistic taste in
what she saw, which had nothing in common with
bargains, fashion or the shop.
Suddenly looking up, Miss Rockhard saw before
her a lady who, though beautiful, was not to be
lightly described as ‘a beauty,’ considering the usual
vulgar associations with the word. There was a
depth of expression and moral truth, allied to
strength of character, in her face which would have
shamed into oblivion the charm of a Helen, who
was (according to Flaxius) only a professional
beauty of the popular kind after all. ‘And such,’
adds Flaxius, ‘I have invariably found all fashionable
belles of the season (“whom every one is
talking about”) to be.’
‘I am Miss Alban,’ said the lady to the visitor,
‘and I shall be pleased to aid you in the object of
your call. You desire indubitable proof of the
existence of supernatural or magical influences or
beings, and I can supply it.’
‘You are, ahem! I believe, a—dressmaker,’ said
Miss Rockhard, with considerable sarcasm. For
she felt with every word and glance that Miss Alban
was immeasurably her superior in exactly that in
which she would have liked to be great herself: or
in calm self-possession, penetration, and the terrible
art of influencing others, and being invulnerable.
Therefore it was with something like suppressed
exasperation, wrapped up in a smile, that she exclaimed:
‘A dressmaker!’
‘I appear to every one,’ replied Miss Alban,
looking the other clearly in the eyes, ‘as the ideal
ministrant of what they most desire in life. What
you prize above everything is simply to appear well
before everybody, be it in good looks or clothes as
regards the body, and accomplishments and setting
people down and “besting” them as regards the
mind, which all amounts to mere show or dress, and
therefore I appear to you as a modiste.’
‘I confess,’ declared Miss Rockhard, who had
always, with all her failings, a substratum of frank
courage as regarded her poverty and unavoidable
defects, being therein no snob, ‘that as I have only
one decent evening-dress in the world, and am
getting to the end of my twenties, or to a time
when dress becomes more needful, and as I live for
society, I do regard externals with love and envy.
But as for the proof of enchantment——’
‘I promise,’ replied Miss Alban, ‘to fully and
perfectly convince and satisfy you before you leave
this room, that there is such a thing as magic, by
which I mean simply to show you something absolutely
inexplicable by your knowledge of science.’
‘I ask no more than that as regards your sorcery,’
said Miss Rockhard with a complacent smile.
‘While as to dress, I promise that you shall be
at no expense, and for life, the best dressed woman
in London, or even in New York or Paris. But on
one condition.’
‘I know—absolute secrecy. That for me is a
mere trifle.’
‘It is no “mere trifle,” as you will find, but, especially
for you, a terribly difficult and onerous task.
For know that the secrecy must be without speck
or flaw. You are not to say that you have heard of
fairy dressmakers or jest with people who ask you
whence you had your garments, in such a way as
to cause surmises as to the truth; and if you fail
you must not say, “I thought this or that,” as people
of weak minds always do. There is to be no allowance
for thought, or prevarication, or independence,
or misfortune or excuses. If you can persevere in
merely keeping a secret to your own advantage, I
promise you that dress shall not be the limit of my
favours, and you shall lead a long and happy and
highly-honoured life. But if you fail, that is, if by
the least inadvertency, or even accident, you betray
the secret, you will incur a terrible disgrace, and a
suffering and humiliated life. Consider well, and do
not let your vanity lead you to ruin.’
‘I think,’ said Miss Rockhard, with the same old
contemptuous smile, ‘that we may proceed to the
proof. As I happen to know my own mind a little
better than you probably do, I am better aware of
my capacity for secrecy. I accept your conditions.’
‘The proof is very easy,’ replied Miss Alban,
taking from a drawer in a cabinet what seemed to
be a large walnut. ‘Did you ever hear of the
famous wardrobe walnuts of the witch tree of
Benevento? Legend says that a prince once filled
a palace with the splendid garments in cloth of
gold, ermine, velvet and pearls, which he drew from
this one nut.[10] Now, are you ready?’
‘Certainly,’ replied the visitor.
‘And should I perform this miracle, you will,
unconditionally once and for all accept it on your
honour as a proof of magic power? If not, we will
try something else.’
‘No,’ answered Jesabelle, who was thinking more
of being beautifully attired than of all the miracles
or oaths ever heard of. ‘The dress will be proof
enough in all conscience.’
As she spoke, her outer garment fell off, and she
stepped out of it, while Miss Alban, opening the
walnut, drew from it what seemed at first to be a
mere cobweb, which she shook and shook out into
greater fulness, till she placed it on Miss Jesabelle
who, to do her justice, had really a fine little figure,
just made to be very well dressed, with the one
drawback of large feet and hands.
‘Now tell me,’ said the dressmaker, ‘what colour
or material or style would you prefer?’
‘Nothing extravagant as regards expense,’ replied
Miss Rockhard, ‘no cloth of gold or pearl-embroideries
or anything to make people wonder
where the money came from, when all the world
knows how poor I am. Grey silk will do; but as
elegant, original, and beautiful in fit and fold as a
robe can be.’
‘C’est fait,’ said Miss Alban. ‘Rise and look into
yonder glass!’
Then Miss Rockhard looked and could hardly
believe her own eyes, such a vision of beauty was
before her. For, as has been already intimated, she
was really very ‘good-looking,’ with a fine figure,
both being of the kind which are incredibly improved
by tasteful dress, so that she came out (like fireworks)
in a grand ball, or at a fête, when fortune favoured
her.
But never before, under the most benign influence
of a grand cheque from her benevolent aunt, had
she bloomed out like this. It was more than a fit,
more than modelling to the form, more than artistic
folds after any painting, for there was in the fluent
grace and easy elegance of that skirt and bust an
æsthetic apocalypse. ‘Which is,’ pencils Flaxius,
‘a big word for a man, but not too much, under the
circumstances, for a woman.’
Even the fairy smiled, being feminine, at the
success, and said:
‘There is still a trifle or two wanting.’ She took
from the drawer a wisp of straw, a coarse cord, or
circle of clothes-line, and a simply horrid brooch of
brass and glass, or of agate, which seemed, from afar
off, to have been bought in a common toy shop in
the Burlington Arcade, or under the cliff in Brighton,
for threepence. She fastened the wisp of straw
round the wrist of Jesabelle, and lo! it became a
massy bracelet of gold in old Etruscan style, which
would have maddened Castellani, and sent a whole
ball-room into convulsions of envy. The brooch
turned to a brilliant bouquet of diamonds, while the
rope, with eccentric, yet pretty, taste, remained
exactly as it was, but in pure gold, and, being tied
in a bow-knot with folding ends, formed a very
original and elegant head-dress.
The world hears a great deal about the tact of
women, but there is a great deal to be said on the
subject—for and against. For while she believed she
had the keenest insight into everything, Miss Rockhard,
like all of her class and kind, had no more tact
than an oyster, or a hedge-hog, when it behoved her
to suppress her needless pleonasms, sarcasms, and
little spasms of ‘pure cussedness.’ And over and
above all this, petty scepticism had so worked into
all her being that as soon as she had got over the
first flush of admiration at her dress, the old devil
whispered in her ear not to show too much astonishment
or gratitude, ‘which means,’ he said, ‘that
she has been too much for you.’ Therefore, with
exquisite good taste and characteristic refinement,
she said:
‘Well, it’s an awfully clever bit of hanky-panky,
I must say. I wonder how on earth you
do it!’
The fairy looked at her gravely, and replied:
‘You said seriously, before I showed you this
marvel, that if I could effect it you would accept it
once and for all as a proof of my power, and your
first words are an utter denial of it. You are neither
spontaneously grateful at heart, nor graceful nor
polite in words. Society and petty persiflage and
small sneering and flippant sarcasm have killed in
you every noble quality. But I will give you another
proof which will defy doubt. Observe! Though
your figure is good you have undeniably immense
hands, and your shoes, as you are aware, really
look like badly built gondolas. It is a great
pity and it cuts you to the very soul. Now, if I
reduce these extremities of yours to something
like smallness and harmony with the rest, will
you believe?’
What the reader may very well believe is that
this speech was as gall, worm-wood, coloquintida,
nux-vomica, rue, quassia, extract of aloes, acetic
acid, verjuice, vitriol, and strychnine to the palate
of Miss Rockhard, but the end thereof made her
forget all these amaritudes, and she gasped out:
‘Yes.’
‘And I am to hear nothing more about “hanky-panky,”
or “how it is done”?’
‘No.’
‘Then be it done!’ The fairy bade her be seated
and took one of her hands in her own, and began
to sing a spell in a tongue which sounded softly
but strangely:
‘Tāni-rani, sove a lay!
Chovihani chivs apré!
Tiri waster, tiri piri,
Boro dukkerin mi-deary!
Me bitchava lende sā,
Tinkni-bitti, vel ajā!
Little lady, go to sleep!
Witch lays spell upon thee deep!
On thy hands and on thy feet,
Let the charm be strong and fleet!
So I order one and all
To become both neat and small!’
So Miss Rockhard did indeed go to sleep, and on
awaking found herself in her own home, lying on
the sofa in her own room.
‘She would have thought it all a dream,
Save that round her form
Was still the dress of the fairy queen,
Which fitted her “like a charm”;
And her hands and feet were extremely neat,
And become intensely small;
“’Tis well, ’tis well,” said Jesabelle,
“For now I shall beat them all.”’
It was not long before Miss Jesabelle Rockhard
found that the fairy was right in declaring that it
was not such an easy matter to keep a secret when
its results are brilliantly paraded before society.
Therefore the successful alchemists of the olden
time were said to live so plainly, and to go in disguise,
dodging about the world, as did Thomas
Vaughan, to escape observation. And as even they
found it a fearful task, it may be supposed that Miss
Rockhard, who had a ten times harder secret to
keep than theirs, with not one-tenth part of their
sense or experience to keep it on, began to wonder
anon whether she had not spoken over-hastily when
she commended her own powers of discretion as a
subject not open to discussion.
‘The female sex,’ writes Flaxius in his great
Analysis, ‘differs from the male mostly in this, that
it never takes naturally or instinctively to rum or
tobacco, neither does it ever feel conscience or
remorse. Fear of discovery it does indeed experience,
and very sincere regret or sorrow at incurring
punishment, but whether any one woman
since Eve ever regretted anything on principle, or
per se, is as yet among the unfound-outs.
‘Wherein I discover,’ he observes, ‘a great and
wise provision of nature. For when we consider
what a vast quantity there is of confused conscience
and misplaced remorse in man, we cannot be too
thankful that woman is not afflicted with the same
calamity; it being very evident that if she were,
humanity must needs take a fresh start on new
principles. Therefore do I opine,’ he adds, ‘that
“Things,” as Germans call the evolution of humanity,
are going on best as they are, although I did have
a tin of spoiled caviare brought to me this morning
for breakfast.’
As regards the dress and jewellery of Miss Rockhard,
it was a complete—or, as the French say, an
insane—success. Her friends and the public admired
it with an envy which, as she often perceived,
amounted to agony; and there were peeresses who
suffered the tortures of the damned, and with them
millionairesses who panted like harts for the water-brook,
with desire to learn the secret of those transcendental
toilets; which was all like nectar and
ambrosia to her small soul. And as she had the
thin good sense and cautious taste to rarely use
expensive fabrics, and was very chary with diamonds
and the like; and being clever, soon acquired a
stock of evasive phrases and satirical retorts for the
most direct questions, she might have long escaped
detection.
The first error which she committed was the very
common one for all her kind, of ingratitude. For
as regarded Flaxius, the very fact of her success
irritated her, when she reflected that he had entirely
established all his assertions, and completely got the
better of her—after all her assumption of superior
intelligence—and as she recalled him, every time she
donned a dress, with renewed vexation, the feeling
grew in time to tormenting hatred, there being no
vindictiveness like that for benefits received. Nor
was she any better disposed towards the fairy, since
every time she was teased by questioners she said
to herself: ‘Pest take the creature! why couldn’t
she just as well have given me the clothes without
any condition. ’Tis ever the way with these
mysterious snobs, they always do everything by
halves in a petty way, so as to render gratitude
impossible. I believe that vulgar teasing is a part
of their low nature.’
Now when the moral obligation to keep a secret
is gone, and the buttresses are, so to speak, knocked
away, it generally requires but a little push to overthrow
the whole building. And this push came ere
long from an unexpected quarter.
Miss Jesabelle Rockhard was born, and lived, in
undeniably good society, but had never had more
than very scanty sniffs of ‘the purer atmosphere of
Dukedom.’ As the melancholy Jacques, with refined
wit, remarks, even the word is ‘a spell to call fools
together,’ albeit printers have spoiled his spelling.
Now it befell that a duchess of twenty-four carats,
a dame of irrepressible power, stronger at every
point than poor Miss Jesabelle, and one whose
flamberg or six-feet two-handed sword was not to be
lightly turned by the latter’s fencing foil—fenced she
never so wisely—had set her whole soul on learning
the secret of the exquisite toilets. Hitherto Miss
Rockhard had only gentler breezes to resist, but now
there was a cyclone brewing, before which, had she
been wise, she would have fled unto the uttermost
parts of the earth.
The duchess soon learned—indeed ’twas common
talk—that the now famous Miss Rockhard guarded
with great care the secret of her dresses. She made
adroit, special, long-continued inquiry—who would
not be detective for a duchess?—and the more she
was confirmed in the report, the more obstinately
was she determined to penetrate the mystery.
‘O thou poor Jesabelle,’ writes Flaxius, ‘whom
I did greatly love with all thy faults—since devil a
one was there of them thine own—all being drawn
from good society—how gladly would I have averted
from thee the fate which I saw gathering over thy
graceful head; how gladly would I have clucked
unto thee, as the cock clucketh unto the hen to come
to him when he has found a grain, albeit he often
swallows it ere she gets there!—or done anything in
reason, to paratonnerre away the crash and flash in
the dark gathering cloud—it could not be! All
that we could do was to await the explosion, pick up
the pieces, glue them together as well as possible
and so, en avant!
‘It is written in the Babylonian chronicle of the
great Rabbi Ganef Ben Nofgur, that “even as a
monkey will, in doing mischief, manifest as much
mind as would make him the equal of man, so
a woman, to find out a secret which is none of her
business, will show the genius of seven devils. For
ten measures of intermeddling were sent down by
Aschmodai upon earth, and the daughters of Israel
got nine of them.”’
From which ye may understand that the duchess,
finding that the treasure was deeply buried, and
craftily enchanted, took great precaution and pains
to disinter it. Firstly, she was merely affable to Miss
Rockhard in the winsome way which shows that any
one has taken a special, an unconscious liking—which
is a particular form of humbug treated more fully
by Patrick Mac Iavel in his Treatise on the Art of
Blarneying. She set on to Jesabelle an artless niece
who Jesabelle thought was a fool, and who ended
by fooling her—Miss Rockhard—completely. Then
the duchess began a series of fondlings, pettings,
little intimacies, and careful confidences, invitations
to dinner and the opera—sending her carriage freely
for her on all occasions. In a word, she wound
round the victim such an insidious mesh of obligations
that at last she judged that the roast was
done to a turn, and ready to be served, carved and
eaten.
So one night at a reception at the ducal palace,
to which Jesabelle had come in consequence of most
ingenious and urgent desire—in the utmost magnificence
which she dared—her jewellery on this
occasion being rather seriously splendid and dangerous—the
hostess struck her coup by displaying the
most passionate admiration of her guest’s attire.
Then with great adroitness she led the conversation
to the fondness she had for Jesabelle, which subtly
trained towards the obligations and kindnesses,
which had by this time run up to an alarming sum.
And then, suddenly recurring to the dress, she
said:
‘If you are, indeed, as you say, deeply grateful
to me for anything, and are sincere as I am in
friendship, my dear, then acquit it all by a mere
trifle, and tell me truly, without any equivocation,
the secret of your marvellous dresses….’
Miss Rockhard would very much have preferred
seeing an insane anarchist flourishing a bomb, and
a carving-knife come dancing into her drawing-room,
to this simple question from her dearest friend.
And the agitation of her features showed it—almost
fearfully. The duchess was delighted. ‘Now for
an adroit coup,’ she thought, ‘and I have it.’
‘I dare say, my dear,’ she added with sweet persuasion,
‘that there is really no great mystery in
it after all. You girls are so fond of making up
romances. Perhaps I can even aid you with it, if perfect
secrecy, experience, and love can aid. But it
will not be confiding a secret, you know, for we two
are one, and ’twill be as if you told it to yourself.’
When one feels a secret like an intolerable burden,
or a pack of coals on one’s back—heavy as sin, and
burning as remorse—the bearer catches at any
excuse for betraying it. Nor was Jesabelle a little
piqued by the artful hint: ‘I dare say there is really
no great mystery in it after all.’ And, perhaps, the
duchess, with her vast knowledge of life and invincible
prestige, could solve the mystery, so that no
harm or loss could come of it; and driven to the
wall as she was, and at her wits’ end, for a rupture
with her Grace meant social ruin, she actually caught
at the last straw—‘it will not be telling a secret, since
we are one’—as if it had been a rope thrown by a
life-buoyant philanthropist.
‘You will not say,’ remarked the duchess, somewhat
sarcastically, ‘that it is a fairy-gift.’
At that word, Jesabelle in despair and anger
exclaimed—’twas as if the very devil spoke for her
and used her tongue:
‘It is a fairy gift!’
The duchess uttered an appalled scream; there
was a chorus of ‘Ha’s—ho’s—oh dear me’s!’ through
all the gamut heard from those around—Tableau!
‘What is the matter?’ cried Jesabelle terrified.
‘Look in the glass!’ cried the duchess, pointing to
a twenty-foot mirror opposite.
Miss Rockhard looked, and saw an awful sight.
It was herself, arrayed in nothing but her under-garments,
with a wisp of straw on her wrist, a piece
of clothes-line rope about her head, and on her
bosom a great threepenny brass and glass brooch.
And amid her surroundings this costume looked
ten times worse than it had done in Devonshire
Street.
‘A lunatic! a mad woman! Wonder how she
got in! Hope she won’t attack us! Wonder if she’s
got a pistol? We shall all be killed! Run for the
police!’ was heard on all sides. Miss Rockhard
fainted. Some mysterious friend—she knew not
who—stepped forward, wrapped her in a cloak, and
conveyed her in a carriage to her home. Yet
heavily as the blow fell on her, it struck the duchess
at once almost as severely. For after all her pains,
and after driving poor Jesabelle to the wall, and to
insanity, all that she had got was, ‘It is a fairy-gift,’
at which even a child would laugh. She might well
have exclaimed, ‘I have brought my pig to a fine
market, to be sure!’ as the Princess Iona Mic
Flanagan remarked, after she had driven a swine
from Dublin to Cork, where it was eaten by a wolf;
the incident was sung in Tara’s Psaltery, and
recorded in the Leabhair Ruad, or Red-Book of the
Nine Masters, in Shelta.
When Jesabelle came to herself in the morning,
a brief half-hour of deadly, sickening despair was
succeeded by a good healthy reaction of rage at the
duchess, the fairy, Flaxius, and all mankind. Even
as the hero Hans Breitmann ungratefully wished
that his teacher, Professor Schmitzerl, ‘vas in hell’
for teaching him how to ride on a bicycle, did Miss
Rockhard wish that all those whose favours, gifts,
and applause she had once so anxiously sought
were all at the bottom of Inferno, and the devil
dancing on them, because they had given her in
fullest measure what she most ardently desired, yea,
perjured herself to obtain!
I have here arrived, O lector benevole, thou best of
readers, at what is to us, I trust, the most interesting
point, that is to say the crisis in this eventful history.
It happened once during the American War
that after the Confederates had been defeated in a
battle, certain gallant Southern ‘chivs’ or chivalric
officers, attempted to account for the failure: one
attributing it to a sudden rise in the river, and
another to a division not coming up in time; till at
last one startled them all by asking, ‘If they didn’t
think the Yankees had something to do with it?’
Even so, after making out that everybody had
been against her, and shown themselves a pack of
contemptible wretches, did it occur to Miss Rockhard
that she Herself had counted for something in
the game, and had something to Do with It. And
being now, as it were, thrown into solitude, and
having a fine, vigorous mind, and being withdrawn
from the society which had so fearfully warped it;
she began, so to speak, to straighten out again
morally, and recuperate. She felt no remorse at all,
but she began to study that which had made her err:
a society, with its ideals of the most adroit slander;
knowledge of all that is none of our business, ostentation,
wealth, rank, and birth, though ever so
evilly sustained, or disgraced or dishonoured; the
adroitness of shallow sarcasm and silly flippancy;
and the real meaning of vogue and fashion; and
finally the awkward, blundering manner in which
even these wretched fancies were carried out by
nine-tenths of their devotees, real and accomplished
men and women of the world,—the true article
being a great rarity even in Belgravia.
Her self-examination was long and searching,
sparing herself no pang, being as pitiless to the Me
as to the Them. Having no other on whom to
exercise her sarcasms, she turned them all on her
own follies—not raving in despair, and calling herself
a fool, but, as she indeed always did, finding out
what was in the object thus illuminated and shown
up. And it did her an immense amount of good.
She had an awful crust of old dead shells, and a
fearful lot of foul sea-weed to scrape away from the
ship, ere it would sail well; but she did it!
For to do Jesabelle Rockhard justice, she had
pluck and bottom, grit and endurance, and was not
the kind of girl to throw up the game of life because
she had lost a fairy wardrobe, or even the favour of
a duchess; and not being French, but right valiant
English of good fighting stock, she resolved to show
fight, and put a good face on a bad game.
All at once it occurred to her that the long and
earnest reflection which she had given to herself and
to society had developed the serious and sustained
analysis of character which forms the real power of
the novelist, and that which elevates him above the
story-teller. She was seated at Brighton in the
shingle on a fine day at noon, under an umbrella,
when it came into her mind that as a novelist she
could enter on a new life. It was like a great
revelation, for with her clear, vigorous, well-informed
mind, she grasped all the possibilities of such a
career, and its tremendous power.
Once in history, when women came a-cropper in
any earthly way, they went into a convent; now
they go into a publisher’s—that is to say, they write
or re-write a novel.
All geniuses are white-washed.
A woman of genius may pawn her reputation
when an obscurity dare not look over the fence.
Make yourself a celebrity, and society will do the
rest.
Nine-tenths of notoriety consists not of what
people know, but what they say about anybody.
If you have sinned, there are two ways to be forgiven.
Either repent your evil deeds or describe
those of others.
The most certain way to make two thousand a
year by writing novels is to tell all your friends in
confidence that you earn one thousand.
Understandest thou this—or what?
A gypsy woman of her acquaintance from whom
she bought bouquets, and whose shrewd observations
had often amused her, came up and gave her what
is called in tramp slang a lyover, in Romany a ruzhia,
and in English a flower.
‘Tell me, Amalthea Cooper,’ she inquired, ‘what
do you understand by society? Give me a sixpence
worth of information!’
‘When any kind of a lot of people gets together
anyhow,’ replied Amalthea, after a grave pause,
‘it’s a mob. When there’s a-many that generally
assembles, such as three or four tans or families, it’s
what we calls in our language the Sweti, or our
world. But when they are of the same kind of folk,
and are invited to a drop of tea or beer, or to have
something and a talk—and one, may be, plays a tune
on a fiddle—why, that’s society.’
‘And what do they talk about?’ inquired
Jesabelle.
‘Well,’ answered the gypsy with a smile, ‘mostly
about how one has been sent to staripen, or prison, for
stealin’—and what a fool he was to let himself be
took—and how other folks has run off with one
another wives, and the like um-moralitys, and how
some larrups their romis, or morts, which is wives
and missuses, and all such little rakapen or gossip—and
that’s what I calls society.’
‘C’est tout comme chez nous,’ remarked Miss
Rockhard. ‘Here is your sixpence, Amalthea.
Decidedly I will take to novelling.’
It was a magnificent success, as great as the
toilets had been, and to Miss Jesabelle in her new
mind infinitely more gratifying. She didn’t deserve
it, good people may say, but somehow Jesabelle
did write brilliant books, and rose to the top of the
wave. Even the incident of the evening at the
duchess’s was now narrated as an eccentricity of
genius, and when it was mentioned men in the clubs
said: ‘Ah, my dear fellow, excuse me, you haven’t
got the right rendering of that story.’ Finally it
settled into two versions: one of the sporting
world, which found its way into the Blue ‘Un, that
‘Jes’ had done it for a wager, which was in a way
true; and the other more humane legend, that it was
at the request of the duchess, who had begged her
to sing the ‘Lunatic Bar-Maid’ in character.
And her novels were stinging, I warrant you.
As she became amiable personally she grew savage
in literature. She gave it to society and fashion
à la aquafortis; and as society did not see itself but
only its friends in her scathing speeches, it was perfectly
delighted. She did not touch lightly and
gently and pityingly, as I have done, on its poor
little imperfections; she ripped them up as with a
scalper in the hands of a Red Indian, or a familiar
tormentor of the Inquisition at a five o’clock tea. I
never could learn that it did any good, for even the
victims felt pride at being shown up in good company
as worthy of note; but her books sold, and she
was famous.
‘Heaven help their souls, they’d rather be’
et cetera.
It was more than a year after the events here
narrated had taken place, and Miss Rockhard had
greatly improved on her celebrity by a ‘stunning
second,’ or another novel, that she found herself
again at Brighton, seated as before under a white
umbrella. She was reading proofs, which is of itself
a bliss to a young writer, as strong minds as hers
love to speak of ‘my publisher,’ and this was mingled
with a mild, vague impression of children digging
with wooden spades, negro minstrels, ballad-singers,
flower-girls, bathing-machines, the flow of a thousand
voices, the broad-spreading, blue ocean, and ships far
off and out at sea, with the sun upon their sails.
When lifting her eyes they encountered the gaze
of another pair, which for an instant half prolonged
her dreamy mood in dim conjecture, till she recognised
in the other the somewhat remarkable character
who had, indirectly, had such a wondrous influence
on her fate. It was indeed the Great and Wise
Flaxius, in propria persona, who had taken unto
himself a pennyworth of chair at a little distance,
which distance he promptly proceeded to diminish
when he perceived that the lady had not forgotten
him.
‘It is a long time since we first met,’ said Miss
Rockhard. ‘Nearly two years.’
‘Nearly two thousand years,’ replied Flaxius in a
strangely solemn voice, wie Glocketon und Orgelklang.
‘Yes, quite two thousand, though learned critics of
the Kethubim differ as to the date, and Jochanan and
Ben Hillel think—but never mind! ’Tis so.’
‘And who was I then?’ inquired Miss Rockhard,
entering, as she thought, into the spirit of one of
Flaxius’s strange jests.
‘Truly a femme incomprise, and one who died, in
fact, misunderstood, just as you might have done
had you made your exit some two years ago, since
at that time you did not really understand yourself.’
‘I think,’ replied the dear young lady, ‘that is
strictly true of the whole silly sisterhood.’ She said
it with a deep blush, though not a blusher in a
general way, for she recalled the last interview, much
in sorrow, not at all in wrath. ‘But who was I,
two millennia gone by?’
‘The wife of King Ahab of the Jews, the very
much distinguished Jezebel.’
Truly this was a shake for Miss Rockhard, and
the blush came up as a flush somewhat heightened;
yet she said with a smile:
‘I regret that you only remember me as the
greatest iniquity of the Old Testament. I am
curious to know if you admired me very much in
that character?’
‘Not in that character, but in your true one, which,
I declare sincerely and without paradox, has been
most cruelly misrepresented.’
‘As it is a personal matter,’ rejoined Miss Rockhard,
‘I need not say that I am all expectancy and
attention.’
‘Very well. Who is it that describes Jezebel for
us? A personal enemy of extreme bitterness, and
one of a race approving death and murder in any
form, when any one of the Goyim, or Gentiles, is
concerned.’
‘I never thought of that,’ said Jesabelle reflectively.
‘And religious antipathy must have been stronger
among the Hebrews than in any other race, for they
were strong-minded.’
‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it is too generally lost
sight of in Church histories that those who make
the best martyrs are also best martyring others.
But to return to Jezebel. The first and chief crime
with which she is charged is remaining steadfast to
that polytheistic Syrian religion in which she was
brought up, and to which she was in duty bound to
be attached, since her father was King of Zidon,
and in a sense its head. The King of the Jews
married her, and was fascinated by the charms of
that splendid and sensual system which seemed so
attractive, compared to the grim, Hebrew, ascetic
monotheism, which gave no joyousness to this life,
neither did it promise a future as did the Syrian,
so that it came to pass that the greatest and wisest
men among the Hebrews often adopted it, and it
more than once happened that nearly all Israel went
over to it.
‘Now bear in mind, my friend,’ said Flaxius with
a smile, ‘that in reading the Book of Kings we
generally go as in a torrent of headlong agreement
with the writer, who assumes, as a matter of course,
that everybody who is not a Hebrew monotheist,
and an implicit believer in all that the prophets are
said to have said, and all that is told about them,
is utterly wicked beyond all sinners, and deserving
death.’
‘That is true,’ assented Miss Rockhard.
‘The prophet whom Jezebel threatened in a rage
because he had put to death the priests of her own
religion, who were probably her intimate friends and
relations, is Elijah—Elia—who with the masculine
termination appears in Greek as Helios, the sun,
who, like the latter, goes up to, or over, the heaven
in a chariot of fire, after performing the preliminary
Moses-miracle of dividing the water of a stream. I
think that we may set aside Jezebel’s sins as regarded
this very mythical character as dubiously
inconsiderable. And when we reflect that the
Hebrews slew one hundred thousand Syrians in one
day, as we read in the twenty-ninth verse of the
twentieth chapter of Kings, simply for differences
of religious opinion, the whole war being stimulated
by prophets and priests, the slaughter of a few
prophets ascribed to Jezebel may well pass as an
incident of war. These great bands of one hundred
and fifty prophets seem to have been identical with
the roaming Darweesh of the Arabs, whose business
it is to stir up war. We are accustomed to feel awe
at the prophets, because they usually appear singly
in their majesty, like God, but these bands of one
hundred and fifty, all prophesying en masse, rather
detract from the dignity of the profession.
‘Now, as regards Naboth’s vineyard, it was unquestionably
a wicked deed. Ahab had offered
Naboth, the Jezreelite, a better vineyard for his own,
or its worth in money, and Ahab was the king.
The refusal was a bitter blow before all the world;
so bitter that the king became ill, and seemed to
be dying, because he had been, as he conceived,
insulted.
‘Now there is no proof that Jezebel cared two-pence
for the vineyard, but she was passionately
fond of her family and husband. She had been
born and brought up to familiarity with excess of
bloodshed for trifles; she had seen all the priests
whom she revered, and one hundred thousand of her
own people killed for adhering to their own religion,
and as she preferred the life of Ahab to that of
Naboth, and being an unquestionably clever and
vigorous woman, she easily contrived to have the
latter put out of the way. One evil deed does not
excuse another, but it is worth observing that pious
King David was guilty of a very similar, but far
viler and more nefarious transaction, as regarded
Uriah’s wife, for which he was indeed only vicariously
punished, while Jezebel was made to suffer not only
by loss of husband and son, but most cruelly in
person.
‘Now we come to the end of the tragedy. Jehu,
after having murdered Jehoram in a cowardly and
treacherous manner, returned to Jerusalem. And
here the narrator by a most ingenious little touch
of art has contrived to say something of Jezebel
which has done more to make her appear infamous
by her biographer than every thing else accusative—if
indeed he meant it—which may be doubtful. It
is the simple statement that, “When Jehu was come
to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she painted her
face and tired her head, and looked out at a
window.” From which has come the popular saying
of “painted Jezebels,” suggesting vile women
covered with rouge.’
‘And even rouge is not quite a sin; if it be, God
help Belgravia!’ remarked Miss Rockhard.
‘And yet she was not even rouged,’ added Flaxius,
for the Hebrew original says, “put her eyes in
painting,” which means that she drew lines with
Kohl or antimony powder under her eyelashes, as
was the usual custom with all women, good or bad,
all over the East, where it is common to this day.
It amounted to no more than putting on a bonnet
or drawing on a pair of gloves. As for “tiring her
head,”’ added Flaxius solemnly, and almost sadly,
‘when I think how Isaiah and Jeremiah must have
tired the heads and hearts of all Israel with their
lamentations, I can pass over Jezebel’s work. It
was her own business.
‘And when the brutal and cowardly assassin Jehu
entered, she addressed him as only an injured wife
and mother and a woman of marvellous wit and
deep feeling could have done, with the cleverest,
keenest, and most succinct sarcasm or reproach ever
uttered. It was simply, “Had Zimri peace who slew
his master?” Few at the present day realise how
stinging this question was. To an extremely superstitious
and brutal man like Jehu, fearful of omens,
and uneasy as to the crimes of regicide, it was
maddening. But the woman never existed who
wouldn’t have said it, if she could have thought
of it.’
‘I am sure that I should, under the circumstances,’
replied the young lady, ‘though I knew that all the
vengeance in the hand of man was to follow.’
‘So she was thrown out of the window, and Jehu
killed her, stamping the bruised woman under his
own feet in his frenzied rage, so that, as it is written,
“some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and
on the horses,” showing how high it must have jetted
up, and how savagely she was trampled on by the
infuriated Jew.
‘Even the eating of Jezebel by dogs is told in
such a manner as to convey an impression of infamy
and guilt on her part. But if Jehu, or any other
Jew or Gentile, or anything eatable, were thrown
to the dogs in Jerusalem to-day, they would soon
finish it. When the soul is gone, it matters little
how the poor shell of humanity is treated. But I
find something very degrading and disgraceful in
the manner in which the writer dwells upon and
exults in the fact that the ‘carcase’ of Jezebel was
insulted, and that dogs ate her flesh. It would have
been more creditable to Elijah, and to all concerned,
if they had given her burial as became a king’s
daughter. For she was queenly, and showed no
fear in her last moment, and when she knew that
death was at hand, she calmly made her toilet, as
a lady would, to appear well, like Queen Catherine,
to the last, and greeted her foe with a richly deserved
reproof, and not with prayers for mercy.
Yes, she died like one of royal race.’
‘Mr. Flaxius,’ said Miss Jesabelle, ‘do you know
that if I should ever come into court, as defendant,
in anything from pitch and toss up to murder,
anarchy, or high treason, I should like to have you
for my counsel. I believe that you would make me
out an angel, even to my own conviction.’
‘The usual formula of polite society would be,’
replied Flaxius, ‘to say that I have always been
convinced myself of the fact. But as I have not,
and would be very much puzzled to know how to
dispose of any such feathered anomaly, all I can
say is that if you were no more guilty than I believe
Jezebel to have been, I would accept the case with
alacrity, and clear you, if there be such a thing as
justice in the land.’
‘Since you have defended Jezebel so well,’ replied
the lady, ‘perhaps you could say a word for
Herodias. I always understood that the Advocatus
diaboli was the prosecuting attorney, but in this case
he appears for the defence.’
‘Herodias,’ said the sage, ‘was a bird of a very
different colour, but, like all the rest, she was a
femme incomprise. And to begin with, the original
of the name, who is to this very day recognised
among the older witches in Italy as their queen,
jointly with Diana, was of remote Oriental origin,
or the same as Lilith of the Jews. She was
eminently the fair demon of fascination who was
“simply killing,” and you must bear it in mind that
something of all this devilry was in the mind of
the good Christians who wrote about the lady of
the New Testament who danced Herod off his head
and the head off Saint John. And the original
Herodias was as certainly the goddess of dancing,
which was a serious and terrible means of bewitchment
in the olden time.[11]
‘In regard to the transaction described in the
later Scripture, it is marvellous that no writer has
ever treated it from a modern-society, Christian,
five-o’clock-tea, practical point of view. Suppose a
lady—an intelligent, accomplished widow who has
had a pleasant life as wife of the governor of Paryobberee,
or Cathay. The governor dies, his brother
succeeds to the appointment, and marries the widow,
as was strictly commanded in the Old Testament;
from which book sundry moderns derive the
command that a man is not to marry his wife’s
sister.’
‘Consistency, thou art a jewel!’ interpolated Miss
Rockhard.
‘Well he marries the widow, or, it may be, the
fraternal divorced wife. Then uprises a clergyman
of a new sect, with what were considered eccentric
new views, who has tremendous influence among
the people, and informs the governor that his
marriage is illegal. And then, fancy the feelings of
Herodias! On one hand divorce and perhaps death
or poverty, with a charming daughter just coming
out; on the other a prophet of the wildest description.
And it was considered to be such a remarkably
natural, trifling, and commonplace thing in
those days to put anybody to death who was in
your way, if you had the power to do it; just as
good John Calvin did with Servetus when the latter
got in his way, or as some millions of heretics were
disposed of, mostly with antecedent torture, by
“meek, merciful, all-Christlike Mother Church.” And
so Herodias did what the grand majority of worldly-minded,
High or Low Church, Christian matrons and
mammas would do to-day, under the same circumstances—if
they could—and put Saint John out of
the way.
‘This is the legend of Herodias.’
There was a long silence, when Flaxius said:
‘Now tell me, if under the same conditions of
secrecy as before, and with all your recent experience
and newly acquired wisdom, would you
accept the marvellous wardrobe of the fairy Alban
once more, for if you will take it you shall have
it, forthwith?’
Miss Rockhard had for months reflected on and
studied this very question to its very lees. But she
took a minute—two minutes—to her reply, and when
she spoke it was with emotion close to tears, but
with firm voice:
‘Oh, I thank you from my very heart, for I feel
deeply that this offer now is a thousand times
kinder than was the first. But I have had my
lesson, and I hope I do not need another—when I
do, you will, I hope,’—here she looked up with a sad,
sweet smile.
(‘She is immensely prettier than she used to be,’
thought Flaxius.)
‘You will I hope not spare me. But as for the
wardrobe, it is best where it is—in fairy hands. Nor
would I know anything more of magic or occulta or
mysteries, for I have learned what few know, that
no human nature, unless perhaps it be gifted as
few are, and has had years of training, can keep, or
is fit to know, such secrets. It will be time
to attend to them when we shall have exhausted
science.’
‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘when you exhaust science
a little more, you will indeed find that magic is
beginning in earnest.’
‘And so,’ added Jesabelle with a smile, as they
rose to depart—I dare say it was in the direction
of Mutton’s, to lunch—‘we learn from past trials
and bitter storms how in future to keep under
shelter, and seek only the sunny way.
‘“For all experience is an arch where through
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever as we roam.”’
Haec fabula docet, ‘ye morale of whych lytil
historie,’ pens Flaxius as usual on the galley, ‘is
that we should, firstly, not believe the worst of
anybody, be it derived from their own manner,
and demeanour, or from oral or written report,
and above all have patience with them, and try to
help them to a better state. For, verily, this Miss
Rockhard was a hard nut to crack, and enough to
daunt the devil, or any decent man as I first met
her, and a hard time I had with her, yet did she
come out ‘all right as a trivet,’ a trivet being, as ye
know, dearly beloved, a tripod, and the reference
‘all right’ to the infallible accuracy of the Delphic
oracle, which is, however, a fact not generally known.
For of all things a three-legged stool stands most
securely.
As for the manner in which any evil report may
be cruelly and undeservedly attached to a name,
there is still a word to be said for belle Jezebel of
Hebrew history. When I of late defended her
character, I was rebuffed with the remark that
there was in the Book of Kings a distinct assertion
that she was a—ahem!—social evil—and a witch:
this being the speech of Jehu, Kings II. 9, v. 22.
Now be it observed that the expression here
employed is to be found over and over again in
the Old Testament, and in almost every instance is
used not to signify any adultery or individual immorality,
but to discredit the Syrian religion. It
was a very nasty and unmanly form of abuse which
the Hebrew prophets, and Saint John, used far too
freely, on all occasions, to characterise everything
theological which displeased them; just as sailors
and the like use ‘bloody,’ et cetera, very often with
no meaning whatever, or as the gentlemen and
ladies of Houndsditch cry out noffgur and ben-noffgur,
and so forth, far too freely to all offenders.
This speech of Jehu’s was, it is true, used not in
the Pickwickian sense, but most certainly in the
theological, which is the next thing to it. For
the first impulse of the odium theologicum is, to
be ‘nasty.’
Now a good tough nature like Jesabelle’s, when
really honest, is all the better and cleaner for a
good mangling. As was beautifully expressed by
the ancients as follows—
that is, three V’s, meaning Virtus virtute virescit,
Virtue flourishes by virtue, signifying that like the
chamomile it grows the more for being trampled on.
To the present day this sign is often to be seen on
the walls of Florence, scratched in chalk or charcoal,
and prefixed to the names of popular favourites. It
is generally believed to be a monogram of Evviva!
-
Vide Etruscan-Roman Remains, by Charles Godfrey Leland:
London, Fisher Unwin. ↩
-
Here the chronicler of Flaxius would fain get in a little réclame,
by mentioning that Herodias and Diana have a small book to themselves
in Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches, by Charles Godfrey
Leland. London: D. Nutt. ↩
